I finished an article on rational funding earlier today had a great conversation with a new non-profit about the importance of funders not responding to needs or filling gaps but looking for opportunities and met with a group of donors to talk about how valuable it is to think about philanthropy in terms of investments that have clear goals reporting and measurements along the way. I read a number of articles on venture philanthropy and how to design metrics for results-oriented philanthropy.  It was a great start for the day.  The phone rang and on the other end was a friend on the board of a day care that has…

Several years ago I was sitting in a marketing meeting listening to a discussion about how to engage boomers.  The unanimous conclusion was boomer donors want to be “hands-on” and “engaged” with the work.  There was then a strategy session about how to give them that experience without the expense of the infrastructure it takes to actually make people “hands-on”. While that was not the birth moment of the short term missions movement (which began in the 1950’s with Operation Mobilization and YWAM) it was about the same time progressive churches began to create week-long mission projects vacations with a purpose and other temporary assignments for amateurs.  Skip forward a…

In a couple of weeks I am going to join a group of academics and researchers being convened by the Lake Institute at the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University.  The purpose is to have a roundtable discussion on a review of recent literature on faith and giving.  They sent out the forty-three page report ahead of time and I thought some of the observations might be interesting to a wider audience.  As far as I know nothing is proprietary.  Again these are just quotes and observations that I found interesting as I read.  Most of them are predictable and common sense.  Some are thought provoking.  Some are well I’ll…

I don’t want to break confidences when I use personal correspondence for these blogs but these questions and concerns from Gathering participants are the best sources of thought for me. “One objection to the growing number of support and mentoring programs for young ministry entrepreneurs is that too much is made of the person/personality rather than the organization or movement that’s required to produce significant systemic impact.  We’re trying to figure out the proper balance between celebrating and supporting the entrepreneur who creates the organization and ensuring the organization is strong and deep enough to outlast and outperform a charismatic individual.”  I’m especially interested in this one because it’s a…

The Gathering is a safe place.  That’s what all the surveys tell us.  In fact we’ve used the phrase ourselves for so long to describe The Gathering that we’ve stopped considering what it means.  That’s dangerous – not safe.  Last year we commissioned Dave Goetz and CZ Strategy (www.czstrategy.com) to do interviews and research to find out (among other things) what our participants meant by safe.  Four things rose to the top of the list.  (1)   We are cause agnostic.  We are not pushing an agenda for giving. (2)    People sense they are with peers.  It’s okay to be open with peers. (3)    We are nonsectarian.  There is no “right”…

I attended my first Q conference this year in Portland.  While it is hard to compare Q to The Gathering I did have one especially vivid and riveting experience.  No it wasn’t the tattoos and dredlocks or the testimonies about growing up in a Baptist church and then coming to faith.   It was something even more challenging for someone like me who hosts a conference.  Normally we try to round up participants out of the halls and the classrooms and meals to make sure everyone gets to the general session on time.  We even ring bells and send staff out to remind everyone that the session is starting. We crank…

Several times in the Gospels the disciples ask Jesus about who will be great in the Kingdom.  It’s not a bad question.  In fact it’s a question I encourage younger people to ask themselves.  How you define greatness makes a difference…and you cannot know unless you ask.  It’s the question we should be asking when we are young and should keep asking all our lives.  Yet one time in particular the disciples ask Jesus what it means to be considered great or more literally to have the appearance of greatness.  It’s a totally different question isn’t it?  It’s one thing to have a genuine interest in the qualities of greatness…

I had heard about the app YouVersion (www.youversion.com) and the story behind it a few months ago.  Last month I ran into Bobby Gruenewald the innovation leader at Lifechurch.tv in Edmund Oklahoma and the developer of YouVersion.  What began as a service to the congregation has now been downloaded by 20 million people around the world – and I am one of them.  I use it for a daily Bible reading plan and sometimes in church.  My family doesn’t like me using it in church as it looks like I am checking mail.  People have spent over 7.5 billion minutes on the site – mostly on Sunday mornings.  It looks…

We came to Tyler 25 years ago.  Not long after we arrived I had the privilege to meet and know men and women who had carried public and charitable responsibility in this community for a long time and did so until they died.  I don’t know if all of them would have described it this way but to me they had a call to this community.  They had wealth and they had an ingrained sense of caring for others. They had allowed this community to have a claim on their lives. Allowing others to have a claim on your life is what money is supposed to free us from, isn’t…