Illustrations by Timo Kuilder

Twenty-five years ago, Rebekah Burch Basinger, Ed.D., and the late Thomas Jeavons, Ph.D., wrote Growing Givers’ Hearts: Treating Fundraising as a Ministry, which detailed their research into faith-based giving. Their findings have lasted over the years, as they discussed how to encourage giving as a part of discipleship.

In a recent episode of the “Good Governance” podcast, Basinger discussed the research, lessons learned, and how theological school leaders and boards might consider fundraising and the spirituality of giving. Basinger is the project director of the In Trust Center’s “Wise Stewards Initiative” and a longtime governance coach and a board member, as well. Here, she considers how boards can think about giving and cultivate generosity. Some key takeaways from the podcast interview:

Giving as an Opportunity

I don’t know how many times, particularly in my work with seminary boards, somebody has said to me, “I look forward to the day when we don’t ever have to ask for money again.” And I said, “Oh, no, you don’t want to look forward to that day. That would be a very sad day because you would have cut off a very valuable part of the school’s ministry, and then what are you talking about?”

So fundraising is an aspect of our ministry, whatever the other sort of mission statement ministry is. We need to understand that anytime we have a conversation with another person about what God is calling them to do with their money, we are having a deeply intimate and spiritual conversation. And in that conversation, we are calling them to move closer to God, and that is an amazing ministry.

Releasing Resources

In the research we did, it kept coming up over and over again that their approach to fundraising or generating funds grew out of wanting to do something that they thought they couldn’t. But as they began to talk with people we interviewed, they really came to understand that they had most of what they needed present within their constituency. They just needed to help people release it. And, all of a sudden, they were just kind of overwhelmed by the abundance that was at their ready that had actually been there all along. They just hadn’t recognized it because they had been thinking about the way they were generating funds in a very traditional fundraising kind of way. That’s when we came to the sense that the recognition of abundance is foundational to fundraising and to approach the work with an abundance mindset, saying, “We will have enough.”

The Scarcity Mindest

We mistake what abundance means when we think it means anything I want, but if I recognize that abundance really means I have enough, and there are stories throughout scripture of that. I think particularly of the manna in the wilderness. They had enough for the day, but when they tried to store up more, they got in trouble. When they let a scarcity mindset take over then scarcity took over. We saw that then as our foundational principle that if an organization can’t see God’s abundance in what they have around them, within their constituency, within their own skillset, all of that, they’re not going to be able to approach fundraising as ministry.

What We Communicate

While we were doing the research, I was talking with a board chair of a school. She had discovered Henri Nouwen’s The Spirituality of Fundraising. She had begun to think about that and said, “I realized that I had left the school with such a deep sense of scarcity because that’s all I ever saw at the seminary. That’s all I ever heard from the professors. ... I took that mindset with me to my congregation, and I weep for the 15 years that I wasted.”

When we talk about institutional finances, we, in some way, communicate that we are doing God’s work. We are about God in the world, but if we look like we’re going to go under at the next breath, and that we’re barely hanging on by our fingernails, what are we communicating to our students? And then to realize that’s what they’re going to be taking out into the broader church. What we model has eternal consequences and we’d better get it right.

Making Time for Relationships

Fundraising is ministry and is very relational, and relationships require people who have the time and availability. Set your goals accordingly to what you are. And here’s where boards have a great responsibility. One board member once told me, “I want our fundraising team to be out there twisting arms and kicking butts.” Tell me how that will work in a couple of years. That certainly is not a formula for growing givers’ hearts.

Listen to Episode 86 at: intrust.org/podcast