This is a really short post, but it has a great point. Richard Howell, General Secretary of the Asia Evangelical Alliance and of the Evangelical Alliance India, said to me that stewardship teaching in India recognizes that not everyone can give cash, but they can all give something. People are told that if they can eat, then [...]
A healthy approach to competition
What’s the best way to convince donors to give to your ministry? This will sound counter-intuitive, but hear me out. I’ve visited hundreds of ministries, heard many leaders explain their program design and rationale, and I know how compelling and confidence-inspiring their explanations are. The greatest opportunity for more effective fundraising is to increase the complexity of [...]
Competing for donors
Should Christian ministries compete with each other? When I read Mark Petersen’s post yesterday, I was quite surprised to see what appeared to be a head-on competitive bid by Canadian Food for the Hungry International (FH). Mark posted a graph from FH’s website showing the percentage of donations that go into poverty-relief programs, not only [...]
Performance ratings for charities
Here are my thoughts on the latest attempt to rate charities by MoneySense. Overall, I think the approach is better than others we’ve seen in Canada because they went beyond the information available in the T3010 government return and asked the charities to complete a survey on topics such as governance, privacy and transparency. They also [...]
Picking pockets and rolling drunks
One of the professors here at Harvard is an exceptionally good fundraiser. His track record is outstanding. When he speaks at fundraising events, he believes he should be upfront about his role. That way no one is surprised when he asks for money. He often introduces himself saying, “I am in the business of picking pockets [...]
Rev. John Pellowe, MBA, DMin
