00:00:05
Well, good afternoon, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Holy Donuts podcast. I am pumped. I have a two for one special today, joined by two great guys from an awesome organization called Mission Increase, caleb Crider and Scott Harris. Guys, how you doing today?

00:00:19
Doing well. Better now that we're with you.

00:00:25
Awesome. Well, thanks for joining. I'm going to get the fancy titles out of the way in advance, I promise you. I'm going to butcher them. We'll see if I can get them right.

00:00:31
So, Scott, at Mission Increase official title, VP of Church and Global Engagement, we'll ask you a little bit more in a minute about what that actually means. That's a great title. And then, Caleb, you were the director of Program Innovation, which for me that just moves my heart a little bit that there's actually a ministry out there that has someone doing innovation. So super excited to hear more about your story. So let's just start there and get kicked off.

00:00:55
Caleb, let's kick it to you first. Tell us how did you first get kind of into serving ministries. Give us a little bit of the background of Mission Increase and then your history with the organization. Yeah. So my background is actually an international mission, cross cultural international mission, church planting in other contexts.

00:01:10
Quickly got into training men and women and even children, families for cross cultural life and ministry and in doing that became aware of one just fundamental challenge. And that is people who are called to do ministry typically are not equipped to run the business of ministry doing the stuff, the marketing, the communications, the tech that go into raising funds and keeping the thing going. Right. So that was on my heart for a while, and Scott Harris made me aware of Mission Increase. And I've got to tell you, Mission Increase has been just a terrific organization to work with.

00:01:47
It's a fundamental it's a program that trains ministry leader at no cost to those ministry leaders. So free of charge training through area directors who convene these ministry communities. And the idea is teaching people how to think differently about raising funds. So we start with biblical precepts and basic principles about what it means to be a fundraiser, how to be in relationship with those who give, how to lead communities that are activist communities, essentially. And then the practical pieces like, okay, what does it look like to write up a case for support and what kind of technology or marketing or planning needs to go into all of this.

00:02:23
And again, it's just to equip these people who are so passionate as activists and called to ministry but maybe not necessarily equipped to run the thing in the day to day. Yeah, that's huge. That's huge, man. And there's such a need for that because I think most of us who have worked in Christian nonprofits, we get into it with just this like, man, God's called me to this. I just want to serve.

00:02:44
I have a passion for it. And then reality hits. After like, two months, you're like, oh, like, this is not just the fun. Like, let's go do the good. There's all this other stuff that's the iceberg underneath.

00:02:55
That's actually what nonprofit work is. And so I love the mission Increase is all about that. Scott, you are like connector of connectors, right? Like, you're the guy who makes everyone come into a room. And Scott's like, you need to know them and them and them.

00:03:07
So your role as church engagement, tell us a little bit more about that. It's a little bit your background. Well, and I must say that if any connecting skills I have, it worked when I connected Caleb with Mission Increase because he's been such an asset to our organization. So, like, Caleb, native Californian, was in the missions world. That's how Caleb and I knew each other.

00:03:28
And I came at Mission Increase from a pastoral perspective. So I was the missions pastor at a you know, I saw my job was to mobilize our dollars and our people. So if we're going to do that, we need good nonprofit partners where we can invest our dollars and our people. But then I soon realized that nonprofits are just like churches and people. Some are healthier than others.

00:03:52
So I went looking for a resource. What could we bring to our city to bless the faith based nonprofits in our area to help them flourish? I found mission increase. I'm like, wow, this is great. And so we as a church and others, brought Mission Increase to our community.

00:04:10
I'm in Nashville, and that got us talking. And then four years ago, I joined mission increase. And so my job is to train churches and nonprofits to work better together. They often don't, or if they do, they tend to have a shallow transactional relationship. It could be so much deeper.

00:04:32
So that's the church part of my title. And then the other part is, how would we train nonprofit leaders who aren't in the states? So we currently have a network right, Caleb, of over 3000 nonprofits that have coaching accounts with us. And that's wonderful. We want to help the food pantry in Fort Wayne, Indiana, raise more money so they can feed more people.

00:04:58
But we also want to train the brother, the sister in Nairobi, Kenya, that wants to start a ministry. So that's the church side, that's the global side. And then we know that for nonprofits, their number one felt need tends to be funding. So we lead with that. And if we can provide good, solid content on that, we can then introduce them to other things that they need, like board governance and communications, strategic planning.

00:05:25
So anyway, I think you can hear from our voices. Caleb and I, we like what we get to do. Yeah, it's a lot of fun and at risk of rabbit tailing us kind of too far down one path. Sky I know a passion that we've discussed is the relationship between churches and parachurch ministries or nonprofits. Right.

00:05:44
And so help those who are out there, because it's going to be a lot of people listening that are working mostly in Christian nonprofits, maybe not so much on the church side. Maybe give them a little bit of a vision for how their ministries can better partner with local churches, since that's so much the DNA of what Mission Increase does. Yes. Well, okay. So again, let's take the food pantry ministry in City X.

00:06:08
Most of the time, any nonprofit, if we asked them what their purpose was, it would be to feed the hungry or heal the sick. And we want them to maybe rethink that. We want to be a platform to equip God's people, to feed the hungry and heal the sick. And where are God's people? By and large, there in congregations.

00:06:29
So if nonprofits and churches could work better together, everyone wins, right? The nonprofit has access to dollars and volunteers. The congregation is meant to be missional. So if they're going to be missional, they need partners that can provide platforms for their people to live out their faith. The hungry in the city are going to be blessed, and the individual Christian who lives in both the nonprofit and the church world is better equipped.

00:07:02
So everyone wins. But I've been surprised, Matt. There's not a lot of talk about it. There's talk about how churches can work better together, how nonprofits can work better together. But who's equipping the church and the nonprofit to work better together?

00:07:18
And that's what we're trying to do. We don't have it all figured out. So if anyone out there has thoughts, comments, ideas, we're open. I love it. So one of the things that makes Mission Increase unique versus some of our other guests on the show is that you all get to work with, like you said, over 3000 Christian nonprofits.

00:07:37
So with that, you get to see a lot of what's working and a lot of what's not working. And so when it comes to strategies, campaigns, remember we're thinking through donor engagement, marketing. What are some of the strategies and campaigns that you all have seen that have either just really excited you and said, hey, this has been a huge win for ministries we serve or a ministry or a strategy that you've just seen consistently be put in place and man, this just always seems to produce results. Could you give maybe some examples from Mission Increase in the work you all have done that another Christian nonprofit out there could say, oh, I could latch onto that and implement that for our organization? I have one, but I want to defer to Caleb and then maybe I'll chime in.

00:08:20
But Caleb's the guy that makes the magic. So I would say foundational to Mission Increases thinking about this, about donor engagement, about retention, right. Is this kind of basic idea that we have, which is that people should be discipled into their action or their work in a cause. In other words, if the first step into involvement is giving lots of money, that's your call to action, right. Routinely, you can hit that really hard and people probably will respond.

00:08:51
However, we think a better approach is to babysep people through a process. So, in other words, make things super accessible. Make the first call to action at the top of your funnel really, really easy, like a super easy win, right? And then chain them together through walk them through a process. And in doing so, what we find is that people will sometimes move very quickly through those steps.

00:09:12
It just makes things more accessible. Specifically, we use a format that we call PEO. P is for participation, e is for engagement, o is for ownership. PEO is basically the way we talk about this kind of baby step approach. And so when we think about communicating and trying to get people aware of our cause and aware of our organization, we don't just start with like a three hour video about our and a lot of organizations, a lot of ministries that we serve, that's what they have.

00:09:39
And they're like, well, we've got this really long form video that tells the history, and we're like, that's great for your owners, like, people who are really deep in your cause already. But man, what's, like the 32nd version, right? What's the shorter, easier, quicker, kind of and it's just hard for a lot of folks to think that way, but once you kind of flip the switch and think, oh, we're bringing people along step by step and the first steps have to be little tiny baby steps, that seems to really kind of help. And so then it's a Matter of adjusting your tactics to sort of be incremental like that instead of all at once, let me just gush about my work or about the cause or about the needs and overwhelm people. Yeah.

00:10:16
And so, Caleb, when you all are advising organizations to kind of walk through this multi step process, in my head, the inner marketer thinks, oh, this is a marketing funnel, right? Totally. We're doing awareness stuffers. We're moving people through the steps. Are you all doing this more campaign based?

00:10:31
Like, hey, for this campaign, let's do a piece that just gives broad awareness and gets people to know about or is it more of a holistic? Like, no, your regular rhythms on a daily basis are, we want to design everything around this first. We just want the general awareness of who you are and participation, then kind of move them down. Does that question make sense? It does really tackle hyperphoc or more holistic.

00:10:55
So obviously, everything that I'm saying applies to a typical marketing funnel, but we actually come at it from a different angle. We come at it through this idea of discipleship and how Jesus organized his ministry, right? And here's the difference. A lot of folks, especially marketing folks, we want to sit down at a whiteboard and plan out the funnel, right? Plan out the baby steps that I just outlined.

00:11:16
And that's great, you can do that, but the likelihood of that succeeding is very low because you've come up with this perfect in your mind plan, right? And then you've got to go sell that plan to people to help make it happen, right? And the problem is, they're like, I don't know if I see it. Right? It's like a hard sell to get them to buy whatever plan you came up with far better.

00:11:35
And our mission increase approach is gather those people who are nearest to you, right? Think Jesus and the beloved disciple or Jesus and the inner circle and bring them together, pour into them, and then together decide, what would it look like to create more of us, right? More disciples. And so then you reach out to the twelve and the twelve. Then so often it's the twelve doing the work among the 150 or so and the 150 or so doing the work among the masses.

00:12:02
So just thinking more of in a trickle out kind of approach versus, I come up with a good plan and then I've got to go sell it or make it work, and it all falls to me. The end result is likely different than what one person would come up with, but at the same time so much stronger. And the buy in is tremendous. That's the part you can't shortcut. You can't skip the buy in of your closest champions, of your cause and your organization.

00:12:24
Also, Matt, I would say that this PEO framework not only is focused on giving, but there are five. It so back to holistic. It's not just a funnel for how we get our people to give, how we get them to pray, how we get them involved. So how we get them telling the story. So giving is only one piece of the PEO strategy.

00:12:54
I love it. That's so healthy and actually Christ focused and biblical and refreshing. And immediately, Caleb, as you're talking about this, the difference between that format and a marketing funnel is I'm going, yeah, if we run our marketing funnel that we cooked up on the whiteboard perfectly, we're like, fingers crossed, crushing it if we get a 5% conversion rate, right? And what you're talking about is a whole radical different shift in focus to where we're aiming at 100% conversion rate. Like we're open it's whole life discipleship of integration into the ministry, as opposed to, well, if we can get 5%, we're going to have a really good ROI here.

00:13:31
So I love that. Really. It's just a cycle shift. It also means that any marketing effort, you're not actually managing a project even if you're the project manager, you're actually leading a team. And those are two different things and different skill sets, right?

00:13:47
Different intentionalities end result is communication about our about our cause and hopefully getting return, getting people to be involved and give and share and serve. But, man, leading a team is very different from managing a project and being people first, people oriented makes all the totally, totally. Now, Scott, you said you had one as well. I think we've got time if you do. All right, so again, from the church engagement side, incredible nonprofit ministry in Atlanta, Georgia.

00:14:16
Okay. Tracy comes to me and says, as a nonprofit ministry leader, could you help me with my church engagement strategy? Not sure what she meant, right, because everyone defines that differently. But here's what she and I did, and here's what I learned from her. So I said, Tracy, how many church partners do you have?

00:14:36
And she said two. I said, Let me guess what you mean is two churches send you checks. She said yeah. I said, okay, so here's the first assignment, and let's touch base in three weeks. List every board member, staff member, key volunteer, and next to their name, write what church they go to.

00:14:56
So I called her back. I said, how many are on your list? She said, 37. How many church partnerships do you have, Tracy? She said, 37.

00:15:05
I said, or 39, if the two funding churches are on top of that. I said, look, you already have a relationship with those churches, whether they know you or not. It's called that person. So for the next nine months, what are you going to do to acknowledge and thank and honor those 37 churches? How are you going to pray for them?

00:15:27
How are you going to let them know that when their person walks through the door, which is a piece of that congregation, what they're adding to their ministry and what you are adding to their church, by providing a platform for their people to live out their call, they went to town. They came up with multiple ways of blessing and honoring those congregations. And guess what? A year later, I think they had eight churches writing them checks. They didn't do it to get the check.

00:16:02
They did it because they saw themselves as a disciple making platform. And as they leaned into it, they looked at churches differently. And then churches looked at that ministry differently. That's the kind of thing we need not only to help ministries grow, but to help churches grow and to reach more people, our neighbors and nations for Jesus. Yeah, man.

00:16:25
Scott, thanks for sharing about the church engagement piece, because that's something that we don't talk about a lot on this show, and yet every organization that our company works with that I get a chance to chat with, they always seem to express the same thing, which is we just don't really have the engagement. We know the churches generally, either they have a few of them that, oh, yeah, I think they like us, right? It's kind of like I think they like us. They seem like they're nice to us. They're friendly.

00:16:49
Occasionally, they show up to an event. They always seem to feel like there's got to be something more there. And so that's such a practical strategy to say, how do you just instantly do an assessment of who really are the churches that are partnered with you, and then now you can strategically go out and pray for them, pour into them, let them know, hey, we're grateful for you, whatever that level of partnership looks like. I love it, man. So, so helpful.

00:17:12
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00:17:27
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00:17:49
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00:18:09
So if you want to sprinkle some extra special magic on your donor relationships, check out WeGive. On the Christian nonprofit side, you guys work with a lot of them. You probably see a lot of trends that are happening right now in the space, right? Some good, some bad. I'd love to hear from you all maybe one or two of the trends that you're seeing that are really exciting in the Christian nonprofit space and then maybe a few of them that are a little bit concerning or have you losing an hour or two of sleep here and there.

00:18:37
Caleb, go for it, buddy. Yeah. Nonprofits that are really killing it right now are thinking of their donors, their volunteers, and even those that they serve as a community. And they're treating them as a community, but they're treating them like a fandom. You're familiar with fan communities?

00:18:54
I'm a huge fan of Marvel Comics. Right. So I could be a member of a fan club. I can go to conventions. Right.

00:19:00
I don't, by the way, but I could, right? So I have opportunities to get together with other fans. And really, this is the approach to fundraising and leading a healthy nonprofit ministry today, which is fostering a community of fans, not of you, the leader not of your, but of the cause, right? Like, Jesus at the center cares about what we're doing. We're doing good in the world.

00:19:23
Build fans of this action activity and let's do it together and give people lots of outlets, lots of opportunities to get involved, but then leave lots of room for them to be creative about what involvement looks like for them. There's no rules for being a fan of something, right? People decide what. Some people go all out and they wear the uniform and they spend every weekend and every dollar on the hobby, and then others are more passive and they just watch it. Whatever.

00:19:48
We need that sort of approach that says we don't have a bounded set trying to keep people out or keep people in. Rather, it's just how do we have a centered set on Christ himself, what he's doing in and among the people in need and how can we be part of it? And then you just call people to be part of it. So fostering fan communities. That's the way forward.

00:20:06
Super excited about ministries that are doing this. And honestly, it's not the big ones who are really crushing it when it comes to this. It's the smaller ministries that say, I don't have a whole team, I don't have a whole thing. And ultimately, I don't even have a corner on the market of my cause. In my community, there are other nonprofits doing almost the same thing, right?

00:20:25
Very similar thing. And rather than try to differentiate myself from them and compete, I'm just going to embrace them and say, we're part of this community. Let's lean in together. What can we do together? What can we accomplish?

00:20:35
How can we share? And in doing that, you build this fan community. I'm telling you, it makes a huge difference. And we've seen that as a mechanism of how God provides the funding to make the work happen with that, just. As a follow up to nerd out with you a little bit on that.

00:20:49
One of the things about fandom that seems to help it thrive, right, and really take on a life of its own is almost like you have to create these moments or these spaces where fans can interact, right? We talk about things like Comic Con or different events, or maybe it's just everyone, hey, goes to the movie, the same movie, right? There's a shared experience. Any strategies that you all offer or even just thoughts that you have on how to create opportunities for those people who are fans of your cause to interact and have some of these god moments that just spark creativity. And create more affiliation with, your know.

00:21:26
One thing that I think that is effective. We have a workshop on this idea of how to create a signature participation event. Right? And so Caleb, you have worked on this, and it's been around mission increase a while, but we're always evaluating it and if I'm not mistaken. I mean, that's a key way to kind of create this fandom, which I think maybe biblically speaking is disciple making for your cause.

00:21:53
Right? So how do you attract someone who may be moved by the problem, they may be moved by the solution that you're providing? And how do you then build a Christ centered community through a signature participation event, not just a fundraising event, but how do you involve them? And so when we do these workshops, we have hundreds of nonprofits working on what is a signature participation event that could create this sort of momentum and grandswell of support. Yeah, the basic idea is not just talking about the thing that you're doing or the good that you're doing, but instead inviting people to come do it with you.

00:22:34
Now, again, you got to do it appropriately. We have, for example, one ministry that works in local prison and they can't just invite like hundreds of people to come and work in the prison if there's just restrictions and rules and limits. So instead they look for other opportunities but to still get people involved in the actual work, not just talking about the work. This particular ministry then invites people to come and collect goods to then take in to the prisons so they can have a party, for example, if they're planning Thanksgiving party. Those kinds of things make a big difference because people are hands on.

00:23:06
Now, this is not rocket science. Lots of big orgs do this kind of thing, stuff in Chewboxes or whatever. But if you're intentional about it, putting together a way for people to actually get involved, again, baby steps. So it doesn't mean high commitment. They have to do a background check and commit to a year long no, just real quick, really easy.

00:23:23
But they're actually doing it with you that makes all the difference because people feel engaged and connected and their work was actually useful, their contribution actually helped. So yeah, I think those participation programs are really important. And one other is the idea of micro events, equipping our fans to host their own events on our behalf. Right? So it doesn't have to be this is like the old Tupperware parties or like makeup.

00:23:47
I don't even know what the makeup parties were. But don't just call people to your thing. Ask people. Invite your champions to host their own thing about your cause. Right?

00:23:57
So then give them what they need so they can host an event with their circles of influence. These might even be people you don't know and never meet, but they on your behalf or on behalf of the cause are hosting and leading these kinds of initiatives. Again, it's sort of a networking approach, but it can multiply our efforts and it doesn't all fall to us to plan and pull off a big event. So getting people together, yes. Fans joining together, yes.

00:24:22
But let them be creative and let them decide what it can look like. I love it. So thing that's exciting, great nonprofits out there crushing it on creating a true, almost fan engagement experience around their cause. What's something that's got you a little bit concerned when you look at the state of Christian nonprofits, whether you go anywhere you want, whether that's giving, whether that's discipleship, whatever that looks like. Any thoughts that come up there?

00:24:46
Well, okay, so a complaint, a concern I often hear, but I would change it a little bit. So a lot of folks will say there's too many nonprofits out there. Okay, now I don't know about that because small actually can sometimes be really good. So I don't know if there are too many, but I would say they don't work well together despite rhetoric. So one of the things that I would love to see is what does robust training in true collaboration look like?

00:25:18
I think we hijack collaborative language without actually doing collaboration. So we talk about siloism. Well, silos have a function. They contain grain. If you didn't have a silo, you couldn't save up food for the winter.

00:25:35
So winter silos good, but it's almost like redemptive siloism. So collaboration is redeem the siloism. And where are the training spaces where you incentivize model? What does collaboration actually look like? So it seems as if there's a lot more talk about collaboration than there is actual collaboration.

00:26:03
So maybe on the good side, people realize they need to on the opportunity side, people just don't do enough of it. Right? Yeah. And if I put on my marketing brand hat for a minute, one of the struggles we hear from some of the ministries we get a chance to work with is around their messaging. Right.

00:26:22
Because their programs, especially the older ones, as they grow and evolve and mature, programs get added and added and added. And then all of a sudden what started as a food pantry for say, now is providing childcare services. And now they're also doing after school care programs. They're doing this and that. And so they start getting really it's hard for them to even say what it is that they do.

00:26:45
So if you ask, well, what does your ministry do? Well, kind of everything because we have 37 different programs, right. All the things because they were actively looking just to serve needs. But goes back to that silo idea. Scott which is like, if they were to instead actually collaborate and say, you know what seminary does after school?

00:27:04
Care really, really well. And as much as we could fill that need in the school, why don't we actually seek out what a true deep partnership would look like with that other ministry? I would argue that even on the brand marketing side, they'd be a lot better off because they'd be able to clarify their messaging more and actually have people in their community understand what they're known for and say. No, that's what they do. They're a food pantry.

00:27:25
They're amazing. They serve the needs of the community in that way, and that's what they do. And it would also help their operations be a lot more streamlined. So take my brand marketing rant hat off, but agreed, the Silos, we talk a lot about it, but they don't often get broken down. So totally get that.

00:27:39
Resources. This is something that you all are, I think, one of the best resources out there, if I can say honestly, for nonprofits. But what are some other resources, whether that's books, trainings workshops, articles, whatever they may be, that you all like to recommend on a regular basis for Christian. Nonprofits from just a marketing perspective, it's old. Now, Seth Godin's book, Tribes We Need You to Lead again, it's from like, 2008, but that book short read really quick.

00:28:05
He just captures this idea of sort of marketing to a community. A fandom, he doesn't use that phrase. He calls them tribes, but it's basically what we said. Communicate well with them and then also get them together and let them geek out about the thing, whatever the thing is. And that's really the way forward to building a community.

00:28:21
So I'd say that and then also coach your champions. It's a book that Mission Increase Partners have worked toward and created. It's been out for some time now. We're even looking at updating and revising it. But it has this idea of if you want to lead a nonprofit, don't think of it as you're doing the work and you're trying to get people to fund it so you can keep doing the work.

00:28:40
Instead, you're managing, facilitating, fostering, growing, protecting a tribe of people who are just activists in the cause, champions of the cause, and all working together, playing different parts. And so your job then becomes to coach them. So Coach Your Champions is another those are two books that I would recommend to anyone awesome. And I would add to those two good resources. Henry Nowan's.

00:29:03
Spirituality of fundraising. It's sort of a classic. I'm surprised how many have read it but don't apply it and or people that actually haven't read it. And the idea of fundraising is ministry. It's not a distraction from the ministry.

00:29:18
It's how you disciple God's people or any person to invite them into what you're doing. So anyway, that to me, is a perennial, wonderful resource. Yeah. Well, thank you guys, scott, Caleb, so much helpful content here. If folks want to follow up with you all personally or with Mission Increase, learn more about the organization, maybe they're a Christian nonprofit out there that says, I can use your help.

00:29:42
What's the best way for them to connect with you, but also with Mission Increase? Best would be to go to Missionincrease.org. You can get a hold of me and Scott and any of our colleagues. We have area directors spread out across the country, and now internationally that are ready to serve again. We serve nonprofits at no charge to those nonprofits, because of the generosity of faithful givers, we're able to provide a free service where we train you to raise funds in this mission, increase biblical approach.

00:30:08
It's a little bit different and sometimes counterintuitive, but because we have this coaching relationship, yeah, it's a lot available to you and there's no reason for you not to make use of it. Very cool. Well, guys, thank you so much for the time. This has been seriously a ton of fun. I've learned a lot.

00:30:24
I know everyone listening is going to really, really be blessed by this. Thanks for the time. And I think we're going to have to do a round two at some point because there's a lot more we could have gone into here. Right on. Matt, hey, thank you for hosting us.

00:30:35
Very honored.