Growing Champions, Not Just Donors

Is your nonprofit in a season where finances feel tight and the load feels heavy? Do you feel like you and just a few other leaders are keeping the mission moving forward?

In my last note, I shared the difference between transactional giving and transformational giving—and how the latter grows both the giver and the receiver.

In Coach Your Champions, author Eric Foley offers a powerful parable about turning ordinary donors into champions of the cause. He challenges us to rethink how we see the people God sends our way:

• What if God is already sending you all the donors and volunteers your mission needs—and your leadership role is to deepen their involvement in the mission?

• What if volunteers and donors are categorized by their ownership of the shared cause, not by the number of zeroes on their check or hours they volunteered?

• What if the donor and volunteer are the primary way the mission spreads—branch to branch, network to network?

“If the involved people are the ones giving,

and the ones who aren’t involved aren’t giving…

well, that has an effect on our fundraising,”

observed Josh Executive Director in Coach Your Champions

Look around your organization and notice your champions. Some are seedlings. Some are steady growers. Some are branches that extend the mission outward. The question is simple and revealing: Are you cultivating them—or letting them grow wild and unnoticed?

If you’re exploring how to grow champion involvement in the mission, don’t miss my next note.

To growing champions,

Wes Legg

Strategic Plan Facilitator & Coach