The Seeds of Champions Have Already Spouted In Your Mission

Once a year I participate in the Girl Scouts fundraising by buying cookies. They get $12 and I walk away with two boxes of thin mints. After my cookies are gone, I forget about them until next year.

I regularly engage through The Pearl Group’s car clinic where volunteers provide oil changes and minor repairs for single parents. I show up, shoulder the work with others, and together we help families move toward self-sufficiency.

Before moving to Colorado, I saw my purpose as helping families flourish. I worked through Mid‑Ohio Market at HEART to spread the shared cause we owned together. My contribution was equipping Champions who could grow mission impact.

I have shared Eric Foley’s challenge in Coach Your Champions, to see donors not by the size of their gift, but by the depth of their involvement in the cause. Today, I want to pass along a simple tool that can help you identify the different levels of Champions involvement of your cause.

It’s called P‑E‑O and it helps you identify your Champions not by dollars or hours, but by their involvement in the mission. Champions move from Participant → Engaged → Owner. Each with increasing levels of ownership, commitment, and impact to the cause.

How to Use P‑E‑O

Begin by choosing a handful of people connected to your mission—from staff, donors, volunteers, and board members—and reflect on where they currently sit. When you do this, patterns emerge.

• Who is showing signs of moving beyond Participation?

• Which Engaged supporters are demonstrating readiness for greater responsibility or influence?

• How can you equip Owners to multiply the mission through their own networks?

You will begin to see who is ready for deeper involvement, who needs a clearer invitation, and who is already functioning as an owner.

And perhaps it reinforces this truth: God has already planted the Champion seeds that have spouted for your mission. 

Start your P-E-O list.

Name your top 10 Champions.

Identify who’s ready to move forward.

Your role, if you decide to accept it, is to nurture and grow their involvement.

With you in growing Champion involvement,

Wes Legg

Strategic Plan Facilitator & Coach