Integrity Matters

Over on the Church Marketing Sucks blog, author Anne Jackson responds to a question about how churches can ensure they have effective marketing and communications without burning staff out. In her response, Anne writes about the importance of integrity in church communications. She tells the story of a time she refused to design a mailer for a church because they insisted on projecting an image of their church that wasn't true. She lost the job as a result, but she kept her integrity.

This topic resonates with me because of Christians who have recently accused me of slapping photos of children on promotional materials to raise funds for missions the easy way. Our missions department does have a humanitarian ministry that meets the physical needs of many children, but we are careful to not convey a message that isn't true. If an offering isn't going to meet physical needs, we don't use images or language that would convey a lie. To do so, as she writes, would be a sacrifice of integrity incongruent with a holy life.

In addition to the overwhelming spiritual reasons to not mislead people about your ministry, such a strategy is also likely to backfire. Misleading your audience will confuse them. They may not recognize that the materials are for your ministry, or they may begin to associate your ministry with something else. Moreover, as your audience begins to discover that you have misled them, you will lose their trust. Once you have lost trust, good luck raising funds or recruiting volunteers.

Yes, a dishonest approach to fund raising may temporarily meet your needs. But it's not worth the long term consequences - to your ministry's credibility or your personal integrity. I find it interesting, too, that Anne suggests that dishonesty in church communications is one way to lead to staff burnout. If you don't want to burn out, don't lie.

Are goals just great ideas, while budgets are financial needs?

In my organization, we set an annual fundraising goal for our general missions offering. The goal is promoted throughout the denomination, with the hope people will be motivated to reach the goal. Regional groups of churches set a goal as well, and local churches and individuals are encouraged to set goals, too. We've even used the goals concept in a lot of our past promotional materials. An annual theme once challenged people to "press toward the goal" (Phillipians 3:14), and a video another year used soccer to generate some excitement about making goals.

We set a goal for the offering because that's the way we have always done it. But as Seth Godwin points out, we also set goals because they challenges us and provide a way to measure success. It is also reasonable effective, as we usually reach the goal.

Yet, we didn't meet the goal in 2008. It's easy to blame the economy, but I know of at least one ministry that raised its full budget. The Christian radio station Air1 initially fell short during their fall pledge drive. They did an additional end-of-the-year appeal, asking people to donate $100 so they could be "fully funded" in 2009. The DJs continually refered to the amount they needed to raise as their budget, but once, he slipped and called it a goal.

Almost immediately, he corrected himself, explaining: "It's not just a goal that would be nice to meet. It's a real financial need. It's our budget for 2009, and we need to be fully funded. Otherwise, we won't be able to do the ministry we have planned." By the end of the campaign, they had raised their full budget, and yet people still continued to call and donate.

His comment has stayed with me and caused to rethink our reliance on the word goals. I shared the idea with the ministry directors of our organization, but I'm curious what you think as well. Are fundraising goals just amounts that it would be nice to have, while budgets are the money a group needs?

Starving kids - making marketing missions easy?

Every so often, a colleague tells me it's easy to market missions. It's always someone from another department at our headquarters; they resent the amount of money we raise every year for missions because their fund raising efforts don't yield the same amount. While I know they mean well, I find it particularly appalling that the complaints often seem to include this argument: "You have it easy. You can slap a photo of a starving kid on the brochure, and voila, people give."

That argument fails to notice the obvious - there really are starving children in the world. I don't feel guilty for advocating on their behalf to concerned Christians. The argument also fails to take into account the vast amount of money spent on ministry in America. While our world missions department may raise more funds than one of our departments devoted to ministry in America, the combined budgets of the American ministries' departments far exceeds ours.

Of course, I do understand their heart. It can be difficult to raise funds for legitimate ministries in America, particularly if others are advocating for more needy parts of the world simultaneously. I would, however, like to a point out a few of the challenges unique to marketing world missions.

1. People are inclined to care more about the needs of people like themselves and closer to home. It's human nature to identify more with the needs of someone like yourself. The challenge of marketing missions is to get people, who are often ignorant about the world's needs, to care about those who are truly foreign.
   
2. Christians are motivated to give to missions for different reasons. Some are likely to give to humanitarian causes like feeding children, but others want to give to ministries they feel are more directly involved in preaching, teaching, and converting adults. When an overseas ministry isn't focused on humanitarian causes, photos of hungry children are not only misleading, they can alienate the very donor most likely to support the ministry.
3. The needs of the world are great and complex. Raising funds for America is comparatively easier because the task is more easily defined and explained. The varied political, economical, and religious situations around the world make it much harder to explain how contributions will be used. Moreover, since the needs around the world are so great, it's easy for potential donors to feel as if their money won't make a difference; it's just a drop in an ocean of need. They are naturally inclinded to keep the money closer to home, where they can personally see the difference it makes (see my first point).

If I know one thing about promoting missions, it is that it is difficult. Simply put, it requires the help of God. Getting people to care about spreading the Gospel around the world is the work of God's Holy Spirit, however, He has always chosen to use people. I am grateful to be one of them, and I don't expect it to be easy.