My passion for fundraising seems weird to a lot of ministry people. But I absolutely love it! I love casting the vision of Dare 2 Share and engaging people with the strategy and asking them to invest their time, talent and treasure in the cause.
This year I get the privilege of seeking to help raise over two million dollars worth of support to underwrite our ministry mission. Above and beyond the registration fees and sales from the conferences we have to raise this money to hit break even. I know that sounds like a lot but consider this:
- We have 43 employees (none of whom raise their support!)
- We rent 11,000 square feet of office space to give adequate working stations for everyone (plus all the phone, electrical, etc costs!)
- The costs of each Dare 2 Share conference hits about $106,000 south of breaking even.
- Add to all this the high costs of mailing, outsourcing services, sub-contractors, blah, blah, blah and you are in the millions of dollars!
Our donor/partners not only make it possible for us to continue to train teenagers with the best training tools available for teens, they are joining us in the mission of reaching teens for Jesus and training them to share their faith!
Starting this month we are sending out “Transformation Tools” to our donors to equip them to reach others for Jesus and impact teens in their world for Jesus. I’m tired of just telling donors about what we are doing and having them fund that. I’m calling all of our donors to become “owners” of the mission themselves. We are going to equip them to reach out to their kids, their kids’ friends, their friends’ kids, grandkids, nieces, nephews, anyone and everyone.
Thanks to our good friend Eric Foley (development expert and partner in crime) our philosophy of fundraising has moved from”look at what we are doing and fund it” to “help us accomplish this mission then fund it!”
Pray for us as we launch our first Transformation Toolkit the end of this month.
