Editor’s note: We’re stoked to feature this article from another one of Go. Serve. Love’s round table partners, Support Raising Solutions. (Yes! That organization is a thing.) In our quest to present you overseas fully-funded, we’re happy to help you structure a support-raising presentation that works.
Here’s what Support Raising Solutions has to say.
Wondering what goes into a missionary budget (which, when you’re raising support, can feel overwhelming)? We let you peek behind the curtain with some opinions of other global workers.
A missionary budget may include all the expenses of fielding the missionary. Besides a salary, budget categories might include
Editor’s note: We’re stoked to feature this article from another one of Go. Serve. Love’s round table partners, Support Raising Solutions. (Yes! That organization is a thing.) In our quest to present you overseas fully-funded, we’re happy to welcome back the indomitable Jenn Fortner, support-raising expert extraordinaire.
In my time as a support coach, I have yet to see a ministry worker not make it to the field because they were unable to raise their budget as fully funded missionaries. I’ve seen people not go to the field because they got engaged, accepted a different job, or had medical issues—but it has yet to be money that has kept someone from going to the ministry they felt called to.
Heading into March, my goal was to add on 20 new monthly supporters to my ministry team. But just two weeks into my face-to-face meetings, everything came to a halt. Hugs and conversations over café lattes abruptly came to a stop. I was suddenly partnership building in a pandemic.
At first, I just paused. I naively thought, This will pass quickly. Or Doing partnership building that’s not face to face just won’t be effective.
Our family’s support raising journey chaos adventure fell around the birth of our first child. By the time he was 13 months old, we’d hauled him to 13 states. We’d lift him into his carseat again, and he’d start wailing. Poor kid.
I know that for a lot of us, the path is long and uphill.
Say you’ve got a fundraising trip scheduled to an area with lots of personal contacts–but not that much time. Would it be better to have a large dinner or dessert? You could present to a church and ask them for members to support. You could present to a Sunday School class. Bada-bing, bada-boom. Done.
What’s the best option?
We know: Sometimes you want so badly to be DONE with support-raising, for the love of Mike, that your prayers are confined to some version of ohpleaseohpleaseohplease help me find the money.
Don’t hate us for this? There’s a lot of richness to be found in this crazy, so-tired-I-could-sleep-on-an-African-bus journey.
So we want to give you something to hang your hat on–something to anchor your soul. We’ve given you 6 printable verses to encourage your support raising, so we’re taking the next natural step.
PRINT 1 CORINTHIANS 9:24-27 HERE.We know: The road can feel long in support raising, the discouragement real. Sometimes you might even wonder whose bright idea this was to go there this way.
We’re impressed by Support Raising Solutions’ top five verses for fundraising (a passage from Nehemiah? Who knew?). If you’re wanting to sink your teeth into the biblical basis for raising support, this page and this page could give you a rousing start, and here’s a longer one for all you theological (or seriously skeptical) types here.
So…we loved your enthusiasm for our 5 [Printable] Missions Scriptures to Memorize (*That You Probably Don’t Know Yet) for your Journey. Ready for more?
The BAM Review has published a pretty sweet summary of need-to-knows for Business as Mission–all in a tidy infographic. And please, click here for 50+ BAM job openings around the world!
Totally into BAM? From their think tank, BAM Global has produced a series of 19 Issue- and Region-focused reports on business as mission.
