Seven Questions to Ask Before You Give
Excerpted from Generous Living: Finding Contentment Through Giving by Ron Blue
Most people give in response to emotional or persistent appeals. Very few of us take the time to check out an organization to see whether the need is justified or whether the group can produce results.
Before you give to an individual, a church, or a ministry, check it out! Ask the tough questions:
Do I want to give for strategic reasons?
Or is my desire simply an emotional response to a particularly poignant appeal?
Is the need truly justified?
Can this organization (or person) produce the results they're promising?
Imagine getting a call from a stockbroker who wanted you to invest in a particular company. No matter how good the pitch sounded, you would probably ask to see additional information, such as the company’s prospectus. And if you purchased the stock, chances are good that you'd regularly check the progress of your investment.
Like financial investing, strategic giving demands we do “due diligence.” Before we give, we have to do our homework.
My good friend, Pat MacMillan, is a management consultant and the author of Hiring Excellence. He has spent more time and energy studying strategic and leveraged giving than anyone I know. I've appropriated some of his best thoughts for inclusion here.
According to Pat’s analysis, strategic, effective ministries exhibit certain definable characteristics. As you evaluate giving opportunities to your church, the missionaries you know, any parachurch groups, Christian organizations, or other charities, evaluate the ministry based on the following questions:
1. Are the leaders marked by godly characteristics?
Christian leaders—pastors, missionaries, organization heads, and so forth—should be men and women of character, integrity, and vision. They must be competent and qualified to do their jobs, and they should have a biblically based vision that can be communicated to their donors in clear, measurable terms. Most importantly, they should have a growing, vibrant relationship with Jesus Christ. If you cannot trust a group's leaders, you should not be giving money to that organization.
2. Is the ministry active in God's “hot spots”?
Some well-meaning churches, missionaries, campus workers, and other ministry-oriented Christians develop plans and programs assuming God will bless their good intentions. Others, however, take the time to find out what God is doing and where he is working and align themselves with his purposes. Peter Wagner, a well-known missiologist and author, points to patterns in world events as evidence of the Holy Spirit’s work. When the Iron Curtain fell, for example, Christians saw God move in amazing ways through Communism's former strongholds. Today, Africa and Latin America are among the world’s evangelistic “hot spots.” Whether the action is happening in a church across the street or on a mission field a half a world away, strategic ministries are working in God’s “hot spots.”
3. Is the ministry innovative?
Strategic ministries often create, experiment, and challenge. Instead of getting bogged down in a routine, they try new methods and ideas—without letting go of their principles or their message. They see things other ministries might not, such as how to turn a short-term opportunity into a vehicle for long-term growth.
They also make mistakes. If you want your church or organization to be innovative, you need to be willing to tolerate errors. Effective ministries take risks—and when they make mistakes, they don’t cover them up. Instead, they use them as a platform for discovery.
4. Is the ministry growing and cooperative?
Strategic ministries achieve results. This progress, coupled with the clear vision and sense of purpose communicated by the leaders, motivates donors to invest in and be part of the ministry. Ministry workers are likewise attracted and motivated—which ultimately leads to even greater ministry growth.
In the same vein, strategic ministries are willing to partner with like-minded people and organizations. When the Billy Graham teams came to a city, for example, they didn’t build an organization to launch their crusades. Instead, they worked with existing churches and ministries, pooling the resources of countless committed Christians. And as a result, and existing denominational barriers crumbled.
5. Is the ministry goal-oriented?
Strategic ministries have a clear sense of what God wants them to do and how he wants them to do it. Effective churches, missionaries, and parachurch groups are committed to their goals, regardless of how their actions might be perceived by their members or supporters. While they are open to suggestions, strategic ministries never let funding—or a lack of it—dictate their goals and decisions.
6. Is the ministry accountable?
Having established goals, strategic ministries hold themselves and their staff accountable to accomplish these objectives. Instead of measuring the organization’s activity level, effective ministries measure progress and results. One well-known family ministry commissioned an outside researcher to measure how their organization was affecting families. Such an independent analysis can stack results against goals to provide an accurate evaluation of ministry effectiveness.
As you evaluate a church or ministry, ask yourself some key questions: Are the elders or deacons strong enough to hold the leaders accountable? Is there a credible board of directors in place? If you support an individual missionary, who are the people he or she has to report to?
Financially, too, you should check for accountability structures. Strategic ministries have checks and balances in place to ensure that their operations are above reproach.
7. Is the ministry endorsed by a strong track record?
The best indicator of what a ministry will do is what it has done. Eloquent appeals and effective fundraising do not always signal effectiveness in ministry. Instead of analyzing an organization's “look” or style of communication, focus on the ministry and the results it has achieved.
Strategic giving is, to some degree, dependent on where God has placed you and who he has brought into your life from a relationship standpoint. If your teenager becomes active in a youth group or a high school ministry, God may lead you to support that cause. If your church decides to support an international worker or field, you may consider contributing financially to that effort. You will never be able to give to every strategic and effective church, ministry, or missionary. Instead of spreading yourself thin in an attempt to be part of every good work, consider where God has placed you, and why.
Faith & Finance Perspective
As Ron so clearly articulates above, we have an active role in discerning how we apportion our giving. It’s all too easy to get swept up in a fresh new opportunity that suddenly presents itself with eloquent messaging and compelling imagery. But if, in haste, we fail to wrestle through the questions above, we run the risk of misappropriating the wealth God has entrusted to us.
Those of us who are part of The Christian and Missionary Alliance share a family privilege of being able to give to a diversity of workers, churches, gospel-advancing initiatives, and compassion-based ministries—both locally and globally—that answer these questions with a resounding “YES!”
Prayerfully ask God to direct you to support the Kingdom causes—in or out of the Alliance—that He has assigned you for His perfect purposes.
Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life.
1 Timothy 6:18-19