Pledgers who don’t give

You’ll always have some people pledge who never follow through.

There seem to be three categories of this kind of giver:

1) The person who pledges and never gives.
2) The person who pledges, gives a few times and then isn’t heard from again.
3) The person who pledges and gives seldom and randomly thereafter.

Of these, the first two are most common in my experience. Dealing with non-giving pledgers is tricky business. You don’t want to seem too eager to get their gifts by sending a slew of reminders, but some communication is prudent. Do take into account the personality and circumstances of the giver when deciding how to approach them. Some people have good and sincere intentions but simply forget, every month. Some people may be out of a job or lose a job after committing to a regular donation. If said donor is generally jovial, I’m more likely to approach them more often and more bluntly.

Two things I’ve leaned on are thank-yous and Christmas gifts. We’ve made a practice of sending donors small notes of thanks in the middle of the year, as well as inexpensive gifts around Christmastime. I use these as a reminder to people that they are a part of the team, although after a certain “point of no return” — that is, if a person hasn’t given for, say, 18 months or more — I’ll drop them from the thank you list.

In truth I don’t think this tactic has actually revived any of the non-giving pledgers. Even the two, that I can think of, “jovial” donors that I’ve given face-to-face or phone reminders to haven’t begun giving regularly, or at all.

Thus it seems to be a fact of living on support: You’ll always have some people pledge who never follow through. Plan on it when creating your budget and fundraising strategy!

Staying put and looking forward

So our house didn’t sell, and the contract on the house up north expired. Thus we will continue, gladly, working for the ministry we’re with for the next year as our new support allows.

We were hoping this year could be a more relaxing time, a year when we wouldn’t have to think about fundraising — for the first time in five years. But I quickly realized that if we completely ignored support this year we’d be at the same spot in six months as we were last year. I don’t know what to do with this knowledge, the knowledge that I “should” or “have to” keep on raising support this year. Sure, it’s expected that missionaries will spend 10% of their time every year maintaining full-time support, but when you’ve never gotten to full support the pressures are greater.

On top of this we lost $140 per month of support in the last two months of 2007. Two long-time (relative to our time in ministry) supporters gracefully discontinued their giving which totaled $200 a month, and we picked up new support to the tune of $60 a month from friends in Germany.

Last Friday we had dinner with friends on furlough. The friends relayed a very promising overseas possibility, serving in the same community they work out of for one or two years. This opportunity, though I have few details at this point, sounds very interesting to me. The regular support we do have now will go farther in this 10/40 window community, and we’re confident we could raise the necessary additional funds for an international short-term service such as this. The timing could be very good for us as well. I hope to hear back from the contacts our friends gave us this week; I sent them an introductory email on Monday.