Mailing list

Recently I’ve been wishing our mailing list was smaller.

We were encouraged in support training to create as large a list as possible: Christians, non-Christians, lovers, enemies, family, friends. So we did. And in some ways it’s paid off. As I’ve mentioned here before, a couple of people started giving just by our sending them a newsletter.

But newsletters are a ton of work for us. Some larger organizations seem to have office people to do the mailings for staffers once the letter is created, but in our smaller non-profit we each write, address, fold, stuff, stamp and seal ourselves. My list is about 450 individuals and churches; we send 5 newsletters a year.

The reason I’m wishing for a smaller list isn’t because of the labor involved though. I’ve been feeling a desire to cull from the list people we don’t really know. I was reminded of this again when a lady called asking to be removed from the list. She’s a distant relative of my wife, and even though we were at her husband’s funeral we’ve never actually talked to her. On the phone today, she didn’t seem to have any idea who I was. I didn’t make any effort to explain, either.

I think I’ve come to trust that God will put in place the people He has to be a part of our support team. That said, I’m still not ready — even though I’m wanting — to cull our mailing list. The balance between faith and action never seems to be very clear to me.

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!

A brief update

This is a brief update without any particular news. I haven’t posted as regularly on this blog as in the past, and just want regular readers (if there are any of these) to know I haven’t abandoned it.

Our house hasn’t sold. In fact no one’s even looked at it. While I’m actually quite surprised at this, my wife and I at this point are figuring on sticking around. As it takes 30 days to close on a house, we would have needed to have an offer by today in order to make the deadline on our contract up north. We did fall in the love with that house, but not packing and moving is just fine with us. Our friends have joked about spreading manure on our lawn so no one will buy our Arkansas home, and others talk about how weird it is to pray that our house won’t sell.

We’re looking forward to what 2008 will be like for us. Hopefully it will be a time of respite. Even though we’re only at full support on account of a one-time gift, it’s my intention to more or less take the upcoming year off with regards to fundraising. I’ll still be posting to this blog, as the above paragraph suggests, although content may be historical more than current.

We are looking forward to a respite in 2008, in more ways than just fundraising — although without a doubt support raising is the number one or two stress point from the past four years of our life.

I’m looking forward to more time making art (my degree is in the fine arts) and researching the possibility of graduate school for both me and my wife. I’m also looking forward to a revitalized spiritual life, which art-making is a part of for me. The last year, perhaps especially the last 6 months, an acute distance has been present between me and God. Yes, even missionaries struggle with “devotions” (you should not be surprised at this).

Guess that’s all for now.

Responding to communication

My office-mate, a 20+ year missions veteran, has told me numerous times that communication has to be done in your own style.

But the same kind of communication doesn’t work for everyone, and missionaries don’t have the time to write personal letters to all 400 people on their mailing lists. Further, mailing lists often include people unfamiliar with how support-based missions works.

That said, I get very few responses to our mailings. Of the few I do receive, most are positive. Once in a while they aren’t. This afternoon I got one that wasn’t — although, in all honesty, the response was trying to be encouraging, albeit through a critical lens. This same person has taken issue before with our communication in monthly prayer emails, particularly with regard to our mention of physical or emotional prayer items. Prayer notes, based on my own experience, often contain requests for intercession related to health.

The respondent in question is, most likely, a person who doesn’t have a very good grasp of Evangelical missions in America. The person also comes from a generation and background (culturally and familialy) that was more reserved. His replies basically say “buck up” or “stop whining.” Included are references to God’s strength and related Scriptures.

While I know to take this respondent’s notes with a grain of salt; it is impossible to communicate with perfect clarity to hundreds of people using the same words, and this person’s replies almost always seem to be based on a misunderstanding of our emails. But I don’t want to completely disregard the exhortation. Maybe I am being a bit whiny. Maybe we’re not relying on God’s strength wholeheartedly. I really don’t want to be like this, whether in real life or in emails. I’m an optimist, usually finding the good in any situation (of course, even though I formulate most of the outgoing notes, my wife filters what gets sent out and is basically my polar opposite).

I don’t want to focus on the bad things in life; I want to have a grateful heart and continually realize all of the good things God has given me. But, then again, I don’t feel as though my email said what the respondent thought it said.

I’m sure this will be, to a degree, a constant challenge throughout a missionary’s career — communicating with donors, potential donors, family and our general mailing list. We do take into account every response to every mailing, good or bad.

Of course, good responses are much easier to deal with.

Confusion

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.

Finding other options

This past weekend my wife and I drove up to the town of 45,000 my parents live in looking at real estate. Cost of homes is a fair amount less there (although taxes are more, so you have to find something quite a bit less to lower your mortgage payments).

Our hope is to be able to find a way to continue working part-time, as our support allows, with the ministry from a remote location. Our hope is this:

1) Sell our house.
2) Move to a larger community with more part-time employment opportunities.
3) Use profit from the sale of the house to create a less-expensive housing situation.
4) Continue working, for two to three years at least, part time with the ministry.

There is actually a possibility that my father will purchase a building where we could live rent and mortgage free! We’re working hard to see if this will work, although it presents a number of complications we have yet to face in our young married life, causing us to move forward cautiously.

There is a distinct possibility we will lose a little support if we can work this scenario out, however at this point we probably have enough to sustain part-time hours for the foreseeable future. If we can work this out it should also provide, hopefully, a less stressful period of life after these very high-stress five years past. During this recuperative time we hope my wife’s health will right itself and we’ll be able to determine our next step in life.

I know I’ve said this before, but it deserves to be said again: The support lifestyle is really very different from the non-support lifestyle. It is, at this point in my life, impossible to convey the nuances of this to people working an 8-5 job — or even working in other non-personal-support-based ministries. Someday I hope to be able to elaborate on this sentiment (some of the differences are fairly obvious). Part of our frustration is a lack of communication from people we communicate with. Seldom do we get responses from our prayer emails or newsletters.

Recently a thank you from a friend irked my wife. Her frustration stems from people who try and support us in ways other than giving financially. We know not everyone can give, but when it seems to us we communicate very clearly our need for money . . .

. . . what’s that saying? “Put your money where your mouth is.”

Or in more Biblical terminology, “Where your treasure is, there is your heart also.”

Faith rewarded?

Our finances are getting a little be touchy — not that they’ve been anything to lean on — as we come close to a time when the money seems to, very frankly, be running out. We have a number of expenses, health related mostly, that we could cut but have decided are important enough to stick with until the bitter end.

We do have health insurance, but we don’t use it. In fact we’ve never used it. The expenses related to my wife’s health are through a specialist outside of our state, and is the kind of doctor health insurance companies scoff at anyway. Costs associated with this doctor can average around than $200 or more a month. We also see a chiropractor. Before moving to work with the ministry we did this regularly, but couldn’t afford it just after moving. When I began having mild dizzy spells after sitting at length in front of a computer, which is what I do all day working with the ministry, we both (for different reasons) began seeing the back-cracker regularly again. This costs us $140 a month. And the dizzy spells haven’t returned!

We’ve been able to manage these two costs, although my wife hasn’t been taking the supplements she needs to be all of the time. But since she quit working earlier this year things have become progressively slimmer in the checkbook department.

Earlier today I moved $750 from our savings to our now meager checking account to cover some other unexpected expenses. I felt the need to see the dentist after a tooth, which has bothered me in the past, became a bit sore again. The tooth ended up being fine for now, but my wife is also in need of new glasses. We’ve gone the cheap route for glasses the past four years, but are feeling like this pair needs to be a bit more tailored. Between the dentist and new glasses we’ll easily spend $400, if not more.

Just after getting back to the office today my wife called me. She reported that the mail was just delivered, and it included two things: A large package of nonsensical papers from the health insurance company, and a personal check from one of our donors. The check was in the amount of $500. This will easily cover our dental and optic needs for the month, and should allow me to restore the money I moved from the checking account.

Such uncanny timing has happened in the past, in fact with this same donor. Her commitment is truly inspiring.

Now if we only had about five others like her, in giving and commitment!

Post fundraising trip ramble

This is our last prayer update that went to about 100 people via email:

Praise God for some new support in the last few months. Many thanks to our new and long-standing financial partners.

However, we are staring at a cliff. I’ve shared this year in earlier emails how we are using up the “reserve” fund while I work full-time, since [my wife] quit the newspaper. From the looks of it, we’ll have enough money for paychecks in August and September. After this, without a very significant increase in our support level, everything is up in the air.

It’s difficult to talk about and consider what could very well be the end of our service with Mission Data International. We envisioned our five year commitment to [the ministry] as a springboard into long-term, cross-cultural overseas service. The thought of having to quit, find other work and then come back to missions at a later date does not seem very feasible in our finite, human thinking.

At this point, my goal remains to serve with [the ministry] through the end of the year, if funding allows. We have begun work on a long-term mission website, and without our help it will be very difficult for it to launch in 2007 as planned. Better yet would be for us to be 85% funded by December, giving us at least an opportunity to consider continuing our service with [the ministry] into 2008.

Right now donations meet 60% of our support budget every month.

It is not our practice to ask for financial support in either our newsletters or these prayer notes, but present circumstances make it necessary. If God leads you in His way to give to our service with [the ministry], please do so this month. Our greatest need is for regular donations, be they monthly, quarterly or yearly. A monthly donation of $40 is equal to 1% of our budget.

We really are staring at a cliff. We still have peace about our circumstances. God has been faithful since we began this process almost five years ago. We have never lacked, though we have had to lean on patience from time to time.

A supporter we chatted with on our recent fundraising jaunt exhorted us to stick with it as long as possible. That we will, but truth be told we’re both worn out emotionally, and my wife’s health troubles don’t help our energy level. I was reminded as we traveled of how different the support-based lifestyle is, and how difficult it must be for people who haven’t experience the fundraising process. On the outside it’s easy to believe things are quite similar, especially for those serving in full-time ministry stateside. But behind the scenes the gearing is very different.

We’re now talking seriously about what we might do if, in the next two months or less, we don’t have the support we need. We know the God we serve is big enough for any task. But our minds are beginning to wonder if the door isn’t closing on our full-time service with this ministry. It’s difficult to concentrate on the continuing task of fundraising when thinking about new possibilities, when considering the possibility of needing to sell the house and move.

It’s also difficult to think of quitting the process. As the email cited above states, we have had new support come in. Our support level has always increased. It just hasn’t increased quickly enough. How long does a person persist? What does a slowly closing door look like? We’ve already done the part-time ministry/part-time work thing, and we don’t feel the need to go back to that model. It does not seem sustainable to us, and our missionary salary is barely enough for us to get by on as it is — especially when we’re concertedly spending the money necessary to get my wife healthy again.

Some changes are likely ahead, without a Divine and seemingly miraculous intervention.

Taking stock of our circumstances

Our church asked me to prepare a report of sorts in response to a request I made for additional support. This is a draft of the document (with personal references removed):

Timeline of involvement with ministry

April 2002: Submitted application for employment with ministry.
August 2002: Flew to Arkansas for interview with ministry
September 2002: Accepted as ministry staff.
October 2002: Mailed our first newsletter.
November 2002: Began fundraising with Boot Camp training in Dallas.
May 2003: Moved to Arkansas; I stop working altogether in hopes of hastening the fundraising process. My wife begins working full-time.
November 2004: Began working in the ministryoffice part-time as
support allowed.
November 2006: My student loans paid off. Plans for my wife to quit
working full-time.
February 2007: My wife quits working and I begin full-time in the M-DAT office, using up the reserve fund which had accrued roughly $10,000 over the previous four years of fundraising. This is a temporary fix to our still deficient support level.
April 2007: Sell our car in order to streamline our budget. This eliminates all of our debt with the exception of the mortgage. We’re now driving the late-model Toyota we were given with 225,000 miles on it already.
September 2007: Without a significant amount of new support, the moneys in our reserve fund run out and our salary check will go from roughly $2,200 per month to $1,100 per month. Needless to say, living on $1,100 a month is rough, if it can actually be pulled off.

Minimum support requirement for full-time service with ministry

75% of American missionaries must go out on their own and raise the money required — from friends, family and churches in most cases — in order to begin full-time or part-time missionary work.

The amount of support we are required to raise in order to serve full-time with the ministry was established after discussion and examination of our expenses and the cost of living in Siloam Springs. The number decided upon in 2002 was $4,300 per month. This covered our salary (take-home would be roughly $2,300 if I recall correctly), employer’s side of taxes, insurance, retirement, an administration fee (of approximately 8%) and ministry expenses for things such as fundraising and newsletter postage.

A portion was also set aside for us to make occasional trips to continually develop in our roles with the ministry, such as to a mission retreat or conference. This was later dropped after realizing how difficult getting to full support would be anyway. The minimum support level for us now is $4,075 a month.

The support raising process

Per the timeline above, we officially began fundraising in November 2002. Our first step was a two day training seminar in Dallas. Hours and hours of preparation were required before attending the seminar including the creation of a mailing list, creation of a budget and finishing a workbook. The course was very practical and a good stepping stone for anyone on the verge of the personal support adventure. It did, however, create a bit of false hope in my opinion as the timeline for getting to full support.

We began scheduling appointments immediately after the seminar. In the first 18 months we visited with 125 people, face-to-face, presenting the ministry to them and asking them plainly if they would give towards our service with the ministry. The first 30%in pledges came in with relative ease. After this, however, getting new support became much more difficult. We had exhausted the most reachable portion of our resources. A number of our friends talked of their desire to give, but could not give. Some were still in school, others taking on new expenses with the birth of children.

We knew raising money for a new, internet-based and stateside ministry would be more difficult than “glamorous” overseas work. We knew the post 9/11 economy put certain people in financial situations not conducive to missions giving. But our calling was clear and we continued trying to raise support.

In November 2004 our support level, being about 45%, allowed me to begin working in the office 20 hours a week. At this point we’d spoken to many of the more promising contacts on our mailing list of more than 400 people. I had visited with numerous pastors and attempted to make contact by phone to people far enough away it wasn’t prudent to make a trip to see them.

Throughout 2005 support continued to trickle in, moving us in the right direction albeit at a painfully slow pace. In 2006 we lost a few regular and significant donors, although when all was said and done we still went forward in support. Our intentions of traveling during the year to raise more money were thwarted by Hannah’s stressful job as managing editor at the Herald Leader.

Support in 2007 has again continued to go, ever so slowly, in the right direction. In April we finally made it to 60% of our support pledged.

Personal finances

As stated above, our only debt at this point in time is our mortgage. We cut expenses as much as we felt we could early in 2007, corresponding to our reduced income with Hannah’s leaving the newspaper. This included selling our car to get rid of the payments and lower our insurance costs. We were subsequently given a vehicle in fairly decent running condition. This 1993 Toyota has a little body damage and already boasts of 225,000 miles.

Presently, our savings account contains ~ $3,000 and our checking hovers around $1,000.

Our missional aspirations

The ministry, as a mission mobilizer, views itself as a stepping stone for people planning to go overseas as cross-cultural missionaries. My wife and I took this post with a 3-5 year commitment, expecting in reality to be here at least five years. We have now been a part of the ministry for almost five years, however most of that time has not been in actual service. Most of the time was spent trying to get to a sufficient support level.

We planned on being career missionaries, at some point being overseas long-term. The ministry, as God led, was a very good fit for us at the time. Being stateside allowed Hannah to work, which allowed us to pay off my student loans. This would have been very difficult overseas.

If we don’t see significant new support in the next few months our service with this ministry may be over. While this isn’t for certain, we may be required to move away where I can find a “real job” that suits me.

The thought of quitting the fundraising lifestyle and then trying to come back to it at a later time does not seem realistic to me. I may be thinking in human terms, for nothing is too big a task for God, but I’m not certain we’d be up for the rigorous task of starting from zero twice in our lifetime. The fundraising lifestyle takes an emotional toll on a person that is difficult to describe.

What constitutes justifiable spending?

Earlier this morning my office mate shared a story with the rest of us. He told us of a friend, of modest means, who asked his very well-off friend a question. Modest means asked how a person could justify spending $2 million dollars for a home, as very well-off friend had done. Very well-off replied that the millions he spent on his house were less than 1% of his annual income, and how could modest means justify spending 20-30% of his entire income on housing?

(For a bit of context, we were discussing the merits of purchasing a Wii. All of us in the office are of very modest means. We also all work in the internet industry, and thus are — from time to time — intrigued by video game technology. I gamed on a Wii for the first time just two weeks ago, and must say it’s quite fun.)

The above example, of course, is not really an apples to apples comparison. The idea of two million dollars to me is, well, unfathomable. I won’t even pretend to understand the budget of a person whose two million is a measly 1% of his annual income. Those of us around the M-DAT office would be living in cardboard boxes if we only spent 1% on housing, as would most Americans. Bear in mind I’m coming from a very run-of-the-mill perspective here, living in a small community where housing prices are generally considered “affordable.” I’m not in certain real estate markets, where a cool two mil might get you a two bedroom flat.

And thus it’s very, very difficult for me to comprehend how I might spend even one million bucks on a house. Of course, unlike many American dreamers, I have a staunch aversion to McMansions — to all things oversized, overstuffed or generally inconsiderate of practical spatial considerations. I don’t need three-gazillion square feet; nay, I don’t even want three-gazillion square feet. I don’t say this to knock people who want to recreate the open prairie in their master bedroom closets; it’s just my personal preference. I’ve said before that there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with a large house (speaking outside of cultural, social and sustainable concerns).

In many things I’m not a very detail-oriented person, much to the chagrin of most employment classifieds. However, when it comes to architecture (and most things visual), I’m extraordinarily particular when I can be. Thus, if I built my own million-dollar home, for me to give attention to an exponential myriad of details — resulting in a significant cost increase — is feasible. Construction methods, materials, moldings, sustainability and so on.

Still, I cannot imagine my own precisely detailed, non-McMansion ever cresting the two million dollar mark.

While traveling in late May we visited people who support my wife and I in our service with the non-profit we work for. Somehow, over dinner, Alice Walton’s Crystal Bridges came up. This led to a brief discussion about Walton’s failed attempt to purchase The Gross Clinic late last year. Our friend across the table listened in cynical disbelief at the 60 million dollar figure the painting eventually sold for, lamenting how people like my wife and I struggle to live in a missional and support-based lifestyle when numbers like these are somewhat regularly thrown around for paintings. And this is a serious consideration. What if Philadelphia, instead of raising $30,000,000 in pledged money (in order to secure the $60,000,000 plus loan) for a painting raised the same money in two month’s time to feed, house, cloth and provide jobs for the roughly 25,000 homeless people in the city? If a metropolitan area can mobilize so quickly for a painting, why not for people?

And I say this as an artist.

I wish someone would buy my paintings for sixty million, or six million or even six hundred dollars, knowing such financial tension exists in a lot of people’s personal budgets. I’ve come to a point where I desire to not pass judgment on how people spend, knowing the difficulty of such decisions. I say “desire to not” because it’s very difficult to not pass such judgment (as a human being) living on support.

Getting back to the Wii, my boss was having a hard time justifying the $249 he needed to shell out for the system when the people depicted on posters around our office live on that amount of money in an entire year. My officemate, friends with modest-means, noted that even people who live on so little spend 1% of their income on entertainment.