OK, maybe not. But summer's a great time to get some important "jobs" underway to help ensure the success of your fall pledge campaign.
In a recent Stewardship Workshop, we discussed three of those: Team, Theme, and Dream. This article outlines some of the highlights, and you can also watch a recording of that 60 minute workshop on our YouTube Channel.
Job 1: Who's on the TEAM?
Here we are at the brink of summer, with two months to go before September. Still time to take on a few important jobs--one of which is making sure your church has a strong Stewardship Team set up and working together. Remember, Church Stewardship is a team sport--not one person's responsibility (aside from the fact that loading it all on one person's shoulders isn't fair, it also doesn't work that well).
Who's on your team? Are they meeting? Do they have the resources they need? Who might be added to the team? How about a co-chair?
Job 2: What's your THEME?
It might be tempting to approach the upcoming fall pledge campaign's creative development by simply pulling out last year's file and switching out a few dates. Don't do that. This year's annual pledge campaign is too important to your church not to take advantage of ways that will make your Stewardship messaging more powerful and memorable.
A theme helps you to do that. It helps you to think about the church's ministries through a lens that brings them to life. A theme is a short, memorable phrase that will help you to develop your communications materials and will make everything more powerful and memorable to parishioners. Don't ignore the power of a theme!
Job 3: Articulate your DREAM.
A third "job" for the season is developing a Case Statement, a concise document that clearly explains what need(s) an organization seeks to meet, how they have met those needs in the past and how they plan to meet those needs in the future, and what resources are needed to accomplish that task.
We might think of Case Statements as living more in the secular non-profit world. For anyone who has worked in a nonprofit that depended on fundraising, they know that Case Statements are an essential component. Case Statements are also hugely helpful to church leadership in articulating the connection between the needs of ministry and the possibilities of fundraising. A Case Statement can help us "connect the dots" between the impact of our ministries and the resources we need to meet those needs.
