Matt Boden Support Raising Experience

The mention of the words sends some prospective workers into sounds of groaning and moaning and others into a panic. Support raising. As staff members of Impact Campus Minsitries, we don’t get a ‘normal’ salary like so many other ‘normal’ people do; we have to raise it all ourselves. We actually have to ask other people to give us money. Ugh.  How unfair is that?

On August 5, I waved good bye to my coworkers of the organization I had worked with for four years; my wife had been there for seven. We were excited to join Impact full time on the Florida Gulf Coast University team, and we knew that support raising came with the territory.

Unlike many other Impact staff, Erin and I had already been living on support during our entire time with our previous organization, so we had a large base with which to start. We made it our goal to contact each of our donors personally within the month of August. We created a Google spreadsheet, complete with names, phone numbers, amount given to former organization, date called, amount pledged to give to Impact, and a place for notes. We divided the list between the two of us, mapped out weekly times that each of us could work on communicating with our supporters and got to work.

By the end of August, we had at least left a message with every person on our entire list of monthly donors. Many of these friends we had the opportunity to talk to on the phone, which was encouraging to us. God used these phone conversations to bless each other mutually by catching up on what He had been doing and by asking each person if they were willing and able to transition their support with us to Impact. To our amazement and delight, all but two regular monthly donors gave us Yeses!

We followed up each Yes with instructions on how to give, either right over the phone or in an email with a link to the donation page.  As we waited for the affirmatives to begin giving, we continued to call and email others from whom we had not heard an answer. This took time, patience, persistence, all of which we sometimes had and other days lacked.

As we made our way through our spreadsheet in August, it came time to register for one of the Boot Camp seminars before our baby was born. That did not leave many options. In fact, by the time we looked at our schedule, it really left only one option, Alexandria, Louisiana. Let’s just say we were hoping for a more exciting location for a chance to get away for a few days, say Denver or something. Knowing that we had no other choice, we begrudgingly registered for Boot Camp in Alexandria and hoped that its unapparent charm and romantic appeal would pleasantly surprise us. More on this later.

In the meantime, we continued to hear positive responses from those whom we asked to make the switch and our percentage pledged was on the rise. This part seemed easy, and we praised God by the continuous generosity of our friends and their confidence in our following His direction. We still had not made any new face to face appeals, as we waited to see what would happen with our current supporter base.

Preparation for Boot Camp was intense, time consuming, and beneficial to our support raising experience. Funding Your Ministry is an excellent and thorough book that puts support raising into a good light. Even though I did not like some of the assignments from the preparation packet, I am so glad I was forced to do them because so much of that I would never have done on my own. I struggled with the Bible study the most out of all the assignments because so many of the passages seemed like a real stretch to fit his point, almost taken out of context or inappropriately lumped together with other passages. My attitude toward some of these assignments was apathetic; others I did merely out of duty to check it off the list.

Because Erin and I had had years of support raising experience prior to going to Boot Camp, several of the preparation assignments, such as mailing list and namestorming, we did not need to do. Working on our personal budget and using the Five W appeal list benefitted us most in the process. We read the book and finished the assignments, eager to receive a $100 discount off the price of the seminar.

Although the communication with and responses from our former supporters continued to encourage us, we had still not made a single face to face appeal with a potential new supporter. I waffled back and forth. Some days, I felt confident in what God had called us to and worthy of asking someone to invest finically. On those days, I truly believed that the person that I asked would be blessed by the conversation, whether they were able to give or not, and that they would love to give us money if they could. On many other days, I saw myself as a beggar in other people’s eyes, I wondered if they would ask me why I didn’t get a real job. Sometimes I felt like a shyster when I called someone because I knew I was going to ask for money and I started the conversation with a different topic that I could eventually weave toward the financial. I avoided calling people I had not talked with in a while because I did not want our first interaction to be my asking for their money.

Fast forward a bit to Boot Camp in Alexandria at the middle of September. What a trip this was! Erin and I decided to fly into Houston and spend a couple of days there before the seminar so we could be away from children one more time before baby number five was born. I will spare most of the details of what made those few days laughably challenging, but it involved two city bus rides from the airport to sort of close to our hotel, an overdraft charge, two unsuccessful trips to Hertz to rent a car we had already reserved, and lots of walking along busy streets toting our roller bags.

When we finally got our rented car, we drove the four and a half hours to Louisiana and arrived at Boot Camp about an hour after it started. The coordinator graciously gave us pardon for that so we could still qualify for our $100 discount.

Boot Camp was a challenge, and I do not mean mentally. It was a challenge for us to stay awake, to stay engaged, and to want to be there. Obviously, our attitudes and patience had been worn thin from the weekend we had just finished, so those contributed to our struggles. In addition, Erin was about 35 weeks pregnant by then, and 95% of the seminar was lecture, which meant sitting still in a chair for sixteen hours in two days! That is a recipe for disaster.  We did not find the seminar helpful at all. It was ironic that the presenter mentioned several times how helpful role playing face to face meetings are to the support raising process, yet we only did one mock support meeting, and that was during lunch. In addition, the majority of the material covered in the two days was not a supplement to the preparation material, but rather a regurgitation.

The most positive part about Boot Camp was that it motivated us to finish the support raising process with a renewed biblical perspective on the task at hand. It also helped us determine new potential supporters and to set up face to face appointments with them as soon as we returned home.

Within a few weeks of coming home, I had no less than nine personal appeal appointments in which I asked a person or couple to consider financially supporting our ministry on a monthly basis for the first time. God used each of these appointments to bless both parties. Even when the person was not able to commit to financial partnership, the Lord was honored by our sharing and encouragement, and I walked away with new things to pray about for that person. Two families were unable to give because they have incurred a large amount of debt and are working hard to eliminate that in order that they might be more generous. What a honor for them to share that with me and for me to continue to pray for them about becoming debt free.

I met one couple at Panera, and the husband did not seem interested in being there at all. He rarely made eye contact and seemed almost annoyed. I continued to direct questions to him in order to get to know him better, and by the end of the conversation, the wife told me that she was going to try really hard to see what they could do. I talked to her after about a week, and she informed me that they had decided to invest $100 a month into our ministry! I was blown away.

It was also amazing how many people increased their giving just because we asked them to consider it. They considered it, and at least four families increased the monthly amount they had been giving, some even doubling it.

Probably my favorite story of them all happened the first week of October. I had recently reconnected with two former students that were involved in the campus ministry that I led between 2001 and 2005. I had talked to the husband on the phone to set up a time for me to travel to the other coast and reconnect with them. I got there, we ate lunch at their house, then moved to the living room to continue the conversation. As I had prepared to meet them, it was clear that God wanted me to ask them to consider supporting us at $500 a month. I had never asked anyone for a higher amount, but it was the only amount I had in mind to ask them. In the course of the conversation, hearing how God had been working in our lives since the last time we had spent time with each other blessed us greatly.

After I told them about Impact and some differences in our campus ministry at FGCU and the one they had been involved in at UCF, Patrick asked me how far our house was from campus. Erin and I had already started looking for a used car to replace the one we had since it had required frequent repairs and was terrible on gas mileage. I told Patrick this, as the distance from home related to the gas mileage. We finished the conversation, I asked them to consider investing $500 a month, then I excused myself to go to the bathroom. After a couple of minutes, I returned, and Patrick told me, “We can commit to two things. We will give you $500 a month, and whatever money you were going to put toward the car, we want to match it. We want you to have something that is reliable and something nice that will last a long time and has a warranty.” I could not believe my ears! Erin and I had already decided we could use $10,000 from our savings account to put toward a car, so he wrote a check for ten grand and gave it to me on the spot!

Now that we have secured full support, we look back and are amazed how quickly God brought us through this journey. Parts of the three months were trying and several days we were down and discouraged. Overall, however, we see God’s hand in this process and are astounded that I can be on campus so soon and begin this part of our journey. God is gracious and good.