Fundraising is hard work.  At this point in our church plant, I’m headlong into the process of raising support and what I keep coming back to is that it truly is hard work.  Right now it feels like every spare minute is filled with meeting someone for lunch or coffee, making phone calls to schedule meetings or follow-up, writing communication pieces, emailing, processing commitment cards, keeping up with monthly correspondence and sending out giving envelopes.  I don’t say all of this to complain, I say it to provide a real picture of what this looks like.

In keeping with one of my goals of making this blog a resource for other or future church planters, over the next several weeks, I plan to document our journey associated with fundraising.  As such, I plan to trace through preparing, planning, and executing – documenting what I’ve done as an example, but also keeping it general enough that you can adapt it to your own unique context.

I’ll conclude this introductory post with a couple of thoughts:

The first is a quote from a church planter friend of mine.  When discussing fundraising he once told me that, “It will cost way more than you think it will; you can do it with way less than you think you can.”

The second thought is a question that I continually get asked: “How is it raising support with the economy the way it is?”  My answer: I have no idea, I’ve never raised support before.