You may think you’re all set to fundraise but before you do, here are some logistical questions to think through.

1. After you meet with someone, how are you going to follow-up?
2. How are you going to keep track of who you’ve met with, what transpired from that meeting (a commitment to give, a commitment to pray, a commitment to consider giving, or a respectful decline), who you still need to meet with, etc?
3. Where will people send their money when they give?
4. How will you communicate regularly with your supporters?
5. How will you keep tabs on someone falling behind their monthly commitment?
6. Can you pull off electronic giving?
7. How will you log and keep track of what supporters have given?
8. How will you handle providing tax receipts to supporters?
9. Do you need 501c3 status?

All of these questions need to be answered before you push the button.  To some extent you’re pushing a 500 pound boulder up a hill and are nearing the crest.  Once you get to the crest and nudge it over the edge, you’ve got to be ready to run with this baby as it barrels down the other side.

Here’s how we’ve gone about addressing the questions above.

Get Hooked Up with a Mother Church
If you don’t have a sending church, you have a disadvantage.  We don’t have a sending church per se, but we do have strategic partners.  My advice is to find a church near the area you’ll be planting that can help you with some of the logistics of fundraising.  If they’re an existing church, you can likely fundraise under them and take advantage of their 501c3 status (#9 above), their giving record-keeping system and tax receipt tracking (#7 and #8) and possibly even their system for pulling off electronic giving (#6).  One of our strategic partners is located in Omaha which is an hour from Lincoln.  Per their generosity, we’ve been able to fundraise under them which means that when people give, they write out the check to the strategic partner (designate it to us via the memo line) and send it to them (#3).  The ministry assistant at our partner church then handles the receiving of all of the giving, the logging of the contributions, and simply generates a report for me to review.  That report is then used to keep tabs on who is giving and when (#5).  Having a partnering church to help in this way has saved me a lot of time, a lot of energy, a lot of headaches, and has been a huge blessing.

Have a Good System of Your Own
Assuming that you’ve got a good list of contacts, add some columns to that spreadsheet for keeping track of status.  Personally, I tried to add categories of status so that I could easily sort by status to see who I’ve contacted, who I’ve met with, who I need to follow up with, etc (#2).

Following-Up and Communicating
Assuming that you will be meeting face-to-face with most of your contacts, you’ll need to be sure to follow-up with them (#1).  Roughly half of all of the commitments that we’ve received have taken place via the follow-up call.  For me, I used my categorized status list to keep track of when I met with someone so that I could easily flag myself to follow-up with them 2-3 weeks after we met.  Open and regular communication is key here too.  You don’t want to meet with someone, get their commitment, and sail off into the sunset to plant your church.  What you’re doing is assembling a team of prayer and financial supporters.  If you get their commitment and turn and run the other direction, you’re using God’s people rather than allowing them to be a part of what He’s doing through you.

In the next post, I’ll lay out how I architected my overall process for fundraising from initial contact to closure.  Included in that, I’ll describe how I regularly communicate with supporters (#4).