An Unexpected Gift

A few years ago, a friend of our work reached out to me on the phone in early October. He had been following our work for years, always spoke kindly about it, but had never made a financial investment.

As we talked he started asking me questions about how The Hope Effect was doing financially at the moment. More specifically, he wanted to know how GivingTuesday was shaping up.

I told him of our progress in securing matching donors, what the funding was going to be used for in the coming year, and what early indicators were showing us. This was going to be the biggest ask and biggest goal in our GivingTuesday history.

He listened intently, nodded along verbally, and said he'd been meeting with his accountant and was looking for the right opportunity.

Discovering the Other Side of the Budget

Earlier this month I was talking with a colleague from my first real leadership assignment. We were on staff together at a church in Omaha, running the student ministry department. We got to laughing about how we operated back then.

We joked that we were like the defense department. Every budget season we marched to the elder board, made our case for resources, and walked away with what we needed to blow things up. We were excellent at inspiring the board to allocate resources. We were also excellent at spending it. Passionate about it, even. However, what we never thought about was where the money was coming from.

Then I became the lead pastor of a new church plant in Arizona. Time to build my first budget and present it to the elder board. No problem. I had done this many times and was basically an expert by now. I did what any resourceful leader does. I found the old budget templates from my previous church, changed the name at the top, and got to work.

That is when I noticed something.