Habitat for Humanity & Major Gifts Ramp-Up

Habitat for Humanity & Major Gifts Ramp-Up is author and veteran fundraiser Louis Fawcett’s take on how local Habitat programs supercharge their mission using Major Gifts Ramp-Up. Here’s what Fawcett has to share:

Is God calling your to re-imagine your Habitat?

I don’t know about you, but every time I hear the story of Moses, I think about the call God has placed on my life. You see, the story of Moses is about all of us – it’s about how God calls all of us to mission and ministry.

Habitat for Humanity & Major Gifts Ramp-Up

If we listen to Exodus chapter 3, we hear about Moses the shepherd keeping watch over Jethro’s sheep. The Bible tells us that Moses led his flock to the west side of the wilderness. And look what happens next – the angel of the LORD appears to him in a burning bush – a bush that burned but was not consumed. Moses said, “I will turn aside to see this great sight, the bush that is not burned.” Then God called to him by name and Moses said, “Here I am.” Even though he was reluctant, Moses answered God’s call.

• How often are you just walking on the west side of the wilderness minding your own business?
• How often are you just doing the job which has been given to you that can be rather mundane?
• How often are you confronted with a burning bush?

Now, you are probably thinking, “Well, I’ve never been confronted with a burning bush.” But you see, there are many burning bush moments in our lives. Moments when we experience something significant that causes us to turn aside and pay attention. Moments when we are more in tune to God speaking into our lives about His calling for us.

VISIT HERE TO JOIN LOUIS FAWCETT AT A MAJOR GIFTS RAMP-UP EVENT

A burning bush moment might be something traumatic like an automobile accident or the death of a loved one. A burning bush moment might be a divorce, or a kid going off to college, or losing a job. Maybe your burning bush moment is something someone says that hits you like a bolt of lightning. Or perhaps it’s a moment when you are discerning what will come next in your lives.

Moses’ burning bush is a metaphor for the many and various ways God places a calling on our lives. For Moses, this calling was to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. For you, God has called you to be in mission and ministry at Habitat. God has called you to lead people into having a home. I can’t think of a more important calling and yet I wonder if Habitat is doing all it can to answer God’s call?

God called Moses to re-imagine his future and the future of the Israelites. Perhaps God is calling you to re-imagine the future of your Habitat.

Are you content with your current mission and impact? Are you doing all you could be doing for your community? Is your mission dramatic or is it mundane? Are you doing everything you can do to monetize your mission and grow your impact?

Here’s the thing – the currency God has given us in this world to achieve His goals for our communities is MONEY. Money is the fuel, the oxygen, the power behind every significant effort to change lives.

I know a time is coming when there will be no more hardship, no more pain, no more suffering, and no more evil. But that time is not now. The reality, whether we like it or not, is that we are working in this world where MONEY is what changes things. Without money, there is no mission.

Does what I’m saying offend your piety? If it does, I need you to wrestle with this because the importance of money is not going to change until Jesus comes again.

If you are going to answer God’s call on your lives to work in the context of Habitat for Humanity to change lives, then you are going to need money – lots of money.

This is why Major Gifts Ramp-Up is so important. Major Gifts Ramp-Up gives you the tools you need to get more money and therefore change more lives. If you are not content with your current impact, the answer is Major Gifts Ramp-Up. If you want to build and remodel more houses to help more people, the answer is Major Gifts Ramp-Up. If you want to be a force for change in your communities, the answer is Major Gifts Ramp-Up.

I want to invite you to thoroughly explore all the parts to the Major Gifts Ramp-Up model in a two-day event that will change your lives. In fact, I would like to personally invite you to join me in Asheville, NC or Columbus, OH or Santa Barbara, CA or Bradenton, FL to immerse yourselves for two days in the Major Gifts Ramp-Up model.

VISIT HERE TO JOIN LOUIS FAWCETT AT A MAJOR GIFTS RAMP-UP EVENT

During these two days, you will learn how to re-imagine your Habitat with key initiatives such as:

1. Learning how to treat your donors as customers. Any good business centers their efforts on creating quality experiences for their customers that keep them coming back, again and again. As leaders of Habitat, you have the compelling experience of homebuilding that you can leverage (not just for more volunteers) for more revenue for your mission.
2. Re-imagining your time priorities so you are focused on Major Gifts. I know you are busy doing things every week that are time wasters. Things like long staff meetings, board meetings, writing reports, checking email, and dealing with perceived urgent issues. If you can step away from these time wasters and focus on Major Gifts, your world will change.
3. Creating a compelling Case for Support with a three-year comprehensive budget. A Case for Support is an investment prospectus for your major donors that illustrates your history, current impact, and future vision. The act of creating this document will clarify your talking points to donors and help them, for the first time, see a clear picture of who you are, who you serve, how you serve, and how much it costs.
4. Stop wasting your time on fundraising events and start hosting one event per year that raises $500,000 each evening. Too many of you are busy putting on golf tournaments, complicated galas, social media appeals, and whatever the latest idea is to raise a few dollars when, instead, you could be hosting a two-hour evening and raising hundreds of thousands of dollars will very little effort.
5. Stop asking your Board to fundraise and instead recruit Campaign Cabinet comprised of veteran fundraisers who understand how to ask for big gifts. Trust me, your Board is not interested in fundraising and you aren’t going to guilt them into doing it. Rather, the Major Gifts Ramp Up model will show you how to put together a Cabinet of 15 fundraising experts who will be delighted to help you grow your mission and impact.

VISIT HERE TO JOIN LOUIS FAWCETT AT A MAJOR GIFTS RAMP-UP EVENT

So what is God calling you to do? If you want more out of your Habitat affiliate, if you want to build more houses and transform more neighborhoods, if you want to re-imagine your Habitat, then I invite you to experience Major Gifts Ramp-Up.

Louis Fawcett
https://LouisFawcett.org
803-808-5086

Habitat for Humanity & Major Gifts Ramp-Up was first posted at INSIDE CHARITY

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