Course Review: Executive Certificate in Religious Fundraising

 I decided to take a moment and share with you my experience in earning the Lake Institute on Faith and Giving's Executive Certificate in Religious Fundraising.  I'll hyperlink to pages that will provide you with more information.

Lake Institute on Faith and Giving is part of the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.  It's mission is to foster a deeper understanding of the dynamic relationship between faith and giving.

One of the ways they accomplish this mission is to offer an educational opportunity called the Executive Certificate in Religious Fundraising. Before the pandemic, it was offered in various locations, lasting a week at a time. Since the pandemic, they have switched to an 8-week online course.

It has been my intention for several years to complete the course; in fact, I set it as one of two training goals in 2019.  The first was to earn the Certificate in Nonprofit Executive Leadership (CNEL); the second was the ECRF.  I signed up for the first course in the CNEL as an in-person course, and then the pandemic hit.  The Paul O'Neil School of Public and Environmental Affairs had already been offering the courses as both online and in-person; they pivoted my course to online.  I completed the course, as well as the next three necessary for that certification, doing only one of them online.

Anyway, my plan was to start the ECRF after finishing the first certificate, but I was hesitate to do an 8 week online course that required two 1 1/2 hour classes a week plus an additional small group zoom meeting.  It seemed like a large commitment of time in my work week.  As I was looking at it again, I noticed they were offering an in-person class in Greenville, South Carolina.  This option was two and a half days with a follow-up Zoom call.  It seemed much more manageable, so I jumped at it. I completed that part of the course in May of this year. 

Completion of the in-person course grants access to their online resources in a system called PathWright, so I worked through those offerings as well.

The last part of the Certificate is a practical project.  It requires a proposal submission, the project completion, and a reflection paper.  My project was our in-person Academy of Faith and Generosity, held this past September.  I turned in my reflection paper on November 1, and learned the 3rd that I've completed the Certificate, so yay!

I would recommend it to those who are interested.  It is well planned and executed.

Book Review: Imagining Abundance

 Information about the book

Imagining Abundance: Fundraising, Philanthropy, and a Spiritual Call to Service by Kerry Alys Robinson.  Liturgical Press. Collegeville, Minnesota. 2014. Amazon link.

Summary

From Amazon: Fundraising is ministry—a transformative ministry that challenges all people to realize their own gifts and how they can be used for the benefit of the church. In Imagining Abundance, Kerry Robinson focuses on reasons why each of us are called to be stewards. We act because we’re excited about what it is that we do for the church and where we’re called by God to be, we want others to be just as excited about what that is, and we want people to be partners with us in that ministry.  In Imagining Abundance, Kerry Robinson offers an inspirational and practical guide to effective fundraising that is ideal for anyone invested in a faith community. Bishops, provincials, pastors, ministers, executive and development directors and trustees of faith-based organizations will benefit from this healthy approach to the activity of fundraising that situates successful development in the context of ministry and mission.

Impressions

This was one of the books I was assigned to read for my Executive Certificate in Religious Fundraising.  There were several things I liked about the book:

1. It was written by a woman who has fundraising and grantmaking experience through her service on her family's foundation's board, but most of the book is written from her viewpoint of working as a fundraiser for a Harvard's Catholic Campus Ministry group.  She accepted the position when the ministry was struggling, and her work through that (with the executive director) gave a reality to the book that I enjoyed.
2. The philanthropic philosophy that the author has dovetails nicely with religious fundraising. She explains it as ministry, and this is a philosophy I have come to share and appreciate. 
3. There are many stories and illustrations that added to my understanding and that I am able to use (with proper credit to Robinson) in my own teaching.

As a United Methodist, I was glad to read a book that was outside of my denominational box. 

This is not a long book, but it is well written and packed with gems.  I would recommend it to anyone in ministry for whom  inviting people into ministry through the sharing of the financial gifts is part of their job (and that's just about everyone, right?).

Posts about book

Other posts that refer to this book with be labeled with the tag Robinson Abundance.

The Grace of Disagreement

One other thought from Rabbi Jason Bonder's video about Rambam's Ladder (I talked about it earlier).  He says that if you review it, and you don't agree with it, or you don't think it applies today (since it was originally created as an illustration in the 12th century, then that is OK.  In fact, he says it is Good!

"Jewish tradition encourages the next generations, one after the other, and each individual to grapple with the texts that are put in front of them.  Disagreement is a theme that is baked into Jewish thought.  The Hebrew name Yisrael, given to the biblical patriarch Jacob, is often translated as 'wrestles with God.'... The key is to tell someone why and find deeper meaning within it."

Do we do that? Do we find it "good" to disagree and to join with others in Christian Conversation (hint - I capitalized it so that it would remind you of the name of one of the Means of Grace Wesley talked about)?  Or do we stick so firmly and stubbornly with the traditional about scripture we have been thought that we leave no room for the grace of disagreement?

Belong, Behave, Believe

As part of my Executive Certificate in Religious Fundraising, I'm watching videos from the online resource for the course  The one I just finished was by Rabbi Jason Bonder.  As part of the video, he talks about the "three B's of religion."  I had never heard of those before:  they are believing, behaving, and belonging.  The are used to help describe people's faith journey.

The three B's are not always used in the same order.  Isn't that interesting? Rabbi Mordechai Kaplan, a "great Jewish thinker of the 20th Century" puts them in this order: belong, behave, and believe.

What do you think?  Does that order make sense to you? It does create a picture of a person belonging to a faith community, and then acting in service.  Those two experiences: belonging and behaving would then, in this order, help lead to belief.  Is that a "fake it till you make it approach?"  I don't ask that question to be facetious, but to say that sometimes that is the way of it.

I'm not sure if this is a related thought or not, but this did bring to mind John Wesley's assertion that we could not do good works - works of God - until we had the assurance of salvation that comes from justification.  In one of his sermons, Justification by Faith (III, 5), Wesley says this about good works:

If it be objected, "Nay, but a man, before he is justified, may feed the hungry, or clothe the naked; and these are good works;" the answer is easy: He may do these, even before he is justified; and these are, in one sense, "good works;" they are "good and profitable to men." But it does not follow, that they are, strictly speaking, good in themselves, or good in the sight of God. All truly "good works" (to use the words of our Church) "follow after justification;" and they are therefore good and "acceptable to God in Christ," because they "spring out of a true and living faith." By a parity of reason, all "works done before justification are not good," in the Christian sense, "forasmuch as they spring not of faith in Jesus Christ;" (though from some kind of faith in God they may spring;) "yea, rather, for that they are not done as God hath willed and commanded them to be done, we doubt not" (how strange soever it may appear to some) "but they have the nature of sin."

It seems that Wesley would put belief first. 

I'm not offering an answer; I just think it is an interesting question.

Rambam's Ladder

I'm working through the steps to receive an Executive Certificate in Religious Fundraising from Lake Institute on Faith and Giving, a part of the Lilly School of Philanthropy at Indiana University.  As part of the class, I read the book Rambam's Ladder: A Meditation on Generosity and Why it is Necessary to Give by Julie Salamon. 

Rambam's ladder is an illustrative ladder that consists of eight rungs - each run another step in Charity.  It was conceived by a 12th century rabbi named Moses ben Maimon, known by his Greek name of Maimonides.  Rambam is an acronym of the first letters of his name.  The first rung is to give begrudgingly.  The next one is to give a small amount, but to do so cheerfully. As you "climb" the ladder, the focus shifts more to the dignity of the donor and the recipient, until you reach rung seven: To give to someone you don't know, and to do so anonymously.  The final rung is the gift of self-reliance, so that the recipient no longer needs to ask for help. 

Often in churches we talk about proportional giving - encouraging people to increase the percentage of their income that they donate to the church, with a goal of tithing.  What struck me about Rambam's ladder is that it is less transactional and more relational - with a focus on both the donor and the recipient. It seems to me that the Rambam's ladder approach (even if the rungs are not what we would choose) places more of an emphasis on spiritual development than proportional giving. Maybe we need to examine our approach to encouraging people to give in the church.