When we think of this past year, or are asked about it by peers or managers, our responses might be along these lines:
1. We raised __% of our annual fund goal
2. We had these activities or events that involved these constituents
3. We produced this brochure, or video, or improved the web site
4. We raised foundation money amounting to __
5. This % of our parents participated in the annual fund
Why do we describe our work this way? I suggest that it is because these are tangible measures of "performance" against a particular goal. And, none of these descriptors are wrong; they are valuable metrics. The problem is that they don't tell the whole story as I described in my last blog.
Try this. Call three or four donor/friends who you have had the most interaction with this year and ask them to evaluate your work. Listen to what they say and see how they describe you. I hope you hear something like this.
This is not to boast, but it is to show forth our Lord's mighty hand in changing hearts. Two weeks ago a donor/friend said to me, "Harold, had it not been for our interactions and your challenge to give generously to the Lord, I would have not known to do it".
By God's grace this man has joyfully increased his giving ten-fold from where he was before. The amounts are not important; the growing in grace is.
God created us, Jesus saved us, and the Spirit lives in us so that we can reflect (show forth) His glory. That is to say that we may need to evaluate or measure our performance in non-traditional ways.
This is why I suggest that Christian development officers have a ministerial orientation. If not, then we simply do what the non-Christian world does and see how much we can extract from folks that "have plenty".
The One who has plenty owns it all (cattle and hills, right?) and He will give it to our schools in response to our faithfulness to Him.
To "summarize", don't leave out the choicest morsels from your year-end review, even if you cannot put a number on them.
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