“I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it”

May 24, 2022

You’ll be successful if you faithfully do the best you can with what you have

I don’t know who originally said this quote but, ignoring the word ‘luck’ for a moment, there is a lot of wisdom here.

For the 4 days of 24-27 May 2022 Vision Christian Media’s on-air radio appeal is aiming to raise $1,400,000. Yes you read that right 1.4 million over 4 days!

Now, in case you don’t know the history, February 1990 saw Vision put on its first radio station in Beaudesert a small town about 80km southeast of Brisbane, Australia – population about 4,000.

So What?

22 years from now could your ministry be raising $1.4m in an on-air appeal?

Previously in this blog I’ve said “successful fundraising comes down to ‘doing the best you can with what you have’“. And that is true for much more than just fundraising.

I believe Vision is a living testament to the truth of this statement.

Are they perfect? NO!
Has Vision made mistakes? YES!

But the team at Vision, led by Phil Edwards and previously Ian Worby, has concentrated on doing the best they can with what they have.

The success of their radio appeal is the sum of a lot (and I mean a lot) of work by a lot of people.

UCB Asia Pacific is here to help your ministry take some shortcuts on your journey. You can avoid some of the mistakes and take advantage of what Vision has learnt along the way. That’s why we keep adding resources to the Radio Appeals page on our website – and I send emails like this ????.

But we can only do so much, ultimately it boils down to you and your team. Ian, Rudy Steve and I are here to help – as are others in our UCB Asia Pacific family – which is why we get together each month to talk and pray for each other.

One example of the behind-the-scenes work the team at Vision put into the success of their Visionathon is an email sent to each of the volunteers who will be coming in to man the phones. It is mail merged so it is addressed to the individual and has their personal volunteering time details in it. It contains a video recorded just to explain how I need to fill in the form! Vision’s IT team developed and refined an internal (but online) form so it integrates with both Vision’s online payment gateway and their CRM (Donor Management) system. None of that just happened. It was deliberately planned and it took work.

So, do the best you can with what you have and see how your ministry grows.

Record Your Donor Details

Here is a simple Excel spreadsheet for recording your donor details.

Download

Read a little more on CRM systems.

CRM Software

There are literally hundreds of options for a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system for your ministry. There are some free options but usually they are limited to a short time or a small number of records.

One truly Free option worth exploring is TNTConnect

As CRM software is a rapidly changing field you are probably best to do your own search.

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