Christian Leadership Alliance

Building a Team

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Where Does the Money Come From?

One of the most worried about and least discussed problem in every Christian organization is, "Where does the money come from?" Money does peculiar things to our thinking. If our church or other Christian organization has a significant balance, someone might say, "My, the Lord is really blessing!" On the other hand, if it is in short supply, we may hear, "Too bad; they are really suffering for the Lord!"

Money is a very personal thing. If you don't believe it, the next time you are in a social group, ask someone how much money they earn each year and listen for the deathly silence in the rest of the room!

But we need to talk (and write) about money. For money is one of the great "tools" that God has given us to carry out his business.

Input—Process—Output

Let's try to fit money into proper perspective. Every organization can be thought of as going through a three-step, repetitive process of 1) inputting resources into the organization, 2) processing those resources in order to 3) produce some form of result or output. A manufacturing organization will take money, manpower, and raw materials as input and process all of this to produce some product (output). A service organization will gather funds (input) and spend (process) these funds in such a way that it will produce a desired service (output). A local church will gather together the lives, prayers, time, skills, and money of its congregation (input) in an attempt to combine (process) these in such a way that men and women are brought into the kingdom of God and that members of the Church are built up (output).

This we see that it is possible to functionally divide any organization into three major functions: 1) input function, 2) process function, and 3) the output function. At World Vision, we think of these things as being fundraising, operations, and ministry.

Start With the Output

"Output" can be thought of as objectives, goals, or outcomes that you want to produce. Regardless of how you describe it, this is a place to begin. Too many organizations worry about money first and outcome last. We need to set high objectives, clear goals—goals and objectives that will make us stretch. After we have decided what it is that God wants done through us, we should move next to the question of the means (process). Only after we have looked at outcomes and looked at the means should we turn our attention to resources (input) that will be needed.

Set Fundraising Goals

Just because money is the last thing we should consider in the planning process, it does not mean that it should not have considerable attention. If our simple model of input — process — output is descriptive of what we are all about, then we need to pay attention to the input. We need to set some goals for funding, lay plans for funding, and evaluate our fundraising performance. Fundraising goals should be based on ministry goals and not vice versa. Nevertheless, fundraising goals need to be specific and challenging.

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