The Formula! Clearly Communicate Impact to Your Donors

You're making a difference, and having an impact in people's lives. But are you translating that to your financial partners in an effective way? Impact isn't enough if your financial partners don't get it. This is the reason for the "packaging" step.

Once you have a clear problem/solution strategy and you know how to measure success as impact, we now have to present all of this in such a way that an external stakeholder can #1 -understand it and #2 - make an honest decision about whether they want to own this impact or not.

Although I'm still fine-tuning this definition, a package of impact needs to contain the following:

• a clear need a donor can provide (in most cases this is a dollar amount)

• the direct result of meeting this need

• confirmation that this result will advance the solution to your problem (impact)

IN OTHER WORDS, YOU COULD PRESENT THIS FORMULA, "PLEASE DO X, SO THAT WE CAN DO Y, AND TOGETHER CAN ACCOMPLISH Z."

This could also be, "please pray every day this week for our event, so that we can identify three persons of peace, and together start at least one new DMM this quarter." 

Or it might be, "please give $100 every month, so that we can live and work in a community opposed to the gospel, and together we can introduce an unreached people group to Christ."

IMPACT ISN'T ENOUGH IF YOUR FINANCIAL PARTNERS DON'T GET IT.

Even if we have a solid strategy for impact and we know what to measure in order to be successful, if we haven't presented this solution in a way an outsider can understand and own it, we may have unknowingly created a barrier to a potential partnership they simply can't overcome.

Kiley Hawkins, Co-Founder