73 episodes

The Ministry at Scale Podcast brings you the latest trends, interviews with experts and practical tips to help your ministry multiply it's impact. Brought to you by Five Q a digital agency with a kingdom impact. If you want to know how to grow your ministry in the digital space this podcast is for you.

Ministry At Scale Chad Williams - Five Q

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The Ministry at Scale Podcast brings you the latest trends, interviews with experts and practical tips to help your ministry multiply it's impact. Brought to you by Five Q a digital agency with a kingdom impact. If you want to know how to grow your ministry in the digital space this podcast is for you.

    #75 - How to bring Joy to Your Donors - Jeff Kliewer of ViewSPARK

    #75 - How to bring Joy to Your Donors - Jeff Kliewer of ViewSPARK

    Jeff Kliewer is the founder of ViewSpark. He has worked in fundraising for over 30 years and brings much experience to this episode. Jeff has taken his experience with fundraising and, through ViewSpark, has put a powerful way to connect with your donors right at your fingertips. In this episode, Jeff shares a variety of topics, including:
    Why Customer Feedback is Critical for Innovation
    Jeff shares how ViewSpark customers started using the product in ways he had never imagined and how those experiences have helped shape their product development.

    How Real-time Information Matters
    It is one thing to tell your donors what their funds are doing to make the world a better place. It is an entirely different thing to show them firsthand. Jeff shares stories about rescue missions in Maui using ViewSpark to give real-time impact updates.

    Showing Impact Means Being Authentic
    Ministry work can be messy, yet we often feel like everything we produce must be polished and shiny. But donors want to see the impact they are having firsthand. Jeff shares a story of how one customer shared a video during a massive snowstorm about the need to help their homeless neighbors living in that very storm. Simple and real wins over polished messaging every time. 

    Why Video and Text is a Winning Combination
    As a digital communicator, you know how hard it is to get your message seen and heard. Jeff shares tremendous response rates made possible by the video and text message combination. He also shares why these rates get amplified when you send the content your recipients have been waiting to watch.

    This episode is full of powerful stories and practical tips on how to better serve your donors with authentic, timely video updates from the field.

    • 36 min
    #74 - The Four Practices of Responseive Fundraising - Aly Hammond & Chip Johnston with Virtuous

    #74 - The Four Practices of Responseive Fundraising - Aly Hammond & Chip Johnston with Virtuous

    During this talk given at the Digital Ministry Conference in 2022, Aly Hammond & Chip Johnston from Virtuous provide 8 responsive mindsets that ministries and organizations can utilize to solve some of the big problems that many non profits are facing today.
    Personal For All
    How do we treat all donors the way we treat major donors? This doesn’t mean you’ll have the capacity to take all your donors to dinner, but it does mean you can send every donor a personal thank you email, call and text. If you have hundreds of thousands of people in your database of donors, you can followup with all your donors in a highly personalized way based on what they’ve done.

    Innovate, Experiment and Embrace Failure
    It’s important to try new things and get really comfortable with failing.

    Focus on Trust
    Relationships thrive on trust and accountability. Donors have rightful expectations that whoever they’re donating to will do what they say they will do. Jennifer McCrea from the Generosity Network puts it like this:
    “Resources will tend to flow naturally towards you when you focus on the most important aspect of the fundraising process: creating human connections”. Donors tend to continue giving when they feel connected with and have confidence in the organization they are involved with.

    Value Motivational Insights Over Behavior
    It’s incredibly important to understand somebody’s intent. What’s their connection? Why are they giving? What’s their motivation for giving? The first thing to find out is “why”. Listen so you can understand the intentions of your donors so you can serve them in the most effective way possible.

    Breaking Down Silos
    Combining your people, platforms and processes to work in harmony together will help build deep, authentic donor relationships at scale.

    Be Abundantly Thankful
    Generosity breeds generosity. Don’t lose sight of the sacrifice that your donors are making with their time and money. Rather than treating donors like an ATM, lead with gratitude and provide highly personal and meaningful experiences.

    Design Plans, Adapt, Stay Curious
    Write out your plans in pencil. Be willing to fail and learn from your failures. “Some organizations will thrive from this increased chaos, some will be unprepared and some will merely fight it and lose.” as Seth Godin put it.

    View Generosity Beyond the Transaction
    There are often so many transactions, it’s hard to see beyond it. Ask questions like:
    What was the mindset behind that donation?
    Why did it take place?
    Take steps to focus on personalization in order to best serve donors based on who they are as a whole.

    To listen to the entire talk, listen to episode #74 of the Ministry at Scale Podcast.

    • 31 min
    Why Conversion Tracking Matters with Anthony Elliott from Five Q

    Why Conversion Tracking Matters with Anthony Elliott from Five Q

    Anthony Elliot is a senior software developer at Five Q. On today’s episode of the Ministry at Scale podcast, Anthony joins Chad to talk about conversion tracking and why it’s so important.
    For many people unfamiliar with conversion tracking, there’s one big question: what are conversions?

    As Anthony put it, it has similarities to a spiritual conversion. Much like how a spiritual conversion involves a person on a journey through life interacting with something that causes a change, a conversion on a website happens when a user comes to a site and interacts with the site in some way. This could include signing up for an email list, engaging with articles, posting on social media or even donating.

    Conversions are important because they provide data in order to more effectively use advertising in ways that actually work. You can start testing and optimizing based on how you know people interact with your online presence.

    In order to track conversions, you need to know the journey that a user takes. Asking questions such as these can help you to understand how people interact with your site:

    What are they doing on your site?
    How long are they on each page?
    Are they a recurring donor?

    The process to set up conversion tracking can be done many ways, but the way that Anthony and the 5Q team have done it successfully is to set up Google analytics to track conversions. It can be a daunting task to begin understanding this process, but Anthony gave an example about how it works. If you wanted to track donations, for example, you can create a “thank you” page that users are taken to when they donate. You can set up google analytics to track how many people visit that specific url each day, thus tracking the number of people who donated in any given day. Another way to track this is to link your Google ads account to Google analytics in order to capture which ads are most successful and which ads need adjustment.

    To learn more tips about conversion tracking and how to do it well, listen the the entirety of episode #74 of the Ministry at Scale Podcast.

    • 21 min
    #72 - 4 Steps to Preparing Your Ministry for Disasters with Pete Marra from Colson Center

    #72 - 4 Steps to Preparing Your Ministry for Disasters with Pete Marra from Colson Center

    In this session from the Digital Ministry Conference, Pete Marra, the Vice President of Innovation at the Colson Center discusses how to get started with risk mitigation for your ministry. 
    Your Ministry is Like the Three Little Pigs
    In the story of the three little pigs, each pig picked different materials to build their house, one used straw, another used sticks and the last pig used bricks. When the Big Bad Wolf stopped by and began huffing and puffing the results were often disastrous for the little pigs. Your ministry is likely built on straw, sticks or bricks as well, though it is most likely a combination of materials and risk assessments will help you identify the areas your ministry is being held together by straw.

    Building Resilience Through and N+1 Mindset
    N+1 comes from network administration. It stands for Node plus 1 which means you have your main node (server, channel, means of communication etc.) plus an alternate or backup in case something happens to the main node. When thinking about this in your ministry you need to think beyond just your data, you need to think about N+1 in terms of people, processes, and technology. 

    The 4 A’s of Risk Mitigation
    Assessment - What is it that you are going to measure to assess the risk score of your ministry. This will be based on probability and impact.

    Alignment - This is about bringing agreement across your team as to what your risk is and how you will handle it.

    Assignment - This is where you decide who will head up your risk mitigation plan.

    Action - This is where you put your plan into action and start building resilience into your ministry. 

    Resilience Doesn’t Have to Be Expensive
    One simple way to ensure you don’t lose your data is to download it from the cloud and store it offline somewhere. For example you could get a backup of your email list.

    Bottom line Pete, wants to make sure that the biggest takeaway you have from his talk is to get started, anything you put in place is better than having nothing in place to mitigate risk. Pete shares many more practical ideas so be sure to listen to the full episode, but whatever you do, get started now.

    • 18 min
    #71 - Your Ministry and Web3, Blockchain and the Metaverse - John Cobb of Ligonier Ministries

    #71 - Your Ministry and Web3, Blockchain and the Metaverse - John Cobb of Ligonier Ministries

    John Cobb is the Vice President at Ligonier ministries. He started looking into Web3, Blockchain and the Metaverse simply as a way to understand what they are and how they could impact ministries going forward. What he found is that there are three main buckets he thinks ministries should be considering. The three categories are community, content and censorship. 
    Community
    When he first began he discovered NFTs since he has an interest in art and photography but found that it goes beyond the art, NFTs can also be used to build community and show membership in a specific community. When building a community one thing that is important is owning the community so that it is not fully dependent on a platform that you don’t control. Many people think of this in terms of collecting email addresses or other contact information so you can still reach them if the platform goes away. Blockchain and decentralization take this one step further by allowing the platform for communication to be secure and resilient. 

    Content
    When it comes to content there is the possibility of censorship and deplatforming coming in America, but there are many places around the world where censorship is already in place, and there is a real risk for those who spread the Gospel in those areas. Blockchain in particular could provide a secure way to distribute content digitally.

    Censorship
    This topic dovetails nicely with the other categories. Making the world virtual (as in Web3), decentralized and secure (via blockchain and NFTs) enables you to build security and resilience within your systems. This is also a way to future proof your digital ministry.

    This is a high level overview of the types of things you should be thinking about for your ministry. John takes some time to answer specific questions and dive into details, so if you have questions you’ll want to listen to the full episode. 

    • 26 min
    #70 - How to Develop a Communication Strategy - Cheryl Brunkow with Bethany International

    #70 - How to Develop a Communication Strategy - Cheryl Brunkow with Bethany International

    Marketing Communications can be a critical part of your ministry. It ensures your message is presented effectively, all of your resources are consistent so you can stand out in a sea of other organizations and that your materials are engaging your audience. In this episode we speak with Cheryl Brunkow, the Marketing & Communications director at Bethany International, and she shares her five C’s for building an effective communications strategy.
    The five C’s for effective communications are clear, clean, concise, consistent and creative. Be sure to listen to the full episode as Cheryl gives very practical advice on why these are important and how to implement them within your organization.
    Clear
    It’s critical that people can understand your messaging if they are going to get excited about the mission of your organization. All too often in ministry we design things around our own personal experiences which require a significant amount of explaining for others to understand. When you’re creating your messaging make sure it will be meaningful to your audience.

    Clean
    Reviewing for things such as typos, or grammar and spelling errors, will go a long way in showing that you value quality, and are a professional organization. Taking the time to make sure all of your resources and materials are clean will go a long way toward building credibility with your audience.

    Concise
    It takes time to build the right messaging, but If you can not clearly communicate what you’re about in a very concise way, then your message is going to get lost, and likely misinterpreted.

    Consistent
    There are a lot of moving parts in any organization and keeping consistency in your branding and messaging throughout all departments and channels is important for building your brand identity. Your audience wants to know that your whole team is working toward the same mission and vision rather than a collection of individuals doing their own thing.

    Creative
    The world around us is filled with amazing creative and engaging things that pull our attention in a lot of different directions. As ministries we need to be on the same level as the secular world in terms of both quality and creativity. Designing creative materials and experiences will not only get people’s attention but it will also keep them engaged over the long term.

    This summary is just scratching the surface of what Cheryl shares in the podcast, so whether you are in the middle of rebranding, building a new communications department, or just need to breathe new energy into your communications you won’t want to miss this episode.

    Resources:
    Bethany InternationalThe Poisonwood BibleLess Chaos, Less Noise by Ken MeyersCreativity Inc.Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me Podcast

    • 41 min

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