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ServiceReef is pleased to announce new functionality to manage personal fundraising pages.  

Just a few things you are now able to do:

• Create a standard fundraising letter text
• Set standard text to required or editable by participant
• Allow users to edit their personal fundraising page
• Require approvals for changes to personal fundraising pages

Learn more about personal fundraising pages and management here.

It's amazing how God often uses short-term trips to be a catalyst for someone's missional lifestyle. And we know you want your participants to view a short-term trip as more than just earning a merit badge, but rather something that impacts the way they live their life. We agree!

We believe short-term trips are a gateway to someone’s heart taking in a rich meal of vision, purpose, and even calling.

But this is also a very challenging task when this isn’t modeled well many places. It takes time and there aren’t many tools and resources available. No problem! Let’s talk about what you can be doing to plant deeper seeds of purpose in someone’s heart. 

#1 Make it an objective. It starts by making it an objective of your church or organization to move people from a “one and done” mindset to seeing missions as a part of their life. 

#2 Talk about it. This is super simple, but take the time to talk to your trip participants once they are back to explain how to take a next step and give them tangible ways to do that immediately. If they don’t know what to do next, then they most likely won’t take any action. As a leader, be sure you're communicating well. For example, be sure you're setting proper expectations before, during, and after missions trips.

#3 Train your Team Leaders. Your team leaders are your advocates for your mission and vision...and spend the most time with your participants. Make sure to train them so they are guiding participants into a perspective that this is more than a single short term trip but an opportunity for a lifetime of mission work. 

#4 Debrief the day and the trip. Take advantage of great debrief questions to help shape each experience into a step for what’s next. 

#5 Capture stories. Stories are powerful ways for sharing your vision, but also powerful ways for your participants to unpack what’s going on in their lives and share it with others. 

#6 Journal. Similar to sharing stories, journaling helps us internally process our experiences and gives us time to work out what the Lord might be calling us to do next. 

#7 Missional.Life. Have your participants complete a free Missional.Life profile where they can build a plan for mission engagement, invite in family and friends, and post stories, prayers, and goals. It’s free and it’s extremely powerful for helping people see it’s more than a single event. 

#8 Training resources. Point participants to great resources like Perspectives, missionary biographies, and other training materials. We have tons of resources and support here.

#9 Sign up for another trip. Take the momentum of the current experience and invite them into signing up for another trip or even more, signing up for a longer trip somewhere to get a deeper experience. 

Andy Stanley once said, “think steps, not programs” as he presented guiding principles for his organization. We agree. Short-term trips are steps toward a greater goal, not an end in themselves. And your calling is to guide people into a lifestyle of mission with countless engagement points. 

Action: Have a conversation with two (2) key staff members about how to engage participants within the first week/ month after they return from a trip. Have your team members create a Missional.Life profile at https://missional.life 

This is just one strategy of five (5) we have for doubling your impact. Download all five (5) strategies you can implement immediately that will double your missions impact.

This post is written by Will Rogers. Will is the Co-Founder and CEO of ServiceReef.

For most of us, the decision to cancel or reschedule a short-term mission trip was made for us with the cancellation of international flights and other quarantines.

That still left the remaining question of having to simply cancel the trip all together or reschedule it for a later date. Both have their reasons and both have their benefits.

Let’s unpack the two sides to better assess which might be best for your organization.
 

Here are a few times when it's good to strongly consider CANCELLING?

• When it’s time specific

• When the team you’re visiting isn’t on the field any longer

• When there are fixed variables

• Project was time sensitive

Here are a few times when it's good to strongly consider RESCHEDULING?

• Because of government travel restrictions

• Because it’s the wise thing to do

• When you have a flexible team, team leaders, field host, and logistics

Have you made your decision yet? Here are a few questions you could/should be asking:

• Is it possible to reschedule?
• Do you want to reschedule the trip?
• Would participants be able to reschedule?
• Can we accomplish the same goal if we reschedule?
• How much work will it be to reschedule the trip (and is it worth it)?
• What are our absolutes for rescheduling?

Hopefully, for those of you considering cancelling or rescheduling, we've helped you unpack the two sides to better assess which might be best for your organization. 
 

This is one post of many we're doing related to the current crisis. Download Cancelled: A Guide to Maintaining Missions Engagement When Your Short-Term Trip is Cancelled.

We talked about how to improve fundraising communication recently. Let's review some ideas for how you can communicate well to everyone you need to during a crisis—or even when life goes back to normal—for that matter. Here 10 ideas for communicating well during a crisis: 

1. Over communication

I truly believe that over-communicating is key. Would you rather someone say, “Why didn’t you tell me?”, or “Ok, I have enough information?”. I for one will take the latter. Granted there are certain situations where information must come out at its rightful time and place, but communicate until you are blue in the face and people are asking you to stop telling them.

2. Break your communication list down

Who needs to know what? Staff, team leaders, participants, parents, leaders, donors, partners, lodging, transportation. Take a moment a create a list of who exactly needs to know what.

3. Communication is two way

Give people space to ask questions. Whether that's through social media, responding to email, or just making phone calls, allow space for people to ask.

4. Behind the scenes

Don’t be afraid to give them insight behind the curtain. I have found a lot of questions come from a lack of context or communication. What will hurt from letting them know your process? I mean really, are any of us keeping presidential-size secrets that people cannot know? Take a breath and give the people what they want!

5. Prioritize your communication list

There is nothing worse than a participant knowing something before a team leader. Enough said.

6. Create a sample email (then test it)

Write out your email. Give it a proofread. Now read it again. Now send it to your team to proofread. Now send it to yourself. Ok, you’re all set! Hit send and let the questions roll in, just kidding, you’ve communicated so well nobody will have any questions.

7. Don't forget donors

This is a very important group. Here are a couple of approaches to this; it all depends on how your organization handles donations and participants. First of all, thank them. This is so important—but can be forgotten in the chaos. Second, let them know your policy for donations whether the money will remain with the participant until they can go, or your own policy regarding funds when a short-trip is cancelled. This might include letting them know the IRS policy on donations and refunds.

8. What’s next?!

Let them know how you will be monitoring the situation, who you are listening to, and how you are going to communicate moving forward. Should they be looking for emails, phone calls, updates from team leaders, social, or website? Be clear and follow through on those. If it changes, let them know!


9. Empower

If you have the space, empower your team leaders to communicate to your team. For one, it takes the burden off of you to communicate and manage however many people you have going on trips. Second, as leaders, we should desire to draw out of our people the ability to lead. Giving this opportunity, although small, gives them the chance to grow and lead their team well—at your direction. You might even write them a sample email to get them started.

10. Have fun with it!

Seriously, I'm not kidding. Especially at a time like this, there is so much somberness going around that being able to lighten the mood through an email, will relieve the tension for the participant and leader. We need to keep perspective that the God of the universe is in control.

In the meantime...

Share some good books to read (could I recommend “The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry”),  encourage them to engage with the community they were going to be apart over there right here, meetings over zoom or Skype, love people by respecting their space especially at this time, or make a list of places where people in vulnerable situations might be that they could serve and love well. I was telling a friend of mine after all this is over if I am no closer to the Father than I was when it started I will be disappointed. Encourage time and space to spend with God.

This is one post of many we're doing related to the current crisis. Download Cancelled: A Guide to Maintaining Missions Engagement When Your Short-Term Trip is Cancelled.

Is your missions trip cancelled? Cancelling (or even rescheduling) your short-term trip may not be the only option.

It’s worth considering if there are other options like repurposing the trip into something local (actually, this post works regardless of if you also cancel or reschedule the trip). It all comes down to the original purpose of the trip and working to extrapolate from that trip its purpose.

Let’s take for example a Youth Trip or Vacation Bible School (VBS) trip in Poland. The heart behind the trip is to engage high school students in a VBS program and have them engage well with younger kids and help make the program a success.

Now let’s see where we might be able to take that same group of high school students and engage them now or in months to come in a similar purpose.

• You could have those high school students working to creatively build things for local kids to do while they are in a quarantine.

• You could have those high school students reaching out to family with young kids to see if they have any needs during this time.

• You could have those high school students sign up for a local VBS-type program this summer

• You could have those high school students reach out to local teachers to ask what they are doing to help parents and see if they could help.

   

It’s really quite simple if you stop to think back about the original purpose and goal for the trip and then mine out a means to do that locally. Truth is, many people are quite bored and your creative ideas here could both help engage your participants and help a lot of people in your local community.

This is one post of many we're doing related to the current crisis. Download Cancelled: A Guide to Maintaining Missions Engagement When Your Short-Term Trip is Cancelled.