Blog

1. Friends - Ask people and alumni to share with their friends.  Give them some triggers for thinking of names.  Some examples might be family, small group members, friends, roommates, colleagues, etc.
2. Social Media - It’s good to leverage things like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.  Be intentional with your messaging and create clear calls to action in each of your postings. Create links for people to follow so that they can act right then. 
3. Drip Campaigns - There are many preparation steps that lead up to an event and often requires your team to respond back and forth with potential candidates.  Drip campaigns are a series of communications to your team to alert them of key dates, key needs, and other updates.  Organizations using ServiceReef have a basic template for drip campaigns that is automated in each event, plus the ability to use the email sender to send group emails at any time and to schedule them for specific dates.  
4. Work Back Calendar - It’s easy to forget all the communications, reminders, meetings, and other logistics of an event.  We recommend building a work back calendar.  The event date is the starting point and then you begin capturing key communication points leading up to the event and how many days/weeks before the event that you need to send that communication.  These are extremely helpful tools to manage your communication and keep you team informed.  
5. Integration with MedicalMissions.com - Remember that you can post your short term opportunities directly into various environments of MedicalMissions.com through an integrated tool.  We encourage you to check out the variety of tools available to administrate your short term trips; ServiceReef has partnered with MedicalMissions.com to build this specific integration for short term trips for this community.  

EFFECTIVE PREPARATION

Clarify Expectations

Clarify expectations with your team.  Consider outlining expectations for different groups involved and the different stages of the event.  You might outline expectations for the team members, the team leader, the field partner, and the sending organization.  You may also outline expectations leading up to the event, the event, and post event.  

 

Provide Resources

Create an experience that’s going to be a success for your team members; provide them with resources like fundraising tools, ways to connect with other team members, educational resources, information about the partner, and any other resource you feel important.

 

Educate about Tools

For organizations who are using ServiceReef, each participant has their own personal fundraising page where they can share their stories, post a personalized message and video, and provide a means for donors to help support them… make sure they know about this.  You may have a number of tools that you have created for short term trip participants; make sure your participants know about them!  

 

Encouragement

This may be a first experience for many of your participants, so be sure to help encourage their journey as a trip participant, in their fundraising, and how they share about their story.

 

Share Stories

Encourage your participants to share their stories, and these start long before the actual event. For organizations using ServiceReef, your participants can share stories at any point in their journey and these stories aggregate together for the entire team to create a team blog.  This is a great way to share the bigger vision for missions in your organization.  

 

You are a steward of their missional journey.  

As the year draws to a close, non-profits have a unique opportunity to engage their donor base and maximize contributions. Here are eleven innovative ideas that can help make your year-end fundraising efforts stand out:

1. Virtual Reality or 360-degree Experiences

Enhance donor understanding of your impact with virtual reality (VR) or a 360-degree experience that shows the real-world impact of their contributions. For instance, a conservation organization might offer a VR tour of a forest they helped preserve, providing an immersive, firsthand view of where donor funds are going.  Or an international organization can provide drone footage or a walk-through of an area which they impacted this last year.  Don’t have a VR experience available?  You can always leverage videos from the field to help provide this experience.

2. Interactive Online Dashboard or Impact Map

Create a dynamic, interactive dashboard that updates in real-time to show the impact of donations. This can visually represent the number of people helped, wells dug, or kids cared for, making the donor's impact tangible and immediate.  If you can tie this to a map of impact for your organization, even better.  For those already on ServiceReef, this is built in for you and you can read more about building your interactive map points and stories here.

3. End-of-Year Giving Advent Calendar

Engage donors with a digital or physical advent calendar. Each day could reveal a different impact story, a personal thank you video, or a small token of appreciation, keeping donors connected and engaged throughout the holiday season.

4. Donor Appreciation Video Montage

Compile heartfelt thank-you videos from beneficiaries or staff, showing the faces and stories behind the contributions. Sharing these personal messages can forge stronger connections between your donors and your cause.

5. Holiday-Themed Competitions

Host creative competitions like holiday card designs or themed photo submissions. Offer prizes and feature winners in your communications to foster a community spirit and involve your donors in a fun, meaningful way.

6. Time Capsule Project

Invite donors to contribute to a time capsule with messages or items reflecting the year’s achievements. Plan to open it at a significant future event, offering a unique historical snapshot of your organization's impact and donor contributions.

7. Customized Gift-Giving Options

Allow donors to give a donation as a gift. Provide customizable gift certificates explaining the donation's impact, ideal for donors looking for meaningful holiday gift options.  If you want to customize gifts to donors this year, provide them with a page where they can select from 3-5 options as a thank you from your organization, thereby allowing donors to select something that would matter to them or provide that token of appreciation as a gift to others.

8. Donor Spotlights

Show appreciation by featuring donor stories in your newsletters or on social media. Highlighting individual contributions can inspire others and demonstrate the diverse support network behind your mission.

9. Flash Fundraising Challenges

Organize 24-hour fundraising challenges with specific goals. Encourage engagement and sharing on social media to create a buzz and drive donations.

10. Recipe or Craft Book

Compile a downloadable book of recipes or crafts related to your mission, contributed by staff, beneficiaries, and donors. Offer it as a special gift to donors who contribute a designated amount.

11. Legacy or Memorial Gifts

Promote a program where donors can contribute in memory of a loved one. These gifts create a lasting legacy and are especially meaningful during the reflective holiday season.

You all are even more creative than we are… What ideas are you thinking about this year?  What ideas have resonated well with your support base in the past?

Our hope is that by implementing 1 or 2 of these creative strategies, you can not only boost end of year fundraising efforts that allows your mission to go farther in the coming year… but also deepen your relationships with donors, creating a foundation for sustained support and engagement.  Blessings on you this season!

One big mistake we often make as leaders is putting all the focus on our staff and forgetting that we have an army of extremely “bought in” trip leaders. Shift gears and instead, think of your leaders as more than great people who lead your trips but people who can carry your vision forward.

To participants and field partners, here are some suggestions on how to engage your trip leaders to a higher calling: 

#1 Equip them. Remember, they might be your greatest tool for mobilizing your audience to mission. Help them become better recruiters, mobilizers, and senders. 

#2 Encourage and gift books. There are so many great mission books (When Helping Hurts, The Great Omission, Shadow of the Almighty, and so on.). Consider having an annual book you purchase and send out to all of your trip leaders to continue building their own personal mission philosophy and worldview. 

#3 Appreciation meals. Host appreciation meals for your trip leaders to pour into them, keep them connected, share what’s new and upcoming, and to allow them to build a tighter community with each other. Spread these out throughout the year to avoid the “see you next summer” mindset that some trip participants and leaders may accidentally fall into. 

#4 Provide trainings. Host at least one annual trip leader training. Whether it's by video or something else, the most successful we’ve seen is for organization to have a time where you stop thinking about everything else and focus on your larger purpose for mission trips. 

#5 Brainstorm sessions. Host brainstorms sessions throughout the year (especially out of peak trip season to keep leaders engaged) and collect feedback on ways to do things better: preparation, process, communications, resources, debriefs, and more. 

#6 Give note & gifts. Sure, giving gifts for a volunteer role may not be the norm, but think creatively about this. Sending a note card and a $5 gift card to Starbucks to say thanks for all they are doing goes a long way. 

#7 Recognize the work. While trip leaders may be working with you on the direct details of a specific trip, they are often mentoring and connecting with their participants long after the trip. Be sure to recognize and thank them for continually pouring into the people. 

#8 Invite to team meetings. Invite trip leaders to key team or staff meetings when you are working through short-term logistics, strategic changes that impact them, and/or celebrating key things. 

You have a unique opportunity to equip and send so many people. We often fixate on the trip participants and forget what amazing resources we have in our trip leaders. More so, these trip leaders really can essentially be your pro bono staff members giving you an army of equipped mobilizers. 

Action: Select at least one item from above that you can implement this week. Maybe it's having a zoom call over coffee with a few team leaders and asking them what they need most to be equipped well. 

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.

7 Questions You Should Be Asking

Leading your church or organization into adopting a new technology, no matter how awesome it is, can be daunting.  If you are like many, you are probably concerned about making a wise choice that will reflect well on you, your leadership, and your church/organization.

We understand and want to guide you to the best solution, even if it is not ServiceReef (seriously!).  Our heart has always been to help guide organizations to increased Kingdom impact.  There are a few tools out there created by folks with good hearts and intentions.  Deciphering which is best for you can be a challenge.  Here are a few key questions to be asking as you evaluate any new technology.  Please note: Since this is a pretty intensive topic, you can also check out our guide for Choosing a Technology (coming in Fall 2019) which will help walk you through how to evaluate options in more detail.

Who are my key stakeholders?

Before you get too far in the decision process, make sure you have a good understanding of your internal teams and who might be impacted by new software.Based on their role, their questions will differ, but understanding their perspective on the process now will help streamline adoption later.Make sure you present the current problem you are looking to solve along with any benefits of a “change” with each stakeholder.That allows them to understand the gains you are looking to accomplish and help them feel a part of the solution that you choose.

Here are a couple of quick examples…

• Who will make the actual purchase decision?  If this is you or your boss, just make sure they are looped in early so you have a good understanding of what goals they are attempting to achieve and are aware of the “why” behind your proposed solution.If you need some assistance, check out this quick overview of Getting Your Boss on Board
• Are there any financial flow decisions?  We are all pressed for time and that is especially true of your financial folks.Their primary concerns are typically around Security and Time Management.Managing “another flow” of donations creates a fear that it will add a lot of time to their schedules.Likely, this is not going to change anything they are doing currently and might even make their lives easier (especially if they are managing their current donations manually for missions).However, to ease this conversation, sit down with your Controller/Accounting staff and ask about their current process.ServiceReef strives to make this as easy as possible in a variety of ways, including CRM integrations, automated flows into a designated account, manual transaction entry, and ways to designate donations to a specific accounting code.
• Are there any IT-related concerns?  If you have folks on staff that manage technology, it’s usually a good idea to include them so they can help answer any integration or technical questions that come up.Typical questions you might get are around security and support in case anything goes wrong.Assure them that the ServiceReef team is continually updating their platform to stay on top of key security and support issues. Again, we are committed to your success… but if they have questions, please reach out and we can provide them with additional information.

What is the true cost?

You might be familiar with the phrase “Penny wise, Pound foolish.”  This English expression first appeared in a 1621 book by Robert Burton.  It still rings true nearly 200 years later.  When considering the cost of a missions platform, the key indicators often come down to the actual dollars that will be spent.  While a part of the decision process, caution your key stakeholders that this isn’t the only cost to consider.  Here are some questions to guide you to a fuller evaluation…

• What is the cost of doing nothing?  Yes, you can actually manage missions relatively “free” with spreadsheet programs or online volunteer sign-up forms. However, these don’t expand very well and typically need weekly (if not daily) management to maintain accuracy.This costs you (or others) precious time each week.A quick example… we had a trip admin who used to spend her entire Friday each week sorting through excel spreadsheets and emailing participants their current fundraising status.When she joined ServiceReef, our automated emails kept everything up to date and she got an entire day back in her schedule to use for more strategic purposes.Your time, or even “volunteer’s time”, actually has a cost… don’t overlook this when making a decision.
• Does the cost structure allow us to scale?  Some platforms charge on a per trip cost.Others on a monthly subscription.There are a couple of questions to evaluate as the initial cost may not reflect what your cost will be in 12-18 months as you grow.For example, if there is a platform that charges on a per-trip basis, consider how many months you would need to keep that trip active (for both recruiting and post-trip activities).Also, consider the mental energy to consider in remembering when to open/close each trip to try and manage costs.ServiceReef considered several billing options and made “ease of use” a primary reason for our pricing structure.You can scale up/down within the plans through your organization settings as you grow, but you also just have a single cost per month and room to grow your impact.If you suddenly need to put a couple new trips out there to meet a need, you won’t need to worry about additional costs as there is room within each tier to meet your needs.If nothing else, this also makes the conversation easy with your stakeholders when they ask “what is the cost?”… as you won’t have to do any mental calculations.  Find out more about our pricing.

Is this platform expanding?

One key consideration is the investment each company is making yearly to improve the process for participants and stay on top of key developments within the Missions industry.ServiceReef is committed to driving the industry forward and is continually adapting the platform to ensure success for its partner organizations (i.e. YOU!).Each year, we create 1 or 2 key modules as well has hundreds of small tweaks to help provide a stable and secure platform.As long as you have ideas (and we haven’t run into too many admins without ideas ), we will continue to provide as many efficiencies and tools to make you successful.

Is this trusted by others?

Since each organization is unique, it might be difficult at first to figure out which platform is best for your situation.In guiding hundreds of organizations, we have found that there are some key shared principles to consider… whether you are a mega-church, a small organization running one trip a year, or anything in between.Here are some stories around various functions within ServiceReef… take a look at how some of your colleagues have become heroes by using this platform.

How does this help our participants?

Today’s mission participant expects technology to be easy and available whenever they have questions.By ensuring that they can apply, track forms, get meeting reminders, or immediately access their updated fundraising status, you reduce the questions participants have while empowering them to own their preparation process.ServiceReef originally built their platform with the participant in mind, ensuring a seamless experience regardless of the device being used.

Can this help me capture impact?

Although we all know that the true impact of Kingdom work may not be known in the days or weeks (or years) following a missions trip, the platform you select should have ways to gather a collection of data points that help you measure the impact on both the lives in the field and the impact on those that participated.ServiceReef captures this impact through two key areas:

• Stories: We believe that story-telling is the primary way to demonstrate personal and field-impact.  By making it easy to share stories/pictures, supporters can follow along at home as participants grow through their experience.  By giving admins control to approve and edit stories, we also provide you ways to protect the safety of those involved.
• Map Points: What if you could visually show all of your organization’s/church’s touch points around the world?  ServiceReef has a free (yes, FREE) tool to help you display your global touch points and better tell your story.  If you post a trip through ServiceReef, it’s automatically included on your map (assuming, of course, that it isn’t a “secure” trip… you can create those to not show on the map).  The ServiceReef mapping tool is designed to help you tell your vision story… where you’ve been and where you are going. 

Engaging people beyond a technology?

Although you are in the process of considering a technology platform, you should keep in mind that there are ways to engage outside of the platform itself. How else will this platform help guide people along their missional journey?  ServiceReef engages people in several ways both within and outside of the ServiceReef.com site.Here are a couple of examples:

• Missional.Life: Every participant who goes on a trip has the option to create a free Missional.life profile.This allows that user to keep supporters updated of their journey into a life of missions (Domestic, International, Job-related, etc).By enabling them to engage supporters in a similar fashion to social media platforms, it’s easy for them to post stories, prayer requests, and more while keeping their message to only those that they can trust (their private supporters).Since the platforms integrate together, any trip they participate on will automatically flow from ServiceReef.com to show on their activity feed for supporters to be aware.Find out more here:
• Donors: For those that give to your participants, the check is so much more than just money.It’s a way to support that individual… and for many, it’s a tangible encouragement of what God is doing in their life.When someone donates, they are alerted via email to stories that are shared on that trip.This enables them to continue to ask questions, engage, and PRAY during each stage of that trip… preparation, during the trip, and after that trip.