I was recently asked to put together a presentation defining "success" in financial development and describing how it can best be achieved. I began by defining success in the more typical ways, e.g., "We seek to increase the amount of annual gifts received by x percent."
However, I quickly found this methodology to be sorely lacking for addressing the fundamentals which must characterize any financial development effort which will yield long-term, institution-sustaining success. Short-term wins can sometimes be had even when fundamentals are poor. However, enduring results do not come without prioritizing the work of cultivating the deep relationships necessary for securing the resources needed to fulfill the institution's mission.
For denominationally-funded institutions of higher education, the last six years have not been kind. Denominational support has declined significantly. In my convention of churches, the Southern Baptist Convention, funding through the Cooperative Program has declined more than $60 million since fiscal year 2007. At last report, receipts for the current fiscal year were approaching a mark ten percent below budgeted expenditures.
Today, my seminary trains 700 more students than she did just ten years ago, and she does it with no more denominational support than she received a decade ago. When considering inflation, the support is significantly less. Yes, you have read correctly. More students. Fewer dollars. The difference has been overcome through tremendous financial leadership and prudent use of cuts in capital expenditures and technology, tuition increases, wage and salary freezes, along with fundraising gains. Many institutions have not been so blessed.
Within the context of denominationally-supported theological education, the need for establishing organizational cultures that joyfully and creatively embrace financial development as essential for long-term viability has never been greater or more apparent.
The trend of cutting cannot continue indefinitely without catastrophic consequences. It is possible to expand while cutting back for a season, but it is mathematically impossible over the long term.
To be sure, institutions of higher education have many challenges and priorities. Funding declines, advances in technology, evolving demographic trends, and a host of other variables constantly contend for the time and attention of higher education's top brass. As such, cultivating a robust financial development presence today that will not provide robust funding gains for several more tomorrows may seem risky or even impossible in today's uncertain funding environment.
Yet, the seminaries that will make the greatest impact ten years from now are the ones who make the right investments today.
Seminaries will never have the Kingdom-extending impact God intends for them to have if they simply pass along accelerating costs to students in the form of debilitating tuition increases.
This is why I am so pleased to serve at Southeastern where keeping tuition as affordable as possible is a stated part of our overall missionary strategy. When students graduate without the burden of educational debt, they often take bolder risks for the sake of Christ and the gospel.
A seminary that does whatever is necessary to be maximally effective in financial development is a seminary that wants to be on the front lines, reaching the ends of the earth by training battle-ready champions for Christ.
So, what is fundraising success?
Success is raising enough of the right money to sustain a Christ-exalting seminary until He comes.
But, how is such success achieved? This is the more challenging question, and it is the subject of the next several posts in which I will share some fundamentals of fundraising success in the hopes that the information and perspective may be helpful to others who are striving to build and sustain institutions that will advance the Kingdom.
How can we live out the truth that "God in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession" (2 Cor 2:14) by building and sustaining institutions that will extend the Kingdom until Christ returns? This is a critical question, and in answering it, nothing less than honoring Christ through our stewardship of the institutions He has entrusted to us is at stake.
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