Our numbers continue to explode!
More and more wonderful men, women, children, families pass through our doors every day.
Frankly, the pace overwhelms our team more often than not.
Further, the waves of people seeking a better life wash over our day-to-day financial capacity producing practical challenges, especially related to cash flow.
Between 70 and 75% of our funding involves designations and restrictions that do not allow us to use these dollars to cover short term cash needs. Ironically, while our bank statements remain strong, our available cash comes and goes over the cycle of the year.
Here's what we need: long term, serious investors in the work of CitySquare. Investors who support our work financially without restrictions or the limitations of designations as to how these funds may be used. In other words, we need general funds without restrictions.
Translation: We need monthly donors who consider themselves "members" of the CitySquare family.
Like to accept this challenge?
Email me today at ljames@CitySquare.org or contact me on Twitter (@lmjread) and we'll enroll you in this special "investors'" group!
As this investors' fund grows, I'll report on its status here, as well as in other social media venues.
Showing posts with label giving. Show all posts
Showing posts with label giving. Show all posts
Sunday, October 19, 2014
Wednesday, October 15, 2014
Giving by income level during recent "tough times"
Here's a graphic display of the impact of the recent recession on giving among various income levels with the lower earnings strata beginning on the left with earnings moving up to the right.
Interesting.
Reactions?
Interesting.
Reactions?
Sunday, October 27, 2013
Mindless giving
Those Who Give
Source: from On Giving
There are those who give little of the much which they have–
and they give it for recognition.
Their hidden desire makes their gifts unwholesome.
And there are those who have little and give it all.
These are the believers in life and the bounty of life,
and their coffer is never empty.
and they give it for recognition.
Their hidden desire makes their gifts unwholesome.
And there are those who have little and give it all.
These are the believers in life and the bounty of life,
and their coffer is never empty.
There are those who give with joy,
and that joy is their reward.
And there are those who give with pain,
and that pain is their baptism.
and that joy is their reward.
And there are those who give with pain,
and that pain is their baptism.
And there are those who give and know not pain in giving,
nor do they seek joy, nor give with mindfulness of virtue;
They give as in yonder valley the myrtle breathes
its fragrance into space.
nor do they seek joy, nor give with mindfulness of virtue;
They give as in yonder valley the myrtle breathes
its fragrance into space.
Through the hands of such as these God speaks,
and from behind their eyes God smiles upon the earth.
Kahlil Gibranand from behind their eyes God smiles upon the earth.
Source: from On Giving
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Sunday, August 26, 2012
Really? Seriously?
--Jesus
Luke 14:33
Thursday, March 18, 2010
The Go Giver
The principles apply in business, but also across the board generally for all aspects of life.
My friend and partner, Dr. Jim Walton gave me a copy for my birthday this year. Thanks, Dr. Jim! Great, inspirational read. Not so much a new message, but packaged so well in a story that pulls you along to the next page.
Sunday, December 06, 2009
Sunday, June 07, 2009
Church folk and generosity
United Methodist Bishop and preacher, William Willimon reported on a new study of giving in American churches, Passing the Plate: Why American Christians Don't Give Away More Money (Oxford University Press 2008), in his weblog (A Peculiar Prophet).
Here's a taste of his April 27, 2009 post:
The poor widow who gave out of her poverty rather than her wealth (Mark 12:42) and the rich young ruler (Luke 18:18-30) who refused to give anything out of his both typify American church giving. Sociologists Christian Smith, Michael Emerson, and Patricia Snell have recently published a study on Christian stewardship, Passing the Plate (Oxford University Press). Their findings are a call to action. More than one out of four American Protestants give away no money to their churches. Evangelical Christians tend to be the most generous (giving the lie to the misconception that liberal Christians are more liberal in their concern for the less fortunate), but even their giving is nothing to brag about. Thirty-six percent of the Evangelicals report that they give away less than two percent of their income. Only about 27 percent tithe.
Passing the Plate’s researchers estimate that American Christians who say their faith is very important to them and who attend church at least twice a month earn more that $2.5 trillion dollars every year. If these Christians gave away 10 percent of their after-tax earnings, they would add a whopping $46 billion to ministry around the world.
Tithing is practiced by few. The median annual giving for an American Christian is about $200, just over half a percent of after-tax income. 5 percent of American Christians provide 60 percent of the money churches and religious groups use to operate. “A small group of truly generous Christian givers,” say Passing the Plate’s authors, “are essentially ‘covering’ for the vast majority of Christians who give nothing or quite little.”
Most Methodist preachers already know that America’s biggest givers –as a percentage of their income—are its lowest income earners. Americans earning less than $10,000 gave 2.3 percent of their income to churches. Those who earn $70,000 or more gave only 1.2 percent.
Read the entire essay here.
.
Here's a taste of his April 27, 2009 post:
The poor widow who gave out of her poverty rather than her wealth (Mark 12:42) and the rich young ruler (Luke 18:18-30) who refused to give anything out of his both typify American church giving. Sociologists Christian Smith, Michael Emerson, and Patricia Snell have recently published a study on Christian stewardship, Passing the Plate (Oxford University Press). Their findings are a call to action. More than one out of four American Protestants give away no money to their churches. Evangelical Christians tend to be the most generous (giving the lie to the misconception that liberal Christians are more liberal in their concern for the less fortunate), but even their giving is nothing to brag about. Thirty-six percent of the Evangelicals report that they give away less than two percent of their income. Only about 27 percent tithe.
Passing the Plate’s researchers estimate that American Christians who say their faith is very important to them and who attend church at least twice a month earn more that $2.5 trillion dollars every year. If these Christians gave away 10 percent of their after-tax earnings, they would add a whopping $46 billion to ministry around the world.
Tithing is practiced by few. The median annual giving for an American Christian is about $200, just over half a percent of after-tax income. 5 percent of American Christians provide 60 percent of the money churches and religious groups use to operate. “A small group of truly generous Christian givers,” say Passing the Plate’s authors, “are essentially ‘covering’ for the vast majority of Christians who give nothing or quite little.”
Most Methodist preachers already know that America’s biggest givers –as a percentage of their income—are its lowest income earners. Americans earning less than $10,000 gave 2.3 percent of their income to churches. Those who earn $70,000 or more gave only 1.2 percent.
Read the entire essay here.
.
Tuesday, December 09, 2008
Speed Giving, the adaptive unconscious and "gut formation"
A popular consensus tells us that giving will be down in the non-profit sector during 2009, thanks to the economic woes of the nation and the rich. I wonder about that assumption, but we can hold off on the subject for another time.
Here's a question for today: How do people best decide where to place their donations? It seems a good, valid question given the heightened sense of both responsibility and scarcity at work today.
I am intrigued by a short piece from Fred Smith, Gathering President:
In his book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, Malcolm Gladwell tells the story of the purchase of a $10 million sixth century marble Greek statue by the Getty Museum. Having been subjected to a 14-month exhaustive analysis for authenticity by an electron microscope, electron microprobe, mass spectrometry, X-ray diffraction, and X-ray fluorescence, it was pronounced authentic, but not without some doubt.
Thomas Hoving, the former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York was invited to look at the statue. What happened is the essence of "thinking without thinking" or what Gladwell terms the adaptive unconscious.
Hoving looked at the statue and within two seconds pronounced it a fake.
Another curator repeated the same experience in Greece. More importantly, they were right.
"In the first two seconds of looking - in a single glance - they were able to understand more about the essence of the statue than the team at the Getty was able to understand after fourteen months." Their brains had reached a correct conclusion without immediately telling them how it reached that conclusion. Both men had tapped into the adaptive unconscious.
There are givers who share the same uncanny ability. This is not to be confused with emotional giving, impulsive giving or irrational giving. It is simply judgment located in a part of the brain not accessible to most. It is the innate ability to discern with great speed and reach conclusions that might take others months or years. I have seen very few individuals in my life who have it, but I would put their results up against any other system for giving. In a time when the emphasis is on "strategic giving" with all the systems for analysis that go with it, let's not discount those who have been gifted with this rare ability to see clearly, quickly and with remarkable results.
Fred is a guy I've known and respected for many more years than either of us would want to admit, I expect! And, once again, he and Gladwell are on the money.
I have no scientific research to back it up, but what he describes here, I call the "gut factor."
Some of the most effective donors, in terms of outcomes achieved, come out of their gut with their decisions to give. I have seen the phenomenon here at Central Dallas Ministries many times over the years.
These special donors have advanced our cause and our work more than any others.
It is as if we share in an unusual, but common experience of gut formation!
We know instinctively what works and what doesn't.
These donors pick up on it and fund our dreams and plans.
Partnerships like this are really hard to beat.
.
Here's a question for today: How do people best decide where to place their donations? It seems a good, valid question given the heightened sense of both responsibility and scarcity at work today.
I am intrigued by a short piece from Fred Smith, Gathering President:
In his book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, Malcolm Gladwell tells the story of the purchase of a $10 million sixth century marble Greek statue by the Getty Museum. Having been subjected to a 14-month exhaustive analysis for authenticity by an electron microscope, electron microprobe, mass spectrometry, X-ray diffraction, and X-ray fluorescence, it was pronounced authentic, but not without some doubt.
Thomas Hoving, the former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York was invited to look at the statue. What happened is the essence of "thinking without thinking" or what Gladwell terms the adaptive unconscious.
Hoving looked at the statue and within two seconds pronounced it a fake.
Another curator repeated the same experience in Greece. More importantly, they were right.
"In the first two seconds of looking - in a single glance - they were able to understand more about the essence of the statue than the team at the Getty was able to understand after fourteen months." Their brains had reached a correct conclusion without immediately telling them how it reached that conclusion. Both men had tapped into the adaptive unconscious.
There are givers who share the same uncanny ability. This is not to be confused with emotional giving, impulsive giving or irrational giving. It is simply judgment located in a part of the brain not accessible to most. It is the innate ability to discern with great speed and reach conclusions that might take others months or years. I have seen very few individuals in my life who have it, but I would put their results up against any other system for giving. In a time when the emphasis is on "strategic giving" with all the systems for analysis that go with it, let's not discount those who have been gifted with this rare ability to see clearly, quickly and with remarkable results.
Fred is a guy I've known and respected for many more years than either of us would want to admit, I expect! And, once again, he and Gladwell are on the money.
I have no scientific research to back it up, but what he describes here, I call the "gut factor."
Some of the most effective donors, in terms of outcomes achieved, come out of their gut with their decisions to give. I have seen the phenomenon here at Central Dallas Ministries many times over the years.
These special donors have advanced our cause and our work more than any others.
It is as if we share in an unusual, but common experience of gut formation!
We know instinctively what works and what doesn't.
These donors pick up on it and fund our dreams and plans.
Partnerships like this are really hard to beat.
.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Ready for some "Green Giving"?
Check out a great opportunity!
Innovative and smart!
http://www.centraldallasministries.org/green/
Love to hear your reactions.
.
Innovative and smart!
http://www.centraldallasministries.org/green/
Love to hear your reactions.
.
Monday, February 11, 2008
DontAlmostGive.org
If you haven't been to the site, drop what you're doing--as in stop reading my page right now!--and take a look at http://www.dontalmostgive.org/.
I think you'll find your visit a moving experience.
Once you've been there, give something. . .somewhere. . .today.
You can make a difference in a life that needs what you have to offer.
I think you'll find your visit a moving experience.
Once you've been there, give something. . .somewhere. . .today.
You can make a difference in a life that needs what you have to offer.
Monday, October 15, 2007
Join us for Community Hunger Day 2007
People who live outside the city or in other locations across the country often ask me, "What is it like where you live, doing what you do?"
There are a number of ways to answer that inquiry. But, for today, I'll direct you to an event we've planned for a week from today. Participation with us in this special, collective action will allow you to experience and share in a bit of our world. And, the video link at the end of this post will really help your understanding.
Just like every other day, on Monday, October 22, thousands of our neighbors will skip breakfast, miss lunch and go without dinner. They will go to bed hungry.
I'm asking you to join them.
For this one day, I ask you to go without food for at least one meal.
Share in the hunger that many of our neighbors experience daily. Spend the day in reflection about the issue of hunger. Donate the amount you save by not eating to our work here in Dallas.
Make a commitment to our community on Community Hunger Day 2007.
Our neighbors who live in inner city Dallas, Texas will be strengthened and encouraged by your support.
Make a commitment to our community on Community Hunger Day 2007.
Our neighbors who live in inner city Dallas, Texas will be strengthened and encouraged by your support.
Sign up for the campaign today at www.CentralDallasMinistries.org/HungerDay
If you want to understand more about the life we share here, connect with us by taking a moment to watch the video below.
Please share it with your friends, family, associates at work and neighbors.
If you experience difficulty viewing this video, go here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=670TpJ0dWTQ
.
Friday, March 23, 2007
"I almost gave"
How many times have you said it?
How many times has it been true?
"I almost gave something to that!" I've been known to say.
Never again.
Not after watching these AdCouncil productions.
Take a look at: http://www.dontalmostgive.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12&Itemid=27.
Tell me what you think. . .
How many times has it been true?
"I almost gave something to that!" I've been known to say.
Never again.
Not after watching these AdCouncil productions.
From now on, whenver I get to "almost," you can just go ahead and count me in!
Take a look at: http://www.dontalmostgive.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12&Itemid=27.
Tell me what you think. . .
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