Fundraising is ministry

A couple of years ago I read "A Spirituality of Fundraising" by Henri Nouwen. I had just stepped into work that sat closer to development than anything I'd done before. I came from a creative and communications background. I had preached sermons on generosity. But seeing fundraising attached to my own name gave me pause, like I had something to prove. So I read the book the way you read when you're trying to catch up: quickly, a few notes, on to the next one.

Recently I picked it up again, and this time I slowed down.

The reframe that stopped me

Two years in, I've read stacks of books on fundraising and generosity. Some helped. Plenty felt like plumbing manuals: useful, mechanical, and strangely far from the heart of the thing. Then here was one of the great spiritual writers, taking the topic we treat as a necessary evil and refusing to apologize for it. "Fundraising is, first and foremost, a form of ministry," he writes. "It is a way of announcing our vision and inviting other people into our mission."

Not a burden. Not the unfortunate engine room of the real work. An invitation into what God is doing. As spiritual as a sermon, as prayer, as feeding the hungry.

The mechanics matter. They will never matter more than the posture of the heart behind them.

I needed that reminder more the second time than the first. When growth is the assignment, it's easy to let the mechanics swallow the meaning, to optimize the ask and forget it's an invitation. But everything I believe about brand-led growth rests on Nouwen's reframe. Becoming known and loved before anyone is ready to give is just ministry with a longer timeline: announcing the vision faithfully, to people who haven't joined yet, without demanding anything back this quarter.

Whatever work God has called you to, keep returning to the books that formed you. The longer we do something, the more we need reminding why we started.