Always Be Late, OR Plan Ahead!

Good Stewardship Timelines Lead to Success

Part of a Year-Long Special Series on Nurturing Stewardship

Timeline plans are vitally important to a good stewardship program. We regularly work with congregations that do not recruit leaders early, start late, feel rushed, and cannot do the full program they would like. So what does a good timeline look like?

If you are talking about your annual budget drive, a good time to start planning is right when the previous drive is wrapping up. In this sense, it really is a year round project, although some parts of the year are much less busy than others. Here are some general guidelines:

• Whenever your clergy and staff are planning for the next year, the stewardship folks should be in on it. There is no sense in going to your minister, 2 months after the worship schedule is set for the year, to ask for pulpit time.
• Similarly, going to your religious education director after the year has been planned, to ask for times to engage this kids in stewardship, will not be successful.
• The annual drive co-chairs, or the small core committee can be working year round. And a larger committee group and other volunteers can be recruited 2 months before your launch.
• For more information on annual drive timelines, check out the slides from our webinar last October, Jumpstart Your Annual Drive.

A different kind of year-round stewardship is the idea that we can develop spiritually, mature as adults, and align our beliefs with our material lives year round. We can do this by learning, reflecting, engaging in dialogue, and changing our behavior with regard to our resources. There is a little library of congregational resources for this on the UUA website, called FORTH, including a Year Round Stewardship Calendar and other useful documents. This treasure trove was created by a diverse group of clergy, congregational staff member, and lay people from across the country.

The bottom line is, if you have a Fall drive, it is very late and you had better get going with a simple program for this year. If you have a Spring drive, you have more time, but should start now if you want to be creative and engage new folks in the effort.

Mark Ewert is a stewardship consultant with the Stewardship For Us team. Mark can be reached at mewert@stewardshipforus.com, via the UUA’s Congregational Stewardship Network, (http://www.uua.org/finance/fundraising/index.shtml), or through your regional staff.

This blog has a new posting no less than once a month. You may find it and more at our website, www.stewardshipforus.com. You are welcome to sign up for stewardship updates at the blog. Comments and discussion are always welcome; share your experiences with us.