Multiplying your Results
May 26, 2008 by markhsmith · 1 Comment
“Aim at Heaven and you’ll get earth thrown in; aim at earth and you’ll get neither.” CS Lewis
I’ve been a Christian for about 30 years and during that entire time, I’ve given regularly to my local church and other charities. But only recently have I attempted to measure and multiply the results of my giving. I figured my job was to give and it was up to God to make it count. This seems to be a common theme. I know very successful businessman who perform very thorough due diligence before making a business investment, but routinely make charitable investments on a whim. This was certainly my own experience.
Over the past 6 years, I’ve gone through a series of “stages” in my own giving/serving experience. I’ve attempted to describe them here to start a dialog with others who, like me, are trying to figure it out.
STAGE 1: THE CHECK WRITER
In August 2002, I funded our own non-profit called Aslan’s Army. I hired a part-time assistant to help me evaluate applications from missionaries seeking funding. We were able to fund around 100 missionaries at various levels of funding. Around 33% of the missionaries actually sent me information about their experiences, but I found it difficult to measure any kind of results.
In my experience, the bible school directors were best at quantifying their results–number of students, churches planted, orphans helped, people served, pastors trained, etc. My epiphany came when I saw an application for a short-term missionary who needed $90,000/year for expenses to serve in Singapore. At the same time, I was shown an opportunity to start a new bible school in India for around the same kind of money–both land and building–that could handle 100 students at a time. The 100-to-1 ratio really struck home with me and I’ve never looked back. Aslan’s Army now supports ONLY bible schools in India, Africa, Mexico, El Salvador, and Cuba. More bang for the buck.
STAGE 2: THE BOARD MEMBER
When you write large checks, you get asked to be on the board of directors. Joining a board is one way to get an inside look on your charitable investments. However, I find that board meetings are simply a way to cram a year’s worth of positive information into a few days. In addition, I’ve found it difficult to serve in non-financial ways through my board position. In business, I was pretty successful at publishing Windows NT Magazine and being an IT manager at Focus on the Family, two talents that I could bring to the table. Unfortunately, its difficult for charities to deal with the donation of “talent,” whereas checks can be readily cashed. Serving on a board has NOT been my greatest contribution to a charity.
STAGE 3: ASSESSING RESULTS
Most wealthy Christians have stopped asking the big questions about their own lives:
- What am I uniquely called to do?
- How much do I need for my family and how can I give away the rest?
- Should I start my own ministry, partner with an existing ministry, go back into business or what?
- How can I multiply my Kingdom results?
- What can I do now that God will reward in Heaven?
Most people are too busy doing life to figure out if they’re really making any kind of difference in the world at all. This was my experience prior to being suddenly thrown in Halftime after the death of my 17-year old daughter. After that sudden shock and subsequent healing process, I had to answer the tough questions just to make sense out of life. My sincere prayer is that people will really wrestle with these questions without having to go through a life-altering event. Unfortunately, most never answer these questions for themselves and thus, have no clue what an abundant life really means.
Here is a list of books that were helpful to me in my own Halftime journey:
- Halftime by Bob Buford
- Success to Significance by Lloyd Reeb
- The Gospel of Wealth by Andrew Carnegie. This article was cited by Bill Gates & Warren Buffet as being inspirational in their own giving journeys
- In Light of Eternity and The Treasure Principle by Randy Alcorn.
- The Call by Os Guiness
STAGE 4: PROFESSIONAL CHECK WRITERS
If you need help doing due diligence and grant making, these philanthropic services can help. Organizations like Excellence in Giving, Kingdom Capital Group, or My Philanthropy Coach help philanthropists and foundations figure out a giving strategy and focus the philanthropists’ donations on charities that provide the best impact measurement. The philanthropic services are a perfect compliment to a family foundation where 2nd generation is now assuming control of their family charity.
STAGE 5: START YOUR OWN MINISTRY
Many entrepreneurs prefer to start their own ministry rather than go through the difficulty of finding an existing ministry to partner with. When you’re the CEO of your business, you have control. Having control just feels better to the entrepreneur. Unfortunately, you can’t change the world by picking up a BIG bat and swinging at the world’s problems. This is especially true if you’ve been Called to fulfill a HUGE vision.
In fact, I don’t recommend starting a new ministry unless you really know you are Called to start it. Many new ministries fail for the same reason that new businesses fail. They’re started by technicians who had an entrepreneurial seizure and now find themselves running an organization that overwhelms them with complexities. In the business world, you can limp along until you run out of cash, then you go out of business. In the ministry world, you can limp along as long as you find donors to “invest” in your effort without any due diligence on their part.
I recommend people work with an existing ministry and take the time to learn the industry before starting their own ministry. Yes, the non-profit world is an industry. In fact, in 2006, there were more new jobs created by the non-profit sector than by the for-profit sector. By becoming an employee or consultant of an existing non-profit, you can learn what you need to know and see if you’re truly called to this type of ministry.
STAGE 6: KINGDOM ALLIANCES
A Kingdom alliance is between business, Church, and para-church organizations to optimize a common solution for the benefit of alliance members and the communities they serve. This is where significant multiplication can happen. Kinnovation Alliance is such an alliance and is focused on information technology. We believe a Kingdom alliance of this type can exponentially increase our ROI by working together rather than working separately on the same problem.
STAGE 7: JOIN A KINGDOM VC NETWORK
Many venture capitalists and investors don’t run businesses, but are excellent at putting money to work in businesses at early stages of growth. These same skills are being applied to Kingdom projects with good results. In the for-profit world, most VC’s network with at least 50 other VC’s that they can call for advice and potentially co-invest in their venture. In the Kingdom realm, most Kingdom VC’s work independently and have a relatively small network of like-minded KVC’s. There is a HUGE opportunity to connect Kingdom-minded VC’s together to participate in Kingdom investment opportunities. Experimentation with blended value–combining for-profit and non-profit investment ROI–could significantly multiply Kingdom results. And most importantly, a network of like-minded Kingdom VC’s would provide a new set of relationships that would survive eternity.
MY CURRENT STATUS
Currently, I find myself operating at several stages at once. I’m still running Aslan’s Army, but have really narrowed down the focus to increase efficiency. I’ve also helped start Kinnovation and am currently working to build a Kingdom VC Alliance. It’s all a work in progress. I don’t have it all figured out.
My goal is to optimize other people’s Kingdom portfolio while building my own. This is one of the biggest differences between the first and second half of my life. In my first half, my focus was on a number–what it would take to become financially independent But for what end?
The focus on my second half is relationships. In fact, I believe my net worth is equal to my network of friends. I can’t take money with me into heaven, but I can look forward to telling and listening to the Kingdom stories of my friends–what we did together during this brief window of opportunity to build HIS Kingdom.
What’s your story?
Microcredit and the Results Giver
April 6, 2008 by markhsmith · Leave a Comment
By Phil Smith, author of A Billion Bootstraps
When Andre Aggasi first started playing tennis, it was relatively easy and inexpensive to improve. He probably bought his first racket for a few bucks, played at public courts for free, and improved his skills rather quickly. As time went by, he found that better equipment costs more and more, having a private court and lessons cost a small fortune, and to improve he would have to spend increasing amounts of time, energy and money. At his current excellent level, he can spend immense amounts of resources and barely see any improvement at all. However, if he doesn’t spend the time to practice, his level of play will diminish.
Andre’s tennis history is an excellent illustration of the ladder of well-being. There are three curious aspects of this ladder that you find as you climb higher and higher: it gets more and more expensive to go the next rung; the rungs get closer together, so at the top it is hard to tell you are climbing higher even after a major expenditure of your resources; the rungs get more slippery at the top, so if you don’t continually spend some of your resources, you will likely fall back a few rungs. This is true for individuals, and true for society.
A Talented Businessman
March 28, 2008 by markhsmith · Leave a Comment
A TALENTED BUSINESSMAN
by Phil Smith, co-author of A Billion Bootstraps
Luke Mathews was a talented businessman. As one of the few legitimate dealers in Amazonian hardwoods, he had amassed a small fortune in only ten years. As he prepared for a five-year trip into the heart of the Amazon jungles, Luke was forced to come to grips with the fact that he needed to invest $800,000 in such a way that he could feel comfortable being out of communication for so long.
Luke talked with his friends and lawyer how to go about such a daunting project. They all suggested that he find some good money managers and give it to them. He searched the financial newspapers and magazines until he had narrowed his list down to the top 20 money managers in America. After researching their websites and talking to them, he was completely stumped on how to go forward. All of them seemed to be equally qualified and all were sincere in wanting to do a good job. So, using his decision making rules from his own business, Luke came up with the following thought process:
The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life
March 22, 2008 by markhsmith · Leave a Comment
Are you looking for purpose in life? For a purpose big enough to absorb every ounce of your attention, deep enough to plumb the mystery of your passion, and lasting enough to inspire you to your last breath? This book is about the reason why we are each here on earth.
Are you serious about looking for such a purpose? How many people do you know who just can’t wait to get to work on Monday because they’re so fired up about what they’re doing? Nobody? When you meet people that are that passionate about their calling, it’s contagious. Find your calling.
KEY POINTS:
- There is no call without a Caller.
- Reality reminds us that all the will in the world will not make us what we want to become.
- Calling in the Bible is a central and dynamic theme that becomes a metaphor for the life of faith itself.
OS Guiness deals with two distortions–the Catholic distortion and the Protestant distortion. The Catholic distortion is that the sacred calling is to become a priest or nun. Martin Luther shattered that myth. Luther wrote: “The works of monks and priests, however holy and arduous they be, do not differ on whit in the sight of God from the works of the rustic laborer in the field or the woman going about her household tasks, but that all works are measured before God by faith alone. The cultural implications of recovering true calling [by Luther] were explosive.
- Calling gave to everyday work a dignity and spiritual significance under God that dethroned the primacy of leisure and contemplation.
- Calling gave to humble people and ordinary task an investment of equality that shattered hierarchies and was vital impulse toward democracy.
- Calling gave to such practical things as work, thrift, and long-term planning a reinforcement that made them powerfully influential in the rise of modern capitalism.
- Calling gave to the endeavor to make Christ Lord of every part of life a fresh force that transformed not only churches but also the worldviews and cultures of the Reformation countries.
- Calling gave to the idea of “talents” a new meaning, so that they were no longer seen purely as spiritual gifts and graces but as natural and a matter of giftedness in the modern sense of the term.