Who does your church actually support?

Ask five people in your church to name the ministries you support. You will get five different answers, and most of them will be short. That is not apathy. Nobody ever wrote the list down anywhere they could find it.

The fix is not a newsletter. It is a page: one link, readable by anyone, that says who you stand behind and what somebody could do about it this month.

Start with the list, not the program

Write down every ministry your church supports. Group them by how near they are, because that is how a congregation thinks about them:

• In our community. The pregnancy center, the shelter, the school down the road.
• Across the country. Church planters, disaster relief, a ministry in another state.
• Around the world. The families you send, the partners you fund.

For each one, write two sentences a person would recognize them by. Not their mission statement. What would you say if somebody asked you in the parking lot?

Give every partner a contact, and be careful whose

A list of names with nobody to ask is worse than no list, because it looks complete while helping nobody. Every partner needs a person.

But think about whose details go on a page anyone can read. There are two kinds of contact, and the difference is not where somebody attends church. It is which organization an inquiry reaches:

• Someone at your church. Publish their name so a visitor knows who to ask for. Do not publish their email address. Route the inquiry to them privately instead.
• Someone at the ministry. Their details can be public, because being reachable is their job. Even then, publish the address the ministry already publishes, not somebody's personal one.

Somebody can be a member of your church and work at the partner. They count as the partner, because that is where the message goes.

Turn the list into something people can do

A list tells people who you support. It does not tell them what to do on Saturday. The second half of this is the concrete thing:

• Serve dinner at the shelter, second Saturday, about three hours.
• Tutor at the elementary school, Tuesdays through May.
• Staff a booth at the community fall festival.
• Join the March team.

Each one needs four things a person needs in order to decide: when, where, how long it asks of them, and how many can come. Write the commitment honestly. "About three hours" tells somebody more than any description.

Say what it costs before anyone says yes

This is the one churches get wrong most often. If a retreat costs a hundred dollars for transport and meals, say so on the card, not when somebody asks after signing up.

By that point they have already said yes in front of people, and backing out costs them something socially. A number said up front costs nothing. A number discovered late costs you a volunteer, and sometimes more than that.

Say what the money covers, too. And if nobody is turned away for lack of funds, say that loudest of all.

Some things should be applied for, not signed up to

Serving a meal is open: turn up, and the only question is whether there is a place. Tutoring a child every week is not. Somebody has to look at the person first.

Where a background check is needed, do not run an open signup. Take applications, decide, and be honest on the page that this is what will happen. An application that does not hold a place also means ten people can apply for three places and you can choose, rather than the fastest three getting in.

Give each inquiry an owner on the day it arrives

The most common failure is not a bad page. It is a good page whose inquiries land in five inboxes where everyone assumes somebody else has replied.

Name one person. Copy the rest of the team so nothing is missed when that person is away. Mark an inquiry answered once you have replied, so the next person to look can see it was handled. That is the whole difference between a list of inquiries and a queue somebody is working through.

Then look at whether it worked

Count three things: how many people saw the page, how many started a form, and how many sent it. The gap between the last two is the useful one. If people keep opening a form and not sending it, the form is asking too much.

Count where the interest is, too. Local against national against global. Most churches assume they know the answer and are surprised.

You do not need to track anybody to learn this. Counts answer all of it, and a church publishing a page about the ministries it supports should not end up holding a record of who read it.

Doing this in GO

GO gives every church a public missions page at no cost on any plan, because a church should never have to pay to say publicly who it supports. You list your partners, choose what the public sees of each contact, and anyone can raise a hand without making an account.

Opportunities, with places, waiting lists and applications, are part of the paid plans. Together they turn a list of names into a page somebody can act on.