The Individual Process (Step 1) Creating Your Contact List and Getting Contact Information

Where do you start when raising support?

In this episode, Jenn Fortner and Josh Sears walk through the first practical step in the support-raising process: building your contact list. They introduce the concept of “name-storming”—creating a list of everyone you know without filtering or guessing who might give.

Jenn and Josh explain how to aim for a list of around 300 contacts, organize them into groups, and begin gathering the information you need to start meaningful conversations.

RESOURCE: 

SendingCircle

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

All right, Jen. So in the last episode, we talked about the individuals being the best part of this process. So that's where the most of our strategy should be focused. That's the most foundational relationship being key. Awesome. Where do I start with that? Like, who do I call first? Like, I don't even know where to begin with this process, Jen. There's I don't even know that many people. I'm not that popular, Jen. I just don't have many people.

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Well, we have a podcast for you today, Josh. Um, no, I think I would answer that question with a with uh a simple answer, but I think we're going to get into the basics of how, like what that actually is. Where do we start, Josh? Where do we start? Um, that is the question that we're gonna tackle today. And I will say the the word that comes to mind is namestorming. And no, I didn't make that up. I've heard it from other ministries before that teach on support raising as well. Um, shout out to Via Generosity and my friends there that do amazing boot camps um for ministry workers all over the United States. But I think the first place that I actually heard the word namestorming is from another shout out um from Scott Morton, who wrote Funding Your Ministry. Uh I don't know if you've ever read that book, Josh, but it's incredible. But that was the first place whenever I was a fresh 20-year-old in support raising, hearing about all of these things and going, the word namestorming doesn't seem normal, but okay. But that's what we're here to talk about today, Josh. We're gonna talk about namestorming.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

So that today's episode we're gonna be talking about namestorming, getting that contact information together so that we are set and ready for this season of reaching out to individuals. So once again, welcome. This is the fully funded podcast with Jen and Josh, and let's get into it today, Jen.

SPEAKER_01 1:49

Yes, let's get into it. So we've got some practical uh things to teach you today about how to where do you start whenever you start raising support and you're thinking through? And this segment is all about individuals, okay? We have got a podcast for you later that gets into the nitty-gritty with churches and with small groups, but we are talking about where do we begin when we start thinking through how to ask individuals to support me on a monthly ongoing basis. What is the first place that we get we do um we land whenever we're starting to think through that process? But specific to individuals, okay. I want to make sure that that is super, super clear as we're starting today. Um, but that is the namestorming or contact list grabbing uh place. That is where we start. So we start thinking through okay, we need to cre we need to start through with a list of um everybody that we could ask. And that is a list, Josh, of not people that you think are going to give, but it is a list of everyone you know.

SPEAKER_00 2:59

But wait a second, Uncle Bob's on fixed income and social security. So clearly he doesn't have to be.

SPEAKER_01 3:04

No, no, no, no, Josh. You're putting the cart before the horse. This is a list of everyone you know. This is not a list of people that you think are going to get. And that is so important whenever it comes to this process because it is a very known principle. And you, uh being somebody that is sport raising yourself on a regular basis know this to be true as well. Um, as a career global worker, I am sure that you know this principle very well that oftentimes the people that you thought in a million years would never support you are the people that support you. And the person you thought absolutely was going to be the person to give is the person that does not support you. It is so true. I promise, I promise you guys, it's so true. So this again, namestorming your contact list is not about who you think is going to give. It is literally putting pen to paper or pen to excel, um, thumbs and fingers to the keyboard of ever a list of everybody you know, okay. This is not a qualitative list of people that you think are going to give. We'll get into that in a moment, but right now you start with this is a list of everybody I know, okay? So, um, and you, I promise you, you're terrible about picking who is going to give and pick people are not really out. And but that, but I'm saying, I'm not saying that's true, but I am saying it is the work of the Holy Spirit. And if we really believe everybody is called to be a part of the Great Commission, we are not going to be the qualifying factors of who gives and who does not give. Let's let God be in charge of that, particularly as we build this basic basis of foundation of how we think about support raising. It is so important to not give qualifiers in the beginning and let God do that work and just sort it by don't even sort it, just a list of everybody who we know. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 4:58

So Yeah. I mean, to be honest, I could go through our list of monthly partners and I could give you 15 names of people that I would have immediately disqualified and never have asked had I looked at it, but they are the most faithful, most generous people because you just don't know. You don't know who's going to and who's not going to, and it's not my job to know.

unknown 5:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:17

It's like you said it's the whole thing. Yeah, that's the Lord's job to know. So let's not do jobs. Uh God's job. I almost said that. I said that incorrectly at first. We don't do God's job. God does God's job.

SPEAKER_00 5:32

Exactly. Okay. There you go.

SPEAKER_01 5:34

So uh just to think this through, the book um uh the Financial Partnership Development Workbook outlines this for our um organization, but other books outline this so well as well, as well. Um, with who is that? So let me give you a list of people to think about, Josh when you're namestorming. So it's friends and family, okay, family, relatives, those are people that you know, close friends, church friends, college and school friends, employers, employees and co-workers, neighbors, regular acquaintances, who cuts your hair, who's your doctor, who does your dentist, all of those people that you interact with, weak ties, loose ties, strong ties, people that you haven't seen, they all go on the list. They all go on the list to begin with. And then Josh, what happens after that?

SPEAKER_00 6:24

So we're shooting for a goal here. Like we're shooting for the 300, right? That magic number. It's not really a magic number, but 300 people. Now don't immediately jump, don't jump to that. Hey, I don't know 300 people. That's that's the first objection. I don't know 300 people, Jen. I can't think of 300 people.

SPEAKER_01 6:41

Most people do know 300 people. That is um a true yeah, that's true. So and a lot, a good place to start is even by just looking at your if you're a Facebook person, maybe even looking at your Facebook list and saying, okay, or whatever social media. And most times people will have are around that or close to that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:01

Exactly. When we started thinking through the people on our on our list, that that list of people was so good, like, you know, friends and family and close friends, people that we see at work, people that work for us, people who work over us, people who we see on a regular basis, who cut our hair monthly, all those people. We're putting it in.

SPEAKER_01 7:17

People in the past, in the past that we haven't interacted with for a long time. So people that I used to go to church with, that I'd done missions trips with, you know, all that kind of it doesn't have to be a live active relationship to count. So right.

SPEAKER_00 7:29

Yeah. And what we're not we're not giving this number as 300 as like, okay, you reach 300 people and you know, you're done. No, this is just a starting point. This is the floor, not the ceiling. We're only growing from here. And so we're just shooting for a baseline.

SPEAKER_01 7:42

And I would say too, if you don't, if you can't get to the 300 mark, that's okay. It's a good benchmark and it's a good thing to shoot for. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:50

If you don't have a target, you're always gonna miss it, right? If you don't know what you're aiming for, you're always gonna miss the target. So um, so we're the quality of these relationships is gonna vary. And so, and I understand that, and that's what we're talking about. Like we obviously, our family, usually, our family is one of our closest relationships, right? More often than not, there are closer relationships, and then we have these varying degrees. But when we have this list kind of put together in these long lists of all these people from all the different spheres of life, now we go through the process not of filtering, but of organizing. So we're gonna take all these names and we're gonna organize them into some groups. I use terminology like proximity of relationship or proximity physically, physical proximity, but usually relationship. So, like group A, right? The people that are closest to us, people I can call right now and go grab coffee with or go and hang out with. I could text right now, they're gonna text back. We have that relationship of close proximity. Those are the ones that go in group A, right? My best friend, the people that I talk to on a regular basis, my family, those that I do ministry with on a day-to-day basis. Those are the people I'm reaching out to for group A because those are the ones that are closest in proximity in relationship. You take a step out, and now you have group B. So we're taking group B, and these are people that we know. Let's say, Jen, you're walking through the store, right? You go in through um walking through Target, and you happen to be walking through the Target market area, and you're going to look for some coffee creamer, and you run across a friend, and you guys could sit there and chat for five to ten minutes, standing there in the target aisle over life. That's group B. That's people we may not interact with on a daily basis, but we could have a regular conversation just by passing in a store or passing somewhere in our day-to-day life that we could have that conversation. So that's our group B. We're getting a little bit farther out. Group C is everybody else, whether it's a new relationship, whether it's people you haven't talked to in a while. And yes, you mentioned, like, hey, people from school, people from college. Now, listen, I graduated college over 20 20 years ago. That was a while ago. But there's still relationship there. It may take more time to rewarm that relationship and get that to a point of asking, but that's still a relationship that is valuable, that can be a potential partner in the future. And so we don't want to qualify that. So that's our group C, those people that are on the farther out in relationship that might take a little bit of warming up and reconnecting to get there. Or you could think of it this way, like I said, if we have proximity of relationship or physical proximity, people, group A is people that are closest to me, people I could get to in the next five, 10, 15 minutes. It'd be easy to get together and meet for coffee. People that might take a little bit more work to schedule out to try and make it happen because they're a little bit farther away. And then there may be those that are distant, you know, I've got relatives in a different state that I may be close personally with them, but they're a couple states away. It's gonna take more work to create a face-to-face opportunity. That's that's another way to organize this list. So we're organizing our list so that we know where to begin, right? Obviously, we want to start with that closest proximity there, but we're doing this so that we have a way to have an idea of where we want to start. Because if you just have 300 people, it'd be really easy to go from the top and work your way down and just try and figure it out. But that's not the most effective way. The best way is to group people, to put them in groups so that I know where I want to start. Now, Jen, do you use an organization system whenever you're talking about contacts and everything? How do you organize?

SPEAKER_01 11:18

Yeah, so there's several different really great programs out there. And as a coach to folks, I say uh a couple different things to keep in mind. So as we're re-recording this today, there are apps out there and there are programs and systems out there that may not be there tomorrow, and there might be a new one tomorrow as well. So um naming them is helpful, but also to keep this like with the idea of being evergreen. I want to point out that it's ever evolving and changing. So giving it a Google, um, giving it a search bar is, you know, on your computer and seeing what is out there is probably the help, like really helpful. But for me personally, I love using Donor Elf, I think is a really great uh management system because it uh work it integrates with a lot of ministries, different back end of like how much giving is happening. So it will it will play with your organization and he can plug it in, like uh Donor Elf can plug it in. And it works on your phone and on your laptop so that you can check things in multiple ways. But it organizes like everything from like it it shows you what your giving is doing and then your tasks um at hand as well, which is another um uh app that is just coming out of um a coworker of mine at Eurasia with Assemblies of God, is called My Sending Circle. And it is a really great organization as um system as well. It is an app. Um, it's actually he is uh the developer has integrated it with the financial partnership development workbook. So it has the same language, and it also gives you like notifications where it pops up on your phone and tells you what you do need to do next. And then it's the way that it's organized is really the way that a global worker would be raising their support with individuals and with churches. It gives you reminders, pops up, pop-ups, um, tasks, and then it integrates with the back end of what's actually happening on the giving as well. So those are a couple, but there's also you can use Google Excel sheets. You can use uh there's TNT Ware, there's MPDX, I know is um out there as well. Uh there's Karani, there's, and then there's a bunch of like um, you know, different systems that I'm not even aware about that exist and they're out there. I think the point is, Josh, is when you are talking about namestorming your contact list and beginning this process with organization, it's just important to have some sort of organization system to begin with and stick with it. And you can refine it, but always have something that is keeping you on task and helping you, and that is different across everybody's brain. So for me, I live by my iCal like calendar. I'm a Mac girl and I like and Excel sheets. So for me, those are really important features and aspects of support raising to me that are important, but it might be a whiteboard for somebody else or sticky notes, or you know, so there's a lot to that too. So it's hard to answer one size fits all, but those are some of the organization systems.

SPEAKER_00 14:29

So but organization is absolutely important. If you're not organized, the the problem is that you lose track without having an organization system. So you don't know where you are in conversation with people. Who have I talked to? Who have I not talked to? Um, relationships require follow-through, so you gotta know where you're at and the process with people because we're gonna start talking about a process. It's not just having this name list and then going down and marking through them. It's a matter of talking through an actual process of reaching out to people. And we're gonna get into that in future episodes. And trust me, future you is going to thank present you for taking the time to organize now. Because what you don't want to have happen is you do not want to be that person who sends out a letter and then makes a phone call, and then you get told that they can't partner with you, and then a month later, after forgetting about previous conversation because you didn't write it down, you reach out again, and that's a completely embarrassing situation. And that is totally not a true story. So trust me, it sounds like you know from experience.

SPEAKER_01 15:30

Yeah, that's good. Uh so okay, so just to kind of to go back through what we've talked about. So as you're thinking through raising support with individuals, what do you start out with? You start off with a list of everybody you know. Then you you try to get a list of around 300 people there. And then once you've developed that list of every person you know, you've written it down, then you organize into groups A, B, and C. So it could be based off of proximity, but it could be based off of how uh well you know the people. Either one works, but it's really helpful to develop like group A, group B, and group C, however, you want to divide that up based off of how much you're traveling or how well you know people. So those are all kind of interplay and helpful to think through as you're developing your organization system. We also just talked about organizing and making sure that you have some sort of system in place to help you out with this once you start organizing. Okay. A couple of other things to mention as we think through the namestorming um individual process is this is the one of the next step once you've gotten that list, once you organize, is you start asking for folks, uh I just said folks, um, people's contact information. Okay. So a really so you want to grab. Um, so if I'm going to ask Josh and Lisa to support me monthly, um uh I would ask for email, phone number, mailing address, um, all of those things. So I need to grab contact information of everybody on that list, okay, that I'm intending on asking for support. I start with group A. So say Josh is on group A's list. How do I ask for contact information? A really great way to do that is typically, like a lot of people choose uh if you have Josh's phone number, you maybe just text him and say something along the lines of, hey Josh and Lisa, I would love to put some information in your hands on an upcoming ministry assignment that I'm on. Would you be able to provide me with your address and your email address if I don't have that? Okay. So, and then say I only have your Josh, I only have your email address. I might type you an email that says something along the lines of, hey, Josh and Lisa, I would love to put some um information in your hands on an upcoming ministry assignment that I'm going on. Would you be able to give me your phone number and your address? So that might be an email that I type. The classic way these days, I think, is to hop on social media. So say you and I, Josh, are Facebook friends. I might DM you on um Instagram Messenger or Instagram Messenger, Facebook Messenger, and say something a lot of the same way. Hey, Josh and Lisa, uh, would love to put some um some ministry information in your hands about an upcoming assignment I've got. Would you be willing to give me your phone number, your email address, and um your mailing address? And then see if they answer back. Okay. So couple of things to think of through here that I've I like to teach everybody is one, it's really helpful when you're when you're asking that direct like indirect message. You don't want to give too much information and you don't want to give too little information. And it's really important to ride that line. What you don't want to do is accidentally ask Josh and Lisa to support you in a direct message because that is not what we talked about in previous episodes. That is not relational way to ask. And typically, if you're being asked to support somebody on direct message, it sort of is off-putting for the most part. So, what you don't want to do when you're just grabbing contact information right now, because we are trying to move into, by the way, we're going to ask them for their contact information, put some information in their hands, and then unto the goal of having a face-to-face appointment with Josh and Lisa. So this is not the time to ask for support. This is the time to ask for contact information. And that is very needs to be very clear in your mind. So when you're grabbing contact information, don't give so much information and that might look something like, and this is one of the classic things that I see as a hang up with global workers that I coach is they they accidentally make an ask in a direct message or in a text message when really they're just trying to grab contact information. So to when I see that happen, it looks, it sounds something along the lines of, hey Josh and Lisa, I'm going on a two-year assignment to Estonia. I'm so excited. I would love to ask if you'd be interested in joining some aspect of my support team. Can I grab your contact information? Um, thanks so much. That's way too much information. The other side of things is whenever you ask for too little information, you pull the wool over their eyes, so to speak. And I say to Josh and Lisa, hey, you just updated my contact list. Can I have yours? You know, that's not enough.

SPEAKER_00 20:20

Wait, you're not sending me a Christmas card?

SPEAKER_01 20:23

Yeah, right. So it's you wanna, you wanna go in the middle there and don't give too much, don't give too little. And it looks like something like saying, typing out something along the lines of, hey, Josh and Lisa, would love to put some um information in your hands on an upcoming ministry assignment I've got going on. Can I grab your email, your phone number, your address, see what happens. But I am almost done here and I I just want to say one more thing. It's really helpful not to stop. So, Josh, if I direct message you on Facebook or on Instagram or whatever, and I ask for your contact information and I don't hear back from you, I don't stop there. Okay, because I think that's one thing that I've seen in coaching that is helpful to remind people is you can always pop in like a week after not having a response from Josh and Lisa, pop back in and say, Hey, didn't know if you saw my message. Um, if if not, that's fine. If you don't want to give me contact information, that's fine, or however it is that you want to say it, don't be too wordy with it. But really just do a just checking in. That's good etiquette, whether that's email or direct message, because if you are, and then also if you don't hear back from them from that just checking in, don't take that as a sign of rejection. It may be that they are just not checking those direct messages on a regular basis, or maybe they popped out of social media for a while. There's all kinds of reasons why somebody doesn't check their direct messages or doesn't respond. For me, for instance, whenever I had young kids and I had my kids really close together, so they're 14 months apart. There was like a couple years in there. It was really hard to get a hold of me. So uh Just in general. And the last space that I would check is my Facebook direct messages or my Instagram direct messages. And honestly, even to this day, if I'm going to fall off in communication, that's the place that I will do it. So Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 22:13

Yeah, I'm the same way.

SPEAKER_01 22:15

So yeah. So just give people that grace and understand that it's not necessarily about you. It may be that they're not good at checking that space and you might need to try a different mode of communication to guide their contact information. Or um they might have forgotten it. Because with, you know, messages, if they're not like uh highlighted um in bold, like a lot of them will be in bold and then I've read them, then I think that I've responded whenever I actually haven't responded. So give people that level of grace that because you uh most of us do that to some level of degree with communication pieces that are written in social media, direct messages and all of that. So give people that grace. That's the last thing that I have to say. So namestorming your contact list. I think we did it. Um, I think that those are the main things to think about whenever the beginning process of the individual um process is namestorming your contact list and grabbing contact information.

SPEAKER_00 23:09

Right. And so just a little hint for a little teaser for a future episode. So, what happens if I run out of people to talk to? We're gonna talk about that in later episodes here, but just to kind of recap today what we talked about is we're brainstorming a list of 300 people. Again, not a magic number, but just a target to shoot for, people that we know, and we're not editing it, we're not disqualifying anybody, just a full dump from our brain of everybody we can think of in those spaces. We're gonna group those names into different lists based upon how warm the relationship is or how close the relationship is or how close we are in proximity physically to that person. And then we got to get organized. So find a strategy, whatever works for you, do some research and find what works best for you so you can keep track of those contacts, keep track of conversations and where you are in conversation with them and use that. Don't just get one and put it on your computer and let it sit there. Actually put it to use. And then start collecting contact information, but don't do a soft ask. We just want the information so we can sit down face to face and have a chat. So here's your action step for this week, right? Or for this episode. Name storm your list of contacts and shoot for that 300 benchmark, right? Don't disqualify or edit. So that's your goal. Sit down, put some time aside whenever you find time to do it, and make that list of people. So I have that list. I've got my 300 people. Now I start mass mailing. Is that how it works, right, Jen? No, not quite.

SPEAKER_01 24:42

Nope. Nope, nope, nope, nope.

SPEAKER_00 24:44

So, next next episode, we're actually going to talk about that first step of communication and reaching out to people. And yes, a letter, but we're not doing mass mailing. So, again, thank you so much for joining us today. Uh, this is the fully funded podcast Building Kingdom Partners Locally to expand God's Kingdom Globally.