by Brad Layland, Chief Executive Officer & Senior Consultant

Last week, I had the privilege of spending time in Oxford working with the Europe Collaboration—an extraordinary group investing funds and resources into church planters in key strategic cities across Europe. They’ve now taken five cohorts of church planters through their process. This time, they were meeting with cohort number six. And for the first time, they invited The FOCUS Group to come provide fundraising training.

Fellow consultants Ame Eldredge, Hector Cruz, and I had the honor of walking eight courageous leaders through the principles of Taking Donors SeriouslyⓇ, our relational fundraising framework. These are men and women serving in cities such as Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Rome, and other spiritually strategic places across Europe—cities where the church is often absent in significant ways.

These church planters are not playing it safe; they are putting everything on the line. And I was deeply inspired.

What struck me most during our three days together is this: the principles we teach about fundraising are 100% transferable.

Culture changes.
Language changes.
Contexts change.
But people? People are people.

Whether you are raising funds in Florida, Frankfurt, or France, the core truths remain the same:

• People give to people they know and trust.
• People give because they are asked and shown how.
• People give when they are involved and have a sense of ownership.

The application of tools—your case statement, your prospect strategy, your annual plan—must be contextualized, of course. Europe is different from the U.S., and philanthropic norms differ there. Church culture differs. Tax laws differ.

But relational fundraising? That transcends borders because it is rooted in something deeper than technique. It is rooted in how God designed people.

As I often say, fundraising is not about transactions. It’s about partnership. You think you need money, but what you really need are partners to walk alongside you in your mission. That truth is just as powerful in Amsterdam as it is in Atlanta.

At the end of our time together, one of the church planters from Frankfurt pulled me aside. He said, “This is amazing. I’ve been a church planter for five years. Why hasn’t anyone told me this?” For five years, he had been doing the work—faithful, committed, sacrificial—but without a clear relational fundraising framework.

Unfortunately, this is not uncommon. Many leaders, in the U.S. and around the world, are simply mimicking what they’ve seen others do in fundraising. They are running hard but feeling lost, hoping that something works. 

The FOCUS Group is (thankfully!) not the only organization serving leaders in Europe. But I am deeply grateful for our expanding relationships in this season. 

Through our partnerships with the Europe Collaboration and others, we now serve more than 20 clients in the U.K., Europe, and around the world. We are venturing into new territory, including hosting our first-ever international Symposium and TFG Institute in Oxford this April. 

In fact, we now have more international clients than The FOCUS Group had total clients when I joined the firm 17 years ago! I’m grateful for the way God has chosen to use The FOCUS Group to do more than I had asked or imagined even just a few short years ago.

 

We’ve been privileged to help many organizations be more effective in their fundraising by learning and implementing relational fundraising principles in their work with donors. Want to talk?