Cellphones can transform indigeneous fund raising

When I lived in Nigeria, my Nigerian Campus Crusade staff friends would spend their evenings and weekends visiting donors to collect cash, then transport this cash to the national office where it was receipted and deposited into their staff account. Their salaries and ministry expenses were covered in this inefficient way.

Most countries are still primarily a cash-based society where the banking system can be a slow and inefficient way to pay bills or transfer funds.

God is revolutionizing the payments system in many countries around the world. Perhaps, he’s creating a way for indigenous fund raising of national missionaries to explode! As I’ve traveled, I’ve found that the desire to help finance God’s Great Commission exists in the hearts of people everywhere. But the process to transfer funds has been difficult.

And we are leveraging what God is providing to simplify the process of donors participating in the Great Commission.

Here is an article and video explaining the huge impact the M-PESA system is having in Kenya. We are running a pilot project in Kenya which we call mGiving. We are adding important fund-development steps to the M-PESA system to build a helpful ministry partner development system.

• a thank-you notification by text message from CCC that the we have received the donation, and processed it appropriately.
• a notification to the staff member by text message that they have received a donation so that they can then thank the donor personally.
• reminder messages to the donor that it is time to give the next donation, thus bringing African donors as close as we can to the automated process that Western donors use with automated monthly giving.

Enthusiasm is high among our fellow staff. We are on a mission to help our national staff around the world raise 100% of their monthly needs.

Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”  Matthew 9:37-38.

Part of praying for the Lord of the harvest to send out workers is to fund those workers. The Lord of the harvest is providing a new funding system to enable his workers to be provided for as they harvest.