In February of last year, Eddie Kahler sat in a room and heard an idea he wasn’t yet sure he believed.
Eddie is the Executive Director of TCU Wesley Foundation, a chapter-based charity serving young adults on a college campus. He attended a fundraising conference where I premiered The Rise of Sustainable Giving.
As I spoke about how the subscription economy was transforming recurring giving, Eddie was open to the possibility that there was a better way to fund the mission than starting from zero every January. But he was honest about where he stood. No real recurring giving program. No named community of monthly donors. Just a small base of sustainers and a quiet hope that something more durable might be possible.
Here’s what I’ve come to believe after walking alongside hundreds of leaders: growth is possible, and it’s hard work. But it doesn’t happen without someone believing first. Belief precedes growth.
Last summer, Eddie began working with us. What he and his team did next wasn’t flashy, but it was disciplined. They dialed in the donation experience. They cleaned up the CRM so Eddie could actually see what was happening. They started featuring monthly giving on purpose instead of treating it as an afterthought. And most importantly, Eddie committed to building sustainable giving as a system – not a one-time campaign.
We saw encouraging initial results. Small at first, almost unremarkable – the kind of early progress that’s easy to dismiss when you’re hoping for something dramatic. But that’s exactly how a snowball starts. Then Eddie’s recurring base doubled. Then it tripled. What had been an idea in the back of a room became a real, visible, growing program – one his team recently named The Home.
Less than a year after Eddie first heard the idea, he called me. It was January, and he already had roughly 25% of the individual giving goal already covered for the year, thanks to his investment in recurring giving.
January 1 didn’t feel like a reset to zero anymore. He was starting the year with one-quarter of his budget funded. As Eddie told me, “Creating our budget for the year was exciting, because we knew our starting place was solid.” I could hear the smile in his voice, and it made me smile.
Eddie’s story comes down to a simple truth that I’ve seen play out time and time again – belief precedes growth.
Eddie didn’t grow his program and then come to believe. He believed first – enough to act, and enough to stay disciplined when the results were still small – and the growth followed.
I asked Eddie to tell it in his own words on the podcast. It’s worth your time
🎧 Turning Belief Into Action: From Crisis-tunity to Consistent Giving – Sustainable Giving Podcast, S2:E8
Belief Building
At The Center for Sustainable Giving, we’ve developed the most comprehensive process for growing sustainable recurring giving programs that exists today. Our assessment and roadmap cover 10 strategic areas and up to 17 different channels, and we sift through hundreds of potential recommendations, whittling them down and tailoring them to each charity we work with. We then translate that into a clear quarter-by-quarter roadmap for growth.
But even though no one has gone as deep into holistically growing sustainable giving as we have, and as good as we are at identifying and developing clear growth roadmaps that work, that’s only half of what we do.
The other half of what we do when we advise an organization is belief building. Change management. Organizational alignment.
The best strategies and tactics in the world are meaningless if they're thwarted by a lack of understanding, buy-in, internal misalignment, or a number of other issues that have nothing to do with tactics and strategies.
Action does not happen without belief. Belief does not happen without hope. Hope does not happen without awareness.
Belief precedes growth.
It’s Your Turn
So let me turn that question around. Where are you on that path – awareness, hope, belief, action?
Maybe you’re already convinced and deep in the work. Maybe you’re intrigued but not yet sure it’s possible for an organization like yours. Or maybe you want to believe, and something is holding you back.
Wherever you are, consider this. Steve Froehlich, formerly of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and now at GoFundMe, recently shared on the podcast that for many charities, 25% is a tipping point. Once about a quarter of revenue comes from recurring giving, momentum tends to build on its own, and organizations start to see double-digit annual growth.
Look back at Eddie for a moment. That quarter of his budget wasn’t just a milestone to celebrate. It was the point where the snowball got big enough to keep rolling on its own – where the work he’d put in started to compound.
That can be true for you, too. So be honest with yourself: do you believe a substantial base of recurring giving is possible for your mission? And if you’re not sure, what’s holding you back – what would need to be true for you to believe it?
From Belief to Action
Belief is only ever the beginning. The whole point of believing is that it moves you to act – that’s the last rung on the path, and it’s the one that changed everything for Eddie. He heard it, he believed it, and then he and his team did the work.
So wherever you are, there’s a next step.
For some of you, that step isn’t hiring anyone. It’s continuing to build belief – in yourself, your team, and your board – that this is possible for your mission. That’s real work, and for this season it may be exactly enough. (Keep learning. Eddie’s episode above is a good place to start.)
But some of you are further along. You already have an established base of recurring donors. You believe growth is possible. And you’re ready to turn that belief into action.
If that’s you, our Sustainable Giving Growth Assessment is where it starts – an assessment and roadmap that turns belief into a clear, quarter-by-quarter plan for your mission. You can learn more and take the next step at sustainablegiving.org/grow.
💡 Takeaway: Growth follows belief, not the other way around. Before a substantial base of recurring giving can be built, someone has to believe it’s possible – so start there, and take the next step the truth requires.
Until next week… Surf’s Up! 🌊
- Dave