A few years ago, I earned my Masters in Theology to ground my approach when it comes to fundraising.

This time learning the roots of Catholicism has helped me tremendously make the right decisions.

Take, for example, the common fundraising strategy of list-renting or list-buying. When you rent someone’s list, you can contact the list of people, but you can’t see who they are. When you buy someone’s list, you acquire the list of people and can contact them as much as you like, but you don’t know who’s on the list in advance.

Therefore, the question is, should you be buying or renting lists?

I’ve thought about it a lot, and here’s my response.

I had an interesting question come in this week.

It was about being too afraid to ask for donations. How do I overcome my fear of asking people?

What do I do to gather the courage to build a campaign and fundraise for a mission? Here’s my answer:

I see Catholic apostolates come across three common fundraising problems.

Well, these problems, you could call them stories. I say this because, too often, the fundraising problems you face are just stories you tell yourself.

Problem/Story #1 – Donors are “overtapped”. [otherwise known as ‘donor fatigue’]

Problem/Story #2 – People have money for everything except your apostolate.

Problem/Story #3 – People are struggling, but those you can afford to give more choose not to do so.

So with these problems (or stories) that seem to be everywhere, I figured that I would try to explain what’s really going on. Check it out:

These past few months have shaped up to be a huge test for Catholic apostolates.

As we overcome one crisis after another, apostolates are finding themselves in one of two categories.

Category #1 – Donations are booming

Category #2 – Donations are on the decline

If you are in category #2, I ‘ve uncovered why people may not be donating to you. Check it out:

PS – spoiler alert: the reason is you!