The conventional approach for church fundraising is to finance essential operating expenses with a regular budget and collect special offerings for missions and large capital expenditures. Add to that mix special needs that arise throughout the year and many churches respond with additional love offerings for special causes and situations.

We might describe this model as the Multiple Offerings Approach. It provides a variety of focused opportunities to respond to stewardship messaging. This often means offerings for the church budget (understood and expressed as a biblical tithe or 10% of income), missions, benevolence, capital projects, and special love offerings.

While there’s nothing inherently wrong with this traditional giving approach, many church leaders recognize that cultural and generational shifts are changing the nature of charitable giving across the United States. Here’s a quick summary of just a few of these culture shifts:

• Offering Fatigue — Too many offerings on top of the expected regular budget offering (tithe) may dilute the significance of the primary ask: Obedience to God by giving the first fruits of your own personal harvest.
• Vision Confusion — Vision clarity for younger generations means framing the entirety of the church’s missional work—staffing, facilities and ministries, as well as local, state, national and international missions—as the essential working out of the Great Commission.
• Denominational Decline — As denominational loyalty wanes and institutional trust erodes, it’s clear that giving at national and state convention levels will be affected.
• Economic Dislocation — While many families will continue to have the capacity to give sacrificially, many others will not due to economic disruption, higher levels of debt, and a mixture of higher fixed expenses and lower disposable income.
• Large Giver Shift — Many historically large givers are “passing the torch” to sons, daughters and spouses who may not share the same zeal for and spiritual commitment to the church and its vision.

Enter the One Fund Strategy—an approach designed to simplify and unify giving by connecting a new generation of givers with the full scope of the gospel task. This significant strategy adjustment to one unified offering has three objectives:

1. Unify church financial needs with…
   • One Ask.
   • One Commitment.
   • One Mission and Vision.
2. Grow overall levels of giving permanently.
3. Build a sustainable future giving base.

It’s been said that money follows vision. Tellingly, that statement is both an aspirational goal for messaging and a clear reality about the motivations people have for giving. It’s also the rationale for collecting the entirety of the church’s funding needs in one place to present a unified vision of its collective gospel impact.

The practical implication is that all of it works together to accomplish the Great Commission, even mundane things like utilities, insurance, administration, staffing and facilities.

Most One Funds are presented with a 2-year timeframe and ask for a corresponding commitment to tithe and give above and beyond. In this way, a One Fund resembles multi-year capital campaign commitments. The difference is that the church’s full missional objectives—traditional budget, special missions and capital projects—are part of the commitment.

So what’s the Big Idea?

Consider how the pace of change among our churches and broader culture is impacting charitable giving across the United States. Perhaps a One Fund Strategy is the answer. It’s an approach designed to simplify and unify giving by connecting a new generation of givers with the full scope of the gospel task.

Resources

• “A One Fund Can Keep Your Budget Growing, Even After the Capital Campaign Ends” by Generis
• “Six Benefits of a Unified Budget” by Christopher L. Scott
• Sample Church One Fund Website — FBC Dallas
• Sample Church One Fund Website — Village Baptist Church
• Sample Church One Fund FAQs — Village Baptist Church (PDF)
• One Fund Initiatives on MinistryActionPlans.com
• One Fund Samples on MinistryActionPlans.com