05651
Dec. 6, 2005

Mission drive is ‘on target’

Hearts & Hands campaign
is putting a new emphasis on marketing

by Toya Richard Hill

LOUISVILLE — The second half of the Mission Initiative: Joining Hearts & Hands (JHH) fund-raising campaign for foreign mission and new church development will be all about target marketing.

        Already the effort to raise $40 million by 2007 has passed its halfway mark in money and pledges. Now campaign staffers and the JHH steering committee, which met last week in Newport Beach, CA, say tailor-made promotional materials fitted to donors’ needs will help bring in the rest.

        “The committee really felt that this was a good focus for the future,” said the Rev. Jan Opdyke, the JHH director. She said target marketing will be a “cornerstone” of the rest of the campaign.

        According to Opdyke, the campaign will continue its current approach, which includes steering donors with specific interests — ranging from mission in Cameroon to new-church developments along the U.S. Gulf Coast — to related needs.

        But now the campaign is also using a video produced by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s Media Services Team, and retrofitting it to suit donors’ needs, Opdyke said.

        Earlier this year, the video won a CINE Golden Eagle Award for excellence.

        “We can now really be very specific with people, and really tailor-make some opportunities,” Opdyke said. “That’s the future.”

        The first re-mixed video was made for the Presbytery of North Central Iowa to use to help raise $250,000 to send an agricultural mission co-worker to the Democratic Republic of Congo. George and Jan Beran of Ames, IA, have made a “lead gift” toward the goal.

        The “targeted” video “works wonderfully, because it requires not as much staff involvement at the national level,” Opdyke said, adding that re-mixing can be done “at a very, very reasonable cost.”

        A companion brochure also is personalized to the presbytery’s needs.

        “It’s a package,” Opdyke said.

        The tri-fold brochure includes information about the agricultural mission co-worker position and a detachable pledge card imprinted with logos from the presbytery and JHH.

         The Presbytery of North Central Iowa has “created more awareness of the mission initiative and this particular position than we probably could have gotten any other way,” said Suann Nichols, the campaign’s associate director.

        When the presbytery markets the campaign, it’s a “peer-to-peer approach,” she said. “From a professional fund-raiser’s point of view, it’s the very best way to raise money.”

        Opdyke said JHH plans to use what’s happening in Iowa “as a model.”

        As other presbyteries make pledges, campaign leaders “will be able to say, ‘Here’s the video we’ve done,’” Opdyke said — which is exactly why it was made.