If you have not then please consider reading, commenting, and sharing at least once this year! The Blogference brings together ministry leaders from around the world to discuss relevant ministry issues. By leaving a comment and sharing your thoughts you create a diverse and energizing experience for leaders seeking to have an influence for Christ around the world!

The Topics This Year:

• Virtual Evangelism–A Personal Story

• Virtual Ministry–A Challenge

• Evangelism and Latinos

• Leading as  a Mom

• How Social Media is Influencing Culture and Changing the Church

• Thriving at College

• Missional Campus Ministry

• Spiritual Leadership

• Leading Strategically

• 50 Year Olds and 20 Year Olds–One of Campus Crusade’s Biggest Internal Challenges

To Participate the Blogference:

Here’s some links to Staffhacker posts that would be super relevant to these screencasts:
1. Why I use Mailchimp, and why you should too: http://www.staffhacker.com/156/why-i-use-mailchimp-and-why-you-should-too
2. How to get subscribers for your newsletter: http://www.staffhacker.com/159/how-to-get-subscribers-for-your-newsletter
3. Creating your first email in Mailchimp: http://www.staffhacker.com/157/creating-your-first-email-in-mailchimp
4. Designing newsletters with your donor in mind: http://www.staffhacker.com/161/designing-newsletters-with-your-donor-in-mind
5. Writing newsletters that get read every time: http://www.staffhacker.com/162/writing-newsletters-that-get-read-every-time

If you could change one thing about an annual conference that you MUST attend, what would it be?

Brian Barela blogs regularly here.

Video is no longer optional to a ministry’s online presence!

I recently posted 6 Reasons Why You Should Think Through Your Video Presence on my own blog and received a comment that was even better than the post, since it clearly outlined how easy and powerful it is to set up an online video presence.

This is from a Destino movement in the US:

“We’ve really started to see the benefit of using video. We’ll take videos of our weekly meetings (maybe special speakers) and post them online. If we have a funny skit we’ll post that on facebook and tag all the people involved.

We also started to realize that our students and staff have great experience and are great ministry trainers. It would be good for us to video those training times and put them on the web for others to benefit from. If you go to YouTube right now, there’s not much Crusade training content. We’re trying to change that.

In Destino we’re breaking new ground learning how to raise support in the Hispanic community. It’s much easier to video our students sharing how they used different strategies than it is to try and write all of them up. That’s one of our new projects for the Christmas break to get more of these support raising ideas that have worked in the past up for others to benefit from (the letter strategy typically does not provide all the support a student needs for summer project).

Our video setup is pretty simple, but works out great:
*iPhone 4 (records HD video)
*$15 tripod from amazon
*”the glif” tripod mount for iphone 4 (http://www.theglif.com)
*iMovie for Mac to edit (or iPhone iMovie app)
*music from http://www.friendlymusic.com ($1.99 a track)

For under $100 and an iPhone 4 we’re now able to rapidly produce these videos. It generally takes about 1-2 hours per video to go from filming, editing, music selection, and upload. We’re just starting up but you can check them out here:http://www.vimeo.com/aggiedestino

(also, we chose Vimeo over youtube because Youtube has a 10-minute time limit on videos. While most of ours are 2-3 minutes, there are times where we want to put up a longer talk that we think would benefit other Destino movements around the country. That’s just not possible on youtube).”

If you are using video consistently in your ministry please share what you are doing and how well it’s working!

Innovation takes many forms. It may look like a new use for an old tool; a new tool for an old need, or more commonly, a new tool for a new need.

Christian Maureira, the national director for Campus Crusade for Christ in Chile, innovated. He saw a creative opportunity to engage 33 miners with the reality of Jesus Christ. He took a common tool (the Jesus film in audio) and innovated a strategy to reach them 2660 feet below ground. And we all applauded his creativity, his courage, and his innovation.

Global Media Outreach innovated. In the era of sophisticated websites, they saw an opportunity. Their “simple sites” are basically the Four Spiritual Laws and are designed for those the Spirit has brought almost to the point of decision. The saw an opportunity for those around -1 on the Engel scale, who simply needed to know how to ask Jesus into their lives.

Agape Europe innovated. In their spiritual environment, they understood that there are many steps from those who are far from God. To move seekers from -10 on the Engel scale to the point of a decision for Christ, takes multiple steps. So they devised the stepping stone strategy. They develop web experiences as a series of steps moving people closer to God. They connect people with mentor coaches to help them along the way. They looked at the process of discovering God, and met people at critical points along the way with insightful experiences and trustworthy people.

Brian Barela innovated. This blogference is a creative way to engage hundreds of people around critical topics focused on reaching and discipling people today. Creatively. Innovatively. Faithfully.

What a time to be alive! What a time to be engaged as Christ’s ambassadors. We can connect with people in ways that Paul, Barnabas, Peter and others could only imagine. We are only bound by our imagination of what God could do through our availability.

God needs each of us to engage with all the creativity He gives. Our organization needs each of us to engage full of faith, growing our collective ability to fulfill God’s calling, employing every approach we can imagine to be fruitful. Our organization needs us to share what we’re learning, both what is working and what is not working. We also need people who have mastered the basics. People who can make a clear presentation of the gospel at the drop of a hat. People who understand the basic elements of how people grow as disciples of Jesus Christ.

At the recent Catalyst conference, Seth Godin said, “Change is made by people who eagerly accept responsibility without expecting authority.” Personally, I have rarely felt held back from innovating in my staff career. Innovation has been a hallmark of my time with Campus Crusade for Christ. While I am responsible for what I have done, I have always had freedom to try.

What about you? Are you eager for responsibility? What are you going to do before the end of this year that you have never done before?

Keith Seabourn is the Chief Technology Officer for Campus Crusade for Christ. His job is to leverage technologies in order to accomplish our traditional goal of helping to fulfill the Great Commission.

Follow Keith’s blog by clicking here.

Follow Keith on Twitter by clicking here.

If Ministry Partner Development is relationship driven, then we have a great chance to leverage Facebook to foster deeper connections to our ministry partners.

Not earth shattering news, right? But I bet a lot of us haven’t taken the time to be intentional with Facebook yet. I would suggest that with 30 minutes of initial set-up and a few minutes a week you can help your MPD partners connect with you and your ministry better and in a more timely manner. Here’s how…

Start a new “list” of Ministry Partners.

• Click on “friends” (left of your news-feed), then click the edit friends box. From there you can create a new “list” of Ministry Partners by adding current Facebook friends. Create your initial list and then go through your Ministry Partners and search for them on Facebook. If they are on Facebook assigned them to the new list as you friend request them. (30-60 minutes initially)

Look at your new Ministry Partners news-feed!

• Now you can click on your new MPD “list” and in essence have a filtered news-feed of only ministry partners. If they update their status regularly you can see what’s going on in their world. This is huge advantage if you’re about to visit them or give them a call. In addition to this I like to take a few minutes a week and comment on people status’s or wall to let them know I care about them. (10 minutes a week)

Update your status with humility filled and appropriate status updates.

• As I post updates on my profile, in the back of my mind I know about 70 of our supporters might see it. My status update might be about a major evangelistic event, or it might be about my daughters birthday party. Whatever it is, I ask the question, “does this help my supporter get to know me, and our ministry more?” Keep in mind, every status update doesn’t need to be about how hard your working. People want to get to know you, not just what you’re doing.

Facebook should NOT replace those MPD calls you need to make, and it’s not the new one-stop MPD shopping experience. What I’m saying is the Facebook has the ability to fuel your MPD relationships if you use it intentionally.

What about you? Are you using Facebook to foster MPD relationships? What’s working well?

Micro-donations might be ARE the most un-explored financial resource available to those who raise money for a living.

“Obama’s online operation, broke down the numbers: 3 million donors made a total of 6.5 million donations online adding up to more than $500 million. Of those 6.5 million donations, 6 million were in increments of $100 or less. The average online donation was $80, and the average Obama donor gave more than once.”–from a Washington Post article on Obama’s online fundraising campaign

Two characteristics of the average person who gives to Campus Crusade that are relevant to this:

• 40-60 years old
• Middle-upper class

Those 20-40 and 60 and above are two HUGE age groups that experience friction in giving the traditional $100 a month. Using micro-donations as a complement to our existing strategy not only increases the amount of people giving, but the amount of people PRAYING!

Another quote from the same Washington Post Article:

“Linnie Frank Bailey, a 52-year-old mother of two in Riverside, Calif., is such a donor. In the past two years, she gave a total of $120.40, mostly in $10 increments. She made her last $10 online donation two days before the election.”

I’m convinced all of us have quite a few Linnie’s in our network that could be mobilized to greater participation via a micro-donation strategy.

Two other reasons to consider the strategy:

1. It’s easy for people to increase their giving if they start small

2. It’s hard for people to discontinue their giving if they are giving a small amount

Our family has begun using micro-donations as a COMPLEMENTARY strategy. So far we have noticed:

• It has been successful in converting those under 30 and over 60 to giving.

• It has allowed us to use the web (our own ministry blog and Facebook) to ask, follow up, and then have the person start the giving process. We have primarily used this for people living too far away to meet with in person.

• It has been DIFFICULT to convince people that a small amount makes a difference; we clearly cast vision that the strategy is for a large amount of people to give a small amount.

$500 in extra support could be 50 people at $10 a month, 25 people at $20 a month, or a combination of some sort.

Have you explored micro-donations as part of your fund-raising strategy?

Brian Barela is the Director of New Media. He blogs regularly and posts on leadership, social media and ministry, and starting a ministry.

Thank you so much for your engagement and interaction these last three years. I’m hopeful that by expanding the people contributing content to the blogference that the learning and dialogue will increase and encourage you to lead more boldly and passionately for Jesus!

Can’t see the video? Click here to view it in your browser.

Unfortunately, many ministry partners don’t know or are not taking advantage of them.

This is a guest post from Steve Raquel, a Social Media Consultant and long-time financial supporter of Campus Crusade staff.

As one whose family has supported many people in ministry over the years, one of the highlights is receiving an update on how God is using them.

We love hearing about your struggles, your triumphs, your personal updates and how to pray.  It gives us a way to stay connected to you and feel like the monetary or prayer support we provide on a monthly basis is making an impact.

The updates we get have varied over the years in different ways, but mostly from written monthly newsletters and some through email updates with attachments.

Taking it to the next level…

One of the first platforms I would recommend is an online program called MailChimp.   While it is along the same lines as Constant Contact and Vertical Response, I have had great personal experience using it and I think is the easiest and most cost effective ones out there.

For those who aren’t familiar with or are hesitating to use MailChimp, this blog outlines some of the key questions that tend to come up.

WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN EMAIL AND MAILCHIMP?  AREN’T THEY THE SAME?

That’s a great question and the answer is not really.

When people send out a email update with maybe a PDF attachment of their update, it is usually done by BCCing all the recipients in a generic message that is mainly a one-way communication.  However, in my mind, it has some significant drawbacks including:

• If someone’s email address changes, you’ll get a bounce back and will need to manually add/change that email for the future.
• The letters are impersonal on purpose, potentially leaving the recipient to feel like only one of many.
• The attachment is normally a pdf, which normally isn’t interactive.  You’ve sent it out via email mainly to save money on shipping costs, which is understandable, but it’s static information that isn’t very interactive.
• If you want to add someone to the list, then you will need to collect the information and manually put it in your address list and remember to add them to the next distribution.

On the other hand, MailChimp is a user-friendly email marketing platform that allows much more integration and flexibility for both the user and the recipient.   Some of the benefits include:

• The management of your distribution lists are managed online.  People can sign up and drop off without your involvement or management
• You are able to create simple “groups” that allow you to send various communications to different support groups (i.e. – monthly financial givers, prayer support, prospective givers) under the same account.
• The communication that is sent out is a custom designed emails with the ability to add links and photos easily to help spice it up.
• The cost to maintain an account is very affordable (see below for details)
• Since the creation and management of your communication is online, it is accessible from almost anywhere in the world.
• You can actually get some quality metrics on how well your email has been read, how many times people clicked on links on it and even where in the world people are reading your email communication.

DO YOU NEED TO KNOW A LOT ABOUT PROGRAMMING CODE TO USE MAILCHIMP?

You really don’t, which is great.  MailChimp has a relatively straight forward way of developing a customized e-newsletter design.  You can use a standard layout and/or if you have a little (and I mean a little) understanding of code and design, you can create a more personalized one.

In addition, MailChimp has great Q&A section, video tutorial and overall customer service forum areas (including for free accounts) that can help you get up and running short order.

HOW DO I USE MAILCHIMP TO MANAGE MY EMAIL LISTS?

MailChimp is similar to most other email management platforms in that you can upload an excel list of your support team emails and it does all of the calibration on their end.   Please keep in mind, these lists must already have agreed to receive email communication from you or you may get in trouble for email to an “unapproved list.”

Once your list is uploaded to MailChimp, you can always manually make any changes you need to moving forward and as you send up more communications through the system, it’ll give you some analytics on how they interact with your content.

Also, if you are concern about adding/subtracting people from lists, MailChimp takes care of that for you as well.  When people want to join your newsletter list, they can easily sign up via mail chimp and it is automatically integrated into your email list.

This can be done through a website link or Facebook fan page link (see below) or a tag that is at the end of every email sent out through MailChimp.  This is very helpful when your ministry recipient forward the email to others who aren’t on your list!

WHAT ARE THE COSTS TO MAILCHIMP?

Accounts are free to up to 500 people and a sending limit of 6,000 a month.  From there, the pricing plan goes as follows:

To see the more information about pricing, click HERE.

To me, this is incredibly affordable compared to other platforms and its ease of use once you learn it will be so worth it!

HOW DOES MAILCHIMP COMPLEMENT MY WEBSITE?

The great part of MailChimp is that it is a great complement to your existing ministry website, especially ones built on WordPress, for the following reasons:

• You can include a standard or customized “sign-up” box where people can sign up to get future communications from you.
• You can create auto RSS campaigns that auto-send any entry updates to your website directly to your entire email campaign list.  This way, you don’t even have to create a newsletter, just update your own website and it auto sends out a professionally looking newsletter that is customized to the names of each of your email list names including links back to your own website.
• If you have a Facebook Fan page for your ministry, you can add a customized sign up box there as well to help spread the word!

To create a customizeable sign up box for your website, you need to click on the “lists” tab in your account and then click on the “design signup forms” box on the left.  If you have an existing list, then you’ll get options on how to make it look right for your website.

To learn how to create auto RSS campaigns that sends updates to your email list from your website, you can click HERE to learn more:

Finally, you can find out how to add a sign up box to your Facebook Fan page by clicking HERE.

SUMMARY

There are too many ways to talk about how to use MailChimp for your ministry communication, but hopefully I gave you a glimpse on a couple of ways you can do it.  It is easy to use, affordable and allows you to stay in touch with your ministry partners in real time.

If you haven’t opened a free account, I’d recommend that you do so now by clicking here to check out how it can work for you.

If you have any other questions on how to use MailChimp or other related communication questions, please feel free to leave a comment below or contact me at sraquel@iovmedia.com.

Steve Raquel is online social media consultant who helps individuals and businesses navigate and succeed in leveraging social media through his company IOVMedia.  He and his wife have four children and live in the Chicagoland area and have been active in Campus Crusade since their college days at the University of Illinois. They support numerous Crusade staff around the world and are currently are part of the area leadership teams for Family Life’s Weekend to Remember, Art of Marriage, and Chicago Metro Campus ministries.   To learn more about Steve, visit his website at www.iovmedia.com.