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On Mission 2022
In traditional partnership development, missionaries seek financial support based on personal relationships. But what if it could also go the other way around? What if partners could find missionaries too?
There are “strategic partners” out there who want to support missionaries contributing to a strategic goal they have. There are also people who have recently been impressed with the desire to be part of missions, but don’t happen to know any missionaries personally.
In both of these cases, these potential partners have not been given the proper tools to effectively find missionaries. Engaging these partners more fully could make a huge impact on missionaries raising support.
The Other Direction
A strategic partner is someone who has decided to support missionaries with a specific goal in mind. Given this strategic goal, they then try to find missionaries who are already contributing to that goal. For example, someone might have a heart for a particular country and want to support missionaries serving there. Or they might feel that there is a need for tech savvy workers in missions. Another person might want to support missionaries reaching a particular people group, such as Muslims. The list could go on.
A second group of people are those who have recently been impressed with the desire to be part of missions. This could be as the result of a sermon or small group meeting they attended. They feel they should be contributing something, but don’t know any missionaries to support. With the proper tool, they could find missionaries they could relate to or whose ministry resonates with them. They may be inspired to partner with them.
But, this group of potential partners has a problem. How do they find missionaries contributing to their goals?
Suppose someone wants to support a missionary employing IT skills, how would they find one? They could contact one mission organization after another asking if by chance they have a missionary doing IT work who needs support. Or they could visit countless websites hoping they list job skills for their missionaries and their support levels. Both of these are very labor intensive. They could ask their church or their circle of contacts, but that could be very hit and miss.
The same problems are encountered for just about any criteria.
The Solution
To fully engage these groups of potential partners, the best solution would be a single website that could collect information about missionaries in need of support from all organizations, and structure it in a searchable format. It should be searchable by location via a map, and be able to be filtered by things like job skills, areas of impact, their current support level, etc. It also should not take a percentage of the donations, as that makes the job of raising support harder again.
Personal connection between a partner and missionary is also crucial to the missionaries success. Partners should be praying for and encouraging their missionaries along the way.
Ergatas has created such a website (ergatas.org). Missionaries can sign up on the site for free, creating a profile that describes their ministries, and entering other information in a searchable format. Site visitors can freely use the site to search for and find missionaries with ministries they believe in and are passionate about supporting.
To encourage personal connection, Ergatas has an in-app contact form that allows potential partners and missionaries to communicate anonymously so they can get to know each other better.
With Ergatas, an entirely new group of people can be fully engaged for the Kingdom, helping missionaries reach full funding faster.
Find out more at ergatas.org.
This is submitted by Kevin Horan of Ergatas. Ergatas is a Missio Nexus member. Member organizations can provide content to the Missio Nexus website. See how by clicking here.
