2024 Ministry
Innovation FUND
Missio Nexus is seeking out mEmber Ministries who are innovatively engaging in evangelism, church planting and discipleship among the unreached.
The Missio Nexus innovation fund, offering micro, macro, and collaborative grants, is now open for applications. This fund aims to inspire innovative thinking and practices within the North American Great Commission Community, fostering diverse work and cross-cultural proclamation of the gospel.
The fund is particularly interested in groundbreaking ideas that can bring about transformative impacts on ministries and reach the unreached. Emphasizing a human-centered approach to innovation, it values qualities such as empathy, creativity, and iteration.
The application window for the fund is now closed as of March 1, 2023.
We are now reviewing applications, organizations who submitted applications will be updated on status in May and June of 2023. The next application window should open again in December 2023.
Application links and key information are at the bottom of this page.
Introduction to the Innovation Grant Process
Your innovation SHOULD...
The Big 3 for us are Church Planting, Evangelism, and Discipleship. Your innovative approach must fuel and further one or a combination of these contributors to gospel proclamation among the unreached.
If you have a new approach that is an iterative change from a past solution, the next question is how it improves upon existing or traditional approaches. Your project should have a strong argument for its approach and be more viable, impactful, or cost-effective than past solutions.
As we seek innovative solutions, we are not looking to invest in standard boilerplate projects. To meet our criteria, your project should be a novel approach that differs from solutions already widely practiced. We are looking for originality, uniqueness, and distinctiveness.
Especially in our Macro grants, we are seeking innovative projects that have the potential to scale to benefit people way beyond those focused on this project. Scaling can take place through any number of ways – we seek plans that have the most credible plans for scaling, sharing, and future collaboration to impact the global missions movement.
We look for innovative projects that have defined teams working together to solve problems they are tackling and understand the context in which they are working. Applicants should be able to clarify who their team is, what their roles are, and how they will work to execute the project.
We are looking for projects that pursue a pathway of empathy, definition, ideation, prototyped iteration, and testing. We are not looking simply for ideas but those that have, to some degree, gone through this process.
Your innovative project must be ready to be implemented upon receipt of the funds. If your project needs more work before putting it to the test, then we recommend you apply next year. There are expectations for reporting back in 12 months that the project was executed to the best ability of the team and has made measured progress.
End user empathy is essential to determining the viability of the projects. The more unique and descriptive the preferences of those being impacted are understood, the more likely the project will have the intended impact.
Your innovative project must be informed by evidence of what works. This evidence might focus on the changes in the lives of the unreached or how evidence on how your solution can be deployed or scaled successfully. Our expectation of the level of evidence increases with the level of funds requested.
Each applicant will define the quantitative and qualitative metrics that they seek to be held to. We are not seeking to place an arbitrary set of metrics on projects but want those to be defined by the project leader to ensure the metrics are achievable and defined to successfully implement the project.
Especially for our collaborative grants, we are seeking multiple organizations that are working together in unique ways to proclaim the gospel among the nations. We are seeking active partnerships that demonstrate an ability to work together and have already completed successful joint projects.
We are looking for organizations that demonstrate a willingness and passion to be a catalyst among the Great Commission community. As this fund seeks to push forward the community, we desire to partner with those that have the greater mission movement in mind and will be open to collaboration and sharing.