Making an Impact!

Thanks for your thoughtful comments! We are encouraged by your thoughts, questions and prayers. This has been an incredible experience for us and it means a lot to be able to share it with you.

To answer Pat’s question, we have been inspired by the joyful personalities, incredible hospitality, and dedication of the GHAFES team. They work incredibly hard and we are amazed at the impact they can make with very modest resources. It is clear that they are fueled by a genuine, all-encompassing love of God and desire to make the world a better place.

Our sessions with GHAFES staff on Friday proved very successful. We built on Thursday’s sessions on strategic positioning with discussions on communications, fundraising, and alumni tracking principles and tactics. For communications, Sam outlined several basic principles, including:

• Rule of Three - you should give three information “gifts” before asking for anything
  
• 360-Degree Touch - the practice of examining how your target “consumes” information and then identifying the most effective communication methods to use with your target
  
• Message Overload - the need to streamline our message content and volume, and to consider “what’s in it for them”.

We split the staff into three groups to identify how these principles apply to students, younger alumni and older alumni. They really enjoyed mapping the communications methods, and it was a good learning experience for us because we learned that university students in Ghana don’t use email like students in the US. Rather, they rely on text messages and poster boards around campus.

Then Loralynne led an interactive session on fundraising to identify how GHAFES can move from “fundraising” – asking for money – to “friend-raising” – developing relationships, cultivating interest and inspiring trust as a more organic process to grow support. She led the group through some different approaches to fundraising, and they staff then broke into three groups to brainstorm fundraising strategies specific to the three stakeholder groups. Throughout the session we tried to emphasis that it is important to remember that people contribute in different manners – money, time, prayers, in kind goods, and to ask people for the type of giving that is going to work for them. It is also crucial to recognize people for their contributions, especially the people that have been supporting GHAFES for decades.


The last hour on Friday was an open discussion on how GHAFES is collecting and updating alumni contact information. We first mapped the current process flow and identified key problem areas. Then, we split into three groups, and asked each group to identify three major challenges and two potential solutions for each challenge. As we reconvened it was exciting to see agreement on the major challenges as well as resolution on solutions to those challenges. We proved them with the idea to develop an Alumni-in-Training program to meet with the final year students at each campus, directly gather their contact information, give them information on benefits of being GHAFES alumni, and articulate the importance of alumni to GHAFES. They seemed interested in this idea!

We concluded our sessions with GHAFES by passing out a one-page strategic communications plan template, and helping them fill-in the information based on the outputs from all our sessions. It was powerful to see the lights go on in their eyes as they understood how it all comes together!

On Saturday we attended an all-day strategic planning offsite with senior GHAFES leaders and the Chairman of the GHAFES Board of Trustees. The chairman, a very successful entrepreneur, is an energetic visionary and was thrilled with the output of our sessions this week. We and the GHAFES leaders firmly believe that God has called us here and aligned us all to accomplish something together. Perhaps the most powerful moment was when the Chairman asked how they would communicate the value GHAFES delivers. The General Secretary volunteered that GHAFES is about developing the next generation of Christian leaders with integrity, who will change Ghana and the world. Our hearts burst to hear him say this because it was a direct result of our sessions! Wow! That got everyone excited and kicked off a discussion about further strategic planning that lasted late into the night.

So our work is far from done! We agreed to advise GHAFES leaders as they develop the organization’s first comprehensive strategic plan. And we are developing recommendations to present to the Associate General Secretary of IFES next week to roll out a similar process in the other 153 IFES national movements around the world. We are not sure how far God wants us to take this, but are prayerful to discern His will for us.

This has been such an amazing experience! It is incredibly rewarding to use skills and techniques we learned in the classroom and the workplace to help a non-profit organization we believe in, and we have developed an even deeper appreciation for GHAFES’ mission. Developing Christian leaders with integrity who will be change agents in Ghana and Africa to overcome corruption and encourage progress is a powerful proposition. GHAFES alumni are some of the most successful leaders in Ghana, including businesspeople, government officials and pastors.

We strongly believe that if we can help GHAFES and other IFES national movements instill Christian values and leadership skills in students, we can be part of something much bigger than ourselves - we can truly help change the world. The Chairman said something that really hit us and we encourage you to think about this: God blesses us with wealth and opportunities not to improve our standard of living, but to improve our standard of giving. And it is through our faith in God that we are able to succeed.

How are you using the many blessings that God has given you – money, education, talents, connections, etc – and your faith to make a difference and give to others?

Us with the GHAFES team