Francis Wade | Will your church or NGO survive the pandemic?

ADVISORY COLUMN: PRODUCTIVITY

Are you concerned that your church or non-governmental organisation, NGO, may not survive the combined punches of a pandemic and a recession?

You should be. But there is much you can do to intervene and turn things around.

Most of us can appreciate the devastating impact of COVID-19 on industries such as education, entertainment, hotels, and restaurants, but there are other effects being felt in two sectors that have traditionally drawn strength from live gatherings of volunteers. Now that large assemblies have been banned, churches and NGO’s are threatened as never before by recent, unstoppable trends.

Threat to churches

While your church is primarily seen as a place of worship, let us assume that it is also an organisation subject to the same requirements as others: it needs manpower and funding to maintain its operations.

In particular, the Saturday or Sunday morning service plays not only a spiritual role, but it also serves as a commercial activity: fundraising. Traditionally, this has been driven by donations from live attendees.

In any recession, church elders would expect a dip, but this one is different. Their primary channel of creating value has been severely and indefinitely curtailed.

This has led to a dramatic change in behaviour on behalf of would-be congregants, particularly those who are lukewarm – which is the majority of them. Now, instead of putting on their Sunday best and sitting on a pew for the better part of the day, they are engaging in alternatives.

Some are watching their home church’s services online. Via Google Search, others have switched to more fulfilling broadcasts in other parts of the world. More than a few are simply distracted by social media, the news, exercise, giving the children extra lessons, and other activities.

The fact is, they are all picking up new habits that will become quite hard to disrupt once the ban on assembling is lifted. Consequently, your church’s recent drop in donated income may not be temporary. Neither is the reduction in attendance. And even when the bans lift, your elders will still have a recession to contend with.

Threat to NGOs

The challenge many NGOs face is a bit different: it includes their leaders. They don’t have the benefit of a permanent pastor and probably elect new executives every year or two.

Traditionally, each incoming leader-body learns its function from the one prior, primarily via face-to-face meetings. The NGO’s regular activities and fundraising events have also always been in-person. So has its annual general meeting, where dues are collected and elections are conducted.

COVID-19 has taken all of these away. Now, the leadership must engage, using unfamiliar online tools like Zoom. In many NGOs, retirees play an important role, but they are least likely to use such tools.

Unfortunately, the sum of these shifts threatens the existence of many churches and NGOs. Some have not responded well, going into hibernation, taking a wait-and-see approach. Their hope is that things will return to ‘normal’ someday soon.

Hopefully, your organisation realises this urgent, existential threat and plans to devise a new strategy.

New strategies, new skills

Start by crafting new commercial strategies and abandoning the old.

While your church or NGO may have built its existence on long, stable traditions, consider this a call to re-think everything. A mission of ‘continuing our tradition’ might need to be replaced.

Now, you must define a fresh destination, one that will appeal to a highly distractable audience wary of in-person gatherings. This should mean looking 5-10-30 years to the future to craft the details of a vision in which you are unique in meeting your followers’ needs.

Once your end-point has been defined, fill in the steps to be followed over the time period. On the commercial side, use metrics such as members, donations, and special- event income to show where your growth will come from. Include milestones along the way that describe the path to follow.

If your board lacks the skills necessary, draft new skills; co-opt younger persons who have them. For example, if none of your leaders have regularly attended a range of virtual services, include someone who has. Ask them for help in defining new ways to add value that appeals to millennials and successive generations.

Time is of the essence. Don’t delay because of pride. Instead, assume the worse: that Jamaica won’t have a vaccine for COVID-19 or achieve herd immunity until after 2021.

To save your organisation from extinction in the meantime, forsake any wishful thinking and embrace the fact that there are irreversible trends at play that are moving against you. Rally your members and show them that this isn’t about a temporary convenience, but an entirely new way to fulfil your mission.

Francis Wade is a management consultant and author of Perfect Time-Based Productivity. To receive a Summary of Links to past columns or give feedback, email: columns@fwconsulting.com