Start & Grow Your Nonprofit Podcast · Tim Needham

Episode 45 - Awkward is Awesome: Bold Moves and Breakthrough Moments with Greg Stier

·33 min·2 clips

Greg rejected a $5,000 check because the donor offered it with the wrong motive.

1. Start & Grow Your Nonprofit Podcast Episode 45, "Awkward is Awesome," examines bold decisions and breakthrough moments with Greg Steer of Dare to Share Ministries. 2. Host Tim Needham interviews Greg Steer, while Mary contributes questions about nonprofit fundraising and donor relationships. 3. The episode asks how nonprofit leaders can use painful data, prayer, and honest donor conversations to keep their organizations aligned with mission. 4. An outside research project found that 76% of students leaving Dare to Share conferences were actively sharing their faith. 5. Six months later, the reported share of actively evangelizing students had fallen to 36%, which Steer initially experienced as a serious failure. 6. The researcher told Steer that 36% of a youth group sharing faith was not terrible and suggested studying groups that maintained their results. 7. That follow-up work identified seven core competencies and values that became the basis for the book Gospelize Your Youth Ministry. 8. Steer says newer research found gospel-advancing youth ministries produced three times more teens discipling teens and ten times more gospel conversations per student. 9. The comparison Steer gives is 50 gospel conversations per student per year in the newer ministries versus five in the comparison group. 10. Dare to Share's early years relied on prayer, volunteers, event fees, and what Steer calls "duct tape" when money was scarce. 11. Steer says the first four or five years were especially difficult, including a period when he and employee Debbie faced breaking an office lease because the organization had run out of money. 12. While part-time at a church, Steer received no more than $15,000 per year and gradually learned development through seminars, trial and error, and board coaching. 13. He contrasts Dare to Share's earlier 50% development and 50% conference-revenue model with its later 92% fundraising and 8% registration-and-fee model. 14. During the Great Recession, Steer says Dare to Share laid off half its staff, an experience that changed his approach to prayer. 15. One unusual gift was a 1998 Brooks and Dunn tractor-trailer worth $135,000, exchanged after 30 free Dare to Share conferences for sound and lighting support. 16. In Lincoln, Nebraska, Steer expected 35 business people at a breakfast but met one attendee who later pledged one million dollars after selling his business. 17. Steer's fundraising framework includes a clear vision, a workable strategy, relationship-building, and roughly six or seven updates or conversations before one financial ask. 18. The interview repeatedly returns to the phrase "awkward is awesome," applying deliberate silence to fundraising asks and connecting donor conversations with evangelism. 19. Christian nonprofit founders seeking practical fundraising stories and faith-centered leadership lessons. 20. Listeners seeking secular fundraising tactics without religious framing might skip it.

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