It's Not About the Money: In Search of Grounded Fundraising

43.5 RECAP of Preparing for Fundraising Success

• Heather Winchell and Andy Brennan

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"Fundraising isn’t just a necessary evil. It’s the point where we’re drawn deeper into the body of Christ and into intentional, transformational conversations."

"The church needs you as much as the people you're ministering to. This isn’t just about funding—it’s about formation, for you and for the church."

In this recap episode, Heather Winchell and Andy Brennan reflect on their conversation with Aaron Gonyou from Unmuzzled Ox. They explore the challenges of ministry fundraising, the role of personal formation, and the importance of preparation and coaching. The discussion highlights the tension between faith and strategy in fundraising, the critical role of church involvement, and why fundraisers should embrace their calling rather than resist it.

Aaron emphasizes the importance of accountability structures, the power of clarity in fundraising pitches, and how ministry fundraising can either be a burden or an opportunity for growth. Heather and Andy also discuss common pitfalls in fundraising training and the importance of seeing fundraising as part of the ministry itself rather than just a means to an end.

The episode closes with an encouraging reminder: "You're doing a great thing. The church needs you. The Gospel moves forward when ministry workers are fully funded."

📌 Key Takeaways:

✅ Preparation is Key – Many organizations don’t fully equip their workers for partnership development, leaving gaps that need to be filled with intentional training and coaching.

✅ Fundraising is a Formational Process – It’s not just about securing financial support; it's about personal growth, dependence on God, and engaging deeply with the church.

✅ Balance Truth with Hope – Some organizations overemphasize the difficulty of fundraising, while others sugarcoat it. The key is "speaking the truth in love" (Ephesians 4:15).

✅ Accountability and Ownership Matter – Having clear coaching structures, billable hour tracking, and expectations helps fundraisers stay focused and effective.

✅ Clarity Wins – Just like a startup pitching on Shark Tank, ministry fundraisers need a clear, compelling, and practiced pitch to connect with potential partners.

✅ Fundraising is Ministry – It’s not just a step to get to the field; it’s a vital part of the mission itself. Reframing it this way can turn it from a burden into a joy.

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Heather Winchell:

What if fundraising is not just about the bottom line. What if it is about who you become and what you believe in the process, and what if the journey is bigger than you and your ministry?

Andy Brennan:

Welcome to season four of it's not about the money. Join us as we examine elements of ministry fundraising through the unique lens of personal formation. Let's dive in.

Heather Winchell:

Welcome back to the podcast today. It's just Andy and I here to recap our conversation with Aaron. He works with unmuzzled ox up there in Janetta, Canada, for those that don't know Chinese, and if you do know Chinese, that might not have sounded Chinese, my tones are bad these days.

Unknown:

Yeah, say it. Andy, janada, I don't know Canada. Is that what it is? I think so. Oh, man, okay, we'll

Heather Winchell:

have to look it up. Yeah. Anyways, welcome back to the episode, guys. We're excited to dig into the conversation we had with him. It was, I think, a really helpful conversation. And Andy, I don't know about you, but I just really appreciated that Aaron strikes me as a very earnest person. He feels very committed. Has a lot of conviction. You can tell he really wants to see ministry workers thrive and succeed. Yeah, and he has built his coaching around that. And

Andy Brennan:

I love how we on the podcast have a variety of voices and people that are coming at it from different perspectives. Some people for from a more kind of theoretical or like big picture perspective, and some people with more like, in the in the weeds and the very practical things that I feel like this one was a little more practical, so I was great,

Heather Winchell:

yeah, yeah. And really just taking a lot of his experiences and leveraging that to identify the kind of key stumbling blocks that he sees that can really stop somebody in the process of raising their support. Yeah? So, so helpful. Yeah, So has he mentioned? I think there was far more he could have said, but maybe let's just chat through what stood out to us from that which he did talk about,

Andy Brennan:

yeah, he emphasized right away, the role of preparation and unfortunately, it feels like for one reason or another, some organizations don't really fully equip their staff for partnership development, and I don't think that's necessarily an intentional gap they're leaving in their training, but for whatever reason, that's the fact. So I don't know, Heather, how did you feel about your preparation? If you can think back that far, did you feel prepared when you were first going?

Heather Winchell:

You know, in a lot of ways, I do feel like I did. I think with fundraising specifically there, there could have been a lot more preparation at the time, the company that I went with had a book, actually, Scott Morton's book, that they gave everybody, and then they had a coach that I met with pretty routinely, but outside of the expectation that I would read the book and implement what was in it. Yeah, there wasn't really any kind of training or instruction, and the coach didn't really even take me through those concepts, as much as they just held me accountable, which is super important. Yeah, accountability is key, and one of the primary ways that a coach comes alongside after the concepts have become convictions. But in other areas, aside from fundraising, I did feel very well prepared, yeah, and I think it was because actually, and this will kind of speak to other conversations we have in this season, but it's because I was sent by a church. A church sent a group of us in partnership with a sending org. So not only was the sending org doing their part to prepare us around the things that they would provide and their expectations, but the church also took a lot of proactive ownership in preparing us as well. Okay. Well, that's unique, right? That is unique, yeah.

Andy Brennan:

What about you? Yeah, mine was similar, I would say, minus the coaching and so maybe similar path, but just a few years earlier, where I got a book, I think maybe even the same book, maybe so was it friend raising.

Heather Winchell:

No, mine was Morton's fundraising your ministry, or funding your ministry

Andy Brennan:

was, I think, friend raising. And it very much like, here you go, like a DIY, like you'll figure this out. And I kind of wonder why there wasn't more training up front. And maybe this is my disinterpretation of the experience that fundraising is just it feels a little loose, a little foggy, a little bit like how the Lord's will just kind of works itself out. Like we don't always know why things happen or how things happen, or when they're going to happen, but. If the Lord's will is in it, then it's going to happen. So it kind of felt like that, and as it turns out, like that, it was enough. And that wasn't the obstacle that kept us from going on the field like the Lord still worked through that. But we were, I think we were well prepared. Otherwise. We came from a great network. We had good friends around us. We had grown up in the church, so we were maybe predisposed to succeed. So I don't think you can take that gamble with everybody. Yeah,

Heather Winchell:

so I think that it sounds like we both had really positive experiences of preparation, even though they maybe weren't ideal, yeah, in some ways. So yeah, certainly God can do it. And that reminds me of the conversation that will air next week for our listeners, with Stephanie and Danny Gutierrez. And they talk about how they had no training and the Lord worked it out, yeah, but still, if they could go back, they would want good training,

Andy Brennan:

yeah, yeah, yeah, there's a pattern there, yeah, unfortunately, and the part of the pattern is also that the Lord continues to provide in spite

Heather Winchell:

of that absolutely. I also thought it was really interesting that he said that a lot of organizations can kind of set the wrong tone by either over emphasizing that fundraising will be too difficult or under emphasizing the challenge. It can present kind of sugar coating it, yeah, and, and I can, I can see how people still kind of like lean on one of those extremes in some ways.

Andy Brennan:

Yeah, I wonder why they, they would do that. Um, how would you strike that balance?

Heather Winchell:

You know, so maybe this would be frustrating to somebody that I was coaching, but I think my answer would just be yes. It's, in some ways the burden is light, and in some ways it's a lot of hard work. It

Andy Brennan:

makes me think of Ephesians 415 and I just pause to look up. This up real quick. It says, But speaking the truth in love let us grow in every way into him who is the head Christ. So I think that balance of of candor, of truth, but also doing it in a hopeful way, of doing it in a loving way. I think both of those are important, and I think we have to be honest with the challenge that people are going to face, because what's the point of of not right? They're going to figure that out pretty, pretty quickly in in week number one or month number one, or whatever. It's just a matter of time. On the other hand, you don't want to leave them feeling completely crushed before they even start, and thinking that this is really a hopeless thing. And, man, if I get any donors, it's going to be, it's going to be miraculous, because you can't over emphasize also the importance of good momentum as you're going into those first few, right, too. So I think, I think both are important

Heather Winchell:

well, and honestly, that's part of the reason that we've set up our curriculum the way that we have. That's part of why you start with what you start with first, building a strong, stable foundation, kind of getting people comfortable in, yeah, biblically, getting people comfortable in the essentials, the the foundational truths before kind of getting into, you know, all of these other elements. Well,

Andy Brennan:

it's like, anything like, like, I wouldn't, as I'm teaching my kids to drive, I wouldn't take my 15 year old directly on the freeway. We're going to start in the parking lot. We're going to work on, you know, signaling and breaking and, okay, let's tap the gas pedal before we learn how to merge onto the

Heather Winchell:

freeway. Yeah, you're going to teach them the fundamental rules before you put them in action, right? Yeah, yep,

Andy Brennan:

check your blind spots. Well, let's, let's talk about the church's role, and he had a very clear opinion on how the church should be involved.

Heather Winchell:

Yeah, he had a strong conviction. And I think he actually even said that he does not coach anybody that is not being sent by a church. Yeah, yeah, which I can see how there's a lot of, I mean, certainly there's a lot of health in that connection. Totally, I think we've both had experiences where we have worked with people that, because of really unique considerations, do not have a church sending them.

Andy Brennan:

Yeah, this actually, it's interesting. This actually came up recently with one of the clients that I was working with, and for a number of reasons, and some of them, I'm sure were good, healthy reasons and other reasons. Yeah, who knows the client I was working with was not being officially recognized by her home church, and so I had a conversation with the missions leader. It was good, but at the end of the day. Okay, the reasons that that he had for not supporting this individual, it didn't seem like they were sufficient for us to deny sending her or equipping her or like, like, who am I to step in the way if God is actually calling her to go? So that's a difficult thing, because from a mobilization perspective, like we're all kind of mobilizing people for the mission field. This individual had a passion for the lost. Had been overseas before, was willing to do the work with fundraising, and so checked a lot of really significant boxes that, quite honestly, make her into, like this. We kind of joke about this. We're kind of looking for unicorns, because the kind of person who's willing to do all those things and has that perspective and has that heart like they're few and far between, ideally, yeah, we would have loved to have the church's blessing, and there's a lot of health and a lot of wonderful things that come out of that. But at the end of the day, she's still a member of that church, and she's still mobilizing people as donors from that church. They're not saying, Hey, you can't fundraise here, but we're just not going to have the official title sent missionary from this body. So yeah, that was, that was a hurdle that was something difficult to work through.

Heather Winchell:

Yeah, I think that in that circumstance, I would probably not necessarily raise a red flag, but it would be a yellow flag. I think it would warrant further questions, and not at all to put that person in a position of proving anything, but just to say, hey, you know, this isn't ideal. Actually, we would really love for there to be a church that's taking ownership on the other side of this for you. So let's just explore like what could be happening. There another circumstance that comes to mind for me is even just with Corey, one of the proviso coaches who actually will be on upcoming episodes. Shout out. Shout out to Corey. She currently is part of a Mission Board for her own church, and she's explained to us that because of qualifications, or, I guess, specific criteria, they have for their sent missionaries, namely, that their sent missionaries are church planting, very specifically, sure that there's other people that the Church will give money to, but they're not sent missionaries because they're not church planting, they're not the bullseye, right? Yeah? So, so I think that can also come up, but I think the heart of what Aaron is getting at with his conviction is just that it feels like it's a pretty universal part of the call, that there would be an internal call as well as some kind of external affirmation of that call. Yeah, right, right.

Andy Brennan:

And that's great. I've also worked with individuals who are like new believers, and they just started going to this college church where nobody really knows them. So I think, I think I'm on Aaron's side, absolutely, and I agree with him, like in a in an ideal situation, and maybe, like in 80 or 90% of the cases that does line up, the trouble comes from me when I'm the one that's saying, No, we can't do this right,

Heather Winchell:

right? You're just saying that you feel a different conviction in that you you don't set the boundary at you need a church before I coach you. No, you definitely have more follow up questions, but you don't have that boundary, right? Yeah, absolutely.

Andy Brennan:

And in the case that I mentioned earlier, as I did have further discussion with that than that member of the Mission Board, nothing really came to light. And I was trying not to be like, we don't want to, like, violate privacy and like, we don't have to get into the weeds and the mud and the ick, if that's what it is. But as I got into it, the the issues that were raised didn't necessarily, to me, dictate, like, a denial, like, like, yeah, like, we can't work with this person. Like, everybody that we send is broken. There is no missionary hero, like the Lord uses weak people. So that's the other dynamic that I'm trying to hold this right,

Heather Winchell:

right, right. So, yeah, that's great. Well,

Unknown:

let's keep moving. Yeah,

Heather Winchell:

something else that Aaron said that I thought was really helpful was just this idea. He said there's going to be pain, the pain of doing the hard work now, or the pain of not having full support later. Choose your pain. And yes, it is so good, because I can't tell you how many people I've seen, for one reason or another, mobilized without their full funding, and that does actually have an effect on them. Totally

Andy Brennan:

does. Yeah, it's always in the back of your head. There's always this nagging thought. I think maybe the Lord is calling me home because of that. So that's tough. And maybe the Lord is calling you, if you've been on the field for 1015, years. Maybe the Lord is calling you to re engage some of that, to re engage the process and to kind of disruption. Yeah, the. It's going to be disruptive either way. And just get just, just, I don't want to say, get over it, but just like, just realize that this is the reality, and it's, it's a good pain, it's a good disruption.

Heather Winchell:

Yeah, it's kind of like when you have a newborn, you're expecting it to just be totally disruptive, right? And so you're like, able to bear up under that, versus when your kids are all older, and for one reason or another, you get woken up in the middle of the night, every night for something, right? Yeah, somebody wet their bed, somebody had a nightmare, somebody sick, whatever. It's like harder to bear up under it when you're expecting that. It should all just be fine, yeah? So I think it's just helpful to not, I don't know, not project gloom, but to just say, Hey, this is going to be disruptive. I'm stepping out to mobilize people for the kingdom, and that's going to be disruptive, at the very least, because we have an enemy that doesn't like that, yeah, it

Andy Brennan:

would be like a new parent saying, Man, this parenting thing is hard. Am I doing it wrong,

Heather Winchell:

right? It's like, no,

Andy Brennan:

that's just is hard, yeah, yeah. And also really sweet, and also fantastic, right? And also life changing, and you're also hard, yes, all those things together. Then he goes on to talk about the importance of clarity. He draws this analysis or metaphor from, like, somebody walking into Shark Tank, and like pitching their new idea. And I have a friend who did that recently, and he's pitched a bad idea, no, pitched to Shark Tank. Oh, and I think he got Mark Cuban to to fund his project and find him online. He's like, got he makes those huge hats that you can see at all these sporting events. And so I was just looking at his Instagram lately, and he was like, here I am at the Women's Open or whatever it was. And here's like, Jelly Roll wearing the hat. Here's me with Aaron Rodgers. I'm like, holy cow. Anyway. So he was very thoughtful about his pitch, and I think he memorized it and he practiced it. So why do we think that we don't need to do that with our ministry pitch? I wonder,

Heather Winchell:

because I think it's, I think people legitimately want to not come across trying to sell something. Or I think it's hard to hold the tension of authentic or I think we feel like it will be hard to hold the tension of authenticity and preparedness, because I think as humans, we just tend to over emphasize one or the other. We

Andy Brennan:

don't want to come across too shiny or too polished. Yeah, polished. Yeah, yeah. We want to be we know that authenticity is important, but do we have to sacrifice authenticity if we're going to be prepared? And I don't think so.

Heather Winchell:

No, yeah. But I think that there's, again, I think because we live in such a culture that has, like, a lot of strategies or formulas or tactics to kind of like optimize, or this is the way it should look, or this is the thing you should say, or here's a template just use this. I think that it's a lot of work to find your own voice and practice speaking it well.

Andy Brennan:

Well, that's, that's a great metaphor. Of it makes me think of a metaphor rather of like, if you're learning to write a novel, you want to learn the pieces of a story. You want to learn the three act system, and you want to learn that, oh, I should have a inciting incident at this point, I need a climax and I need a resolution, but it takes a while for you to find your voice. So in the same way, I think you need to have some structures walking into a fundraising meeting, and the more you do that, the more you're going to find your voice too. But sometimes we need that scaffolding to keep us on point and to keep us focused on what's important and to make the most use of the time that we have, because that time is valuable, and I don't think you get a lot of social capital if you, if you continually don't honor that time like you just, you're continually draining that and there's, there's a limit that you can do that. So I think there's people that are going to give to you regardless, because they have a relationship with you, right? There's, there's your inner circle, your close friends, that I don't care if you're going there, there or there, I'm gonna give you. I'm gonna give to you because I know you and I trust you. So I don't think that that's what he's talking about. Is reaching those people. I think he's talking about reaching those air quote, swing voters that need a little more information, right? They've got a few more options that they're considering. So when you go to them and you're prepared and you show them, okay, here's the big picture that that I here's the big part of the problem that we're that we're addressing, but here's the little idea, here's the day to day, here's the the very practical thing that my ministry is going to address. And here's how you can be a part of that. They need to, they need to see that it's hard for them to take it on, on faith, if they don't know you that well.

Heather Winchell:

So something that he talked about, that actually, I think you've kind of implemented in one of the companies you work with, is just this idea that people are able to come on to staff while fundraising. I know that you work with a company where, traditionally, people don't come on staff until they are right, fielded, right, right. But yeah, so I thought that was I that was an innovative approach. I thought that was cool. I think

Andy Brennan:

it's genius, and we're still in the infancy stage of this, I would say. But so far, it's been well received, and there's some, you know, logistical hurdles to work through, but I'm really looking forward to seeing this, because I feel like, man, there's just so much more ownership when somebody sees Okay. Fundraising is my job right now, and that's tough because I work with a lot of people who have very full calendars, very full schedules, and it's like, well, where do I squeeze this in? I'm at school full time, and I'm working this part time job, but let's substitute that part time job, like you gotta go to school, but let's swap this out. And you'd be surprised. I think what you can do with a little bit of intentionality, consistency right over intensity. And if you just have a five hour a week job, I'm like, if I got the whole semester with you, I think you can get a lot done in five hours a week. Oh yeah, of intentional work. Oh yeah, that's good. Yeah, work with that.

Heather Winchell:

Something else I wanted to just highlight is he spoke to the importance of having strong accountability and accountability structures like in the HR scene. And I do think that's really, really helpful, even though it might feel rigid to people, and certainly I think you don't want to make it more rigid than it needs to be, but having some kind of, like, firm expectations can actually be a real gift. Yeah,

Andy Brennan:

that's a great point. And so the way that works for us is we've identified things that we would call billable and so here's all the things that you can do as a billable hour. So it's everything from setting up meetings to hosting meetings to sending out letters to sending texts to just talking about your work. But there's also their coach who was checking their hours and is holding and kind of asking them if they need to, oh, what did you do from that hour? Not not as a I'm checking up on you, but let's just talk about how that went,

Heather Winchell:

and how effective do you feel? Like it is,

Andy Brennan:

I think it will be very effective. Yeah, yeah. I think it's going to be a game changer for some people. I don't think it makes sense for everybody. I think some people are out of school and they're in their career, and they don't, they don't really need the money. So in our situation, we're effectively, we're we're adding funds to their budget, and so they're just drawing on that. So it's not like we are. Our organization has this pool of money that we can just pay people out of right? But for most people, it makes sense, and I think it will make sense, so I'm excited for that cool, very cool. Any closing thoughts about, if you had to take one nugget from this whole episode and encourage somebody who's in support based ministry, what would it be?

Heather Winchell:

You know, I really, really appreciated the way he closed out our episode when he said, You're doing a great thing. The church needs you. The Gospel moves forward when ministry workers are fully funded. Amen. I do think, you know, we talk about how this isn't just a formational process for you, but it's a formational process for the church as well. And so I love that he emphasized, the church needs you as much as the recipient of your quote, unquote ministry, yeah, needs you and, and, really, I don't know it's like, in a sense, nobody needs you, like God doesn't need you to do this thing. His

Andy Brennan:

works gonna move forward regardless, right? And

Heather Winchell:

He will use you, and if he is going to use you, man, he is worth giving our all.

Andy Brennan:

And it's also that formative piece where it's not just about how he's going to use you, but what he's going to do in you. Yeah, always, like always fundraising with its kind of inherent dependence, I think is a beautiful piece of that ministry puzzle. And I think that's something that we should embrace, not avoid it or bemoan it. Or, man, how awesome would it be. And unfortunately, I think sometimes even fundraisers, even ministry workers, even missionaries, can say, can see fundraising as a necessary evil. And I, man, I would just love to flip that narrative across the board, 100% for people just to say, You know what fundraising is like. It's a highlight. And it's not just the fundraising, it's the partnership, it's the intention. Conversations that it forces me to have. It's the it's the pointing me back into the body of Christ that it that it forces me to do. It's a wonderful part of the design. Yeah,

Heather Winchell:

I would agree. All right, well, I think that's a wrap on this recap. Andy, thanks for being here.

Andy Brennan:

Hey. Thank you. Heather. Good. It's not about the money is presented by provisio fundraising solutions. Provisio equips support based workers with flexible training, practical resources and one on one coaching. Find out more at provisio fundraising.com you.