Missionary Fundraising | 5 Ways to Support Missionaries

In this article and video tutorial, I will share with you 5 practical tips to equip you to support missionary fundraising.

Unless you have been closely connected to missionary fundraising, it can often be hard to know the best way to help.

There are a couple of obvious ways, like giving money and praying, but there are other ways to support missionary fundraising that are often not thought of.

In this article and video tutorial, I’ll give you 5 tips to help missionaries fundraising. Whether the missionaries you support are friends, or people your church has sent, these tips will equip you to have a large part in encouraging and supporting the missionaries fundraising that you know.

How to Support Missionary Fundraising Video Tutorial

Below is a video highlighting 5 practical tips to help to learn how to best support missionary fundraising.

How to Support Missionary Fundraising

Below is a full breakdown highlighting the 5 ways to can help to support missionary fundraising.

1. Give

Now, this is the obvious one, right? If I asked 100 Christians how they can support missionary fundraising, they would probably all say ‘giving.’ I wanted to give a little extra perspective to those who haven’t been in the position of missionary fundraising.

When we fundraised, it caused a ton of anxiety in myself. We were leaving stable, consistent incomes to take on inconsistent incomes that were dependent on people staying up to date on their card information and sacrificing time and money to give to us.

We were very lucky to have so many people who did give and sacrifice. God is sovereign over that.

Also, I want to challenge your perspective on who you are giving to. Obviously, there is a person, or people, asking you to give to support their lifestyle to help them serve the Lord.

This is very difficult to remember at first, but most likely, the missionaries that you are supporting already share this perspective with you. This is something many people missionary fundraising learn early on (hopefully).

You aren’t giving to a person, but you are giving to the work of the Lord. You are giving money to help take the gospel to the other side of the world, or the nation, or to an inner city.

2. Read Their Updates

If you have been supporting missionary fundraising for a while, then chances are your inbox has often received missionary newsletters or other types of missionary fundraising updates.

I hope they come somewhat frequently. If not, I’d encourage you to tell the missionary you support that you would love to hear from them more frequently. Sending updates is an incredibly integral part of missionary fundraising.

Hearing from them more frequently helps in a multitude of ways.

1. It helps you remember you are supporting a missionary. This helps in case your card expires and you have to end up renewing it.

2. It helps give you new ways to pray for them frequently.

3. It helps you be able to share with others about the work of the Lord that you are regularly supporting. It could even encourage other people to support that missionary.

From my experience, being a missionary can feel extremely isolating. We would write weekly updates, and though our open rate was high, it sometimes felt like nobody was reading them.

We know this wasn’t true because people would tell us how much they loved reading our updates.

I would encourage you to read them and even respond to them every once in a while! This would be extremely encouraging to the missionaries you are supporting.

3. Communicate

Like I just said, missionary work can feel very isolating. Whether you are in a foreign country or even just in a different state, it is extremely easy to feel alone.

One of the greatest encouragements was whenever we had people randomly message or email us sharing how they have been thinking about and praying for us.

A great way to support missionary fundraising is to communicate with them.

Reach out to them and even just ask how they are doing. If that’s too much for you, simply sending a text message sharing how you are praying for them is an incredibly encouraging act of kindness.

4. Ask About Their Needs

When communicating with missionaries, ask if there is anything they need or anything you can do for them. If there is little to no history of communication, chances are they won’t really have an answer for you.

The more consistent you are in communicating with them, the more likely they are to share their needs with you. It could be something as simple as them wanting somebody to talk to once a month. Or maybe they have prayer requests that they don’t feel comfortable sharing with all the contacts on their newsletter.

When you know people missionary fundraising, it’s easy to think that all they need is money, but in reality there is so much more than that. A lot of what they need isn’t even just tangible things, but potentially just a friend to talk to.

5. Pray

The last way to support missionary fundraising is to pray for missionaries. I hope you receive regular updates on how you can pray for them each month.

I recently read a biography about William Carey, and it made me reflect on what it was like to be a missionary at that time. It must have felt nearly impossible to communicate all prayer requests, urgent or not, with people.

We live in an age that is saturated with technology. Though we are all aware of the many downsides, one of the positives is the ability for missionaries to communicate prayer requests to their patrons and prayer teams.

We live in an age where the church is able to see and support the work the Lord is doing on the mission field in a way we have never been able to in the history of sending missionaries.

I hope this resource encourages you as you continue to support missionaries in fundraising. If you enjoyed it, be sure to follow along, as we will release weekly content geared toward helping equip those fundraising for missions in a digital age.

Also, check out our course, Modern Fundraising for Missionaries, where we teach you how to fundraise in a digital age. We help you learn the latest techniques for your missionary fundraising journey.