How to Increase Your Joy in Giving

It is no mystery that giving brings joy; we’ve all experienced it, and many studies have proven it. But did you know you can take active steps to increase your own joy in giving?

It’s possible, and it involves combining two very different giving strategies.

1. Being intentional with your giving and working to understand the impact you’ve made; and
2. Being spontaneous with your giving and leaving the outcomes to God.

I recommend devoting 80-90% of your charitable dollars to intentional giving and reserving 10-20% for spontaneous, Spirit-led giving. Let’s look at each type in more detail.

80-90% of your giving: Intentional, impact-driven

There are three simple steps:

1. take the time to identify the issues or causes you care about;
2. find “best-in-class” organizations to fund in those areas; and then
3. follow-up with organizations you’ve funded to learn how your funds were spent and the impact they had.

First, identify the issues or causes you care about.

In philanthropy, we call these focus areas. To discern your focus areas, I encourage you to consider what it might look like for you to give from a grateful heart and to give from a broken heart.

Grateful heart: What are you absolutely grateful for in your life? For me, an example is Young Life. I came to know Jesus as my Savior through Young Life, and I’m absolutely grateful for the way they present the message about who Jesus is and what He did for us.

Some of us are grateful for our churches, or for organizations that have helped family members – like hospice organizations or drug and alcohol treatment services. Maybe you just love animals and want to fund the Humane Society.

There is no right or wrong here, just an invitation to think through what you’re grateful for. It may give you clues as to the causes you care about.

Broken heart: What are the problems in this world that break your heart—the issues that keep you up at night or make you weep? For me, one of those things is that girls are being sexually exploited every day in our communities, suffering trauma and slavery—in present-day America! That breaks my heart, so some of my giving goes to organizations that fight sex trafficking.

Second, find best-in-class organizations to fund in your focus areas.

There are a variety of ways to build a list of organizations doing the work you care about. Once you have found a few strong candidates, I recommend calling or meeting with them and asking some of the following questions:

1. What is your mission?
2. Who is your target population, and how many are you helping each year?
3. What is your theory of change (e.g., how do you believe your programs/projects are going to benefit those you are trying to serve)?
4. Do you listen to the voices of those you are serving to ensure your programs are meeting their needs? How?
5. How do you measure your programs? What have you learned through those measurements over time?
6. What are your plans for the future (i.e., more of the same kinds of programs, expansion to a new population, new buildings/services/etc.)?
7. What is the most significant challenge you have faced in the past ___ years? How did you handle that, and will the lessons learned inform your future work?
8. What other organizations serve your target population in a similar way? How is your organization different from the others? Do you have partnerships with any of those organizations?
9. Please share an anecdotal story about someone who has been directly impacted by your organization’s work.

You don’t have to ask all of these questions; choose the questions that matter to you. Do your best to “listen between the lines” regarding how they talk about their organization and who they serve, not just what they do. Hopefully you’ll get a sense of whether they are good at what they do and how your funding would make an impact there.

Third, follow up to learn your impact.

Understanding and tracking your impact is the last part of pursuing intentional, impact-driven giving.

You can do this in many ways: go for a site visit, ask the organization for a custom report (which they are happy to provide if your gift size warrants it), read their annual report, or go to an event to learn how recipient’s lives were changed. Ask your contacts at the organization what other ways you can stay in tune with their progress. Any and all of these strategies will help you know whether the organization is doing good work, and whether you made an impact with your funds. That brings joy!

10-20% of your giving: Spontaneous, Spirit-led

Even with all its benefits, being intentional with all of our giving can limit our joy and impact. My suggestion is: don’t be intentional with all of your giving—reserve some funds for spontaneous things God invites you into.

Reserving some of our giving funds for spontaneous opportunities increases our joy in giving because:

• It connects us more intimately to the giving we are doing. It usually happens when we’re face to face with another human or presented with an opportunity to give in the moment.
• It puts us in a place to pay attention to what I call “the nudge” — that prompting from the Holy Spirit that urges you to do something.

Spontaneously responding to the nudge is great fun. It gives us the opportunity to truly partner with God on something he wants to do in the moment. That brings lots of joy.

So be intentional and spontaneous with your giving, and watch your joy increase!

“God loves a cheerful giver.” – 2 Corinthians 9:7