Contagious Generosity

By Jason Coffey

If you’ve been following Canaan Group & Associates long enough, you’ve probably heard us talk about JOGs: Journey of Generosity retreats organized by Generous Giving. If we are friends, you’ve definitely heard me talk about JOGs. We love these short, small group retreats because we’ve been impacted ourselves by the earnest, vulnerable settings, and we’ve also watched donors flourish as they encourage one another in generosity.

I remember clearly one donor couple that was deeply impacted through their JOG experience. He owned a growing business, and he and his wife had a heart for the organization where I worked as well as many other missions. Over about six months, we discussed how the nonprofit I worked for fit into his Kingdom-minded, God-given passions. This particular ministry complemented the other missional work he loved, and he soon caught the vision.

After growing our relationship, I asked them to consider increasing their giving based on the business’s increased profitability. Already giving five-figure gifts, the couple soon doubled their annual giving.

The next year, we all attended the Celebration of Generosity event put on by Generous Giving. These events are like macro-JOGs, bringing about 500 people who want to learn to be more generous together into one room.

My friend was wrestling through significant questions: How to steward his company well, how to care for his employees well and compensate them generously, and how to also give generously. At the Celebration of Generosity, he was surrounded by many other business owners and people of means who were thinking through very similar questions.

By hearing from other generous people, this donor couple felt God showing them they can pursue a successful, wealth-producing business and care for their employees well and be generous to Kingdom-focused ministries as they sought to follow Him with everything they were given. By listening to other creative donor strategies at the gathering, they got excited to build their own strategy. Instead of only giving cash, they began giving appreciated stock which increased their giving ability by reducing their capital gains tax liability.

Generosity is contagious. All of these donors in one room, through the power of the Holy Spirit, fed off of each other’s ideas and excitement. This donor couple then wanted to share these conversations with friends back home, so they hosted two JOGs at their home. They invited several friends to attend and asked me to facilitate the retreats. It just so happened that one side benefit for me was that some of the people they invited were also donors to the ministry where I worked.

When facilitating JOGs, I get to participate as a peer, not as a gift officer. As a peer on our own giving journey, my wife and I get to talk through our own challenges, ideas, and possible goals for Kingdom generosity. While my friend also does this in JOGs with his peers, during the second JOG, he seemed reserved and quiet. He didn’t seem like himself. In my own vanity, I thought I might have done or said something that concerned him.

When I asked him about it after the JOG, he said, “I think God might be telling me that for the next ten years, I need to put 10% of the business stock into my Donor Advised Fund so that my wife and I can fund Kingdom giving and allow my employees to buy into the company. I’m just not sure what I think about that. It seems really radical.”

What an honest example of wrestling through generosity! Our relationship deepened as we became peers wrestling together and experiencing the contagious nature of generosity. Over time, the couple’s giving grew exponentially, reaching six figures just to the ministry where I worked—not including what they gave to other missions. They also served their employees by letting them buy stock and have equity in the company. They found that biblical generosity became more lifegiving as they became more generous. God was working His plan through them as they surrendered further in their stewardship of the assets He gave them.

All of this came about not because I was trying to raise the most money for the ministry but because God was working in their hearts as I was trying to care for the donors in their own generosity journey. I became a spectator in God’s story for their lives. The goal of JOGs is not to find that one donor who is going to grow exponentially in giving. Rather, it’s to care for the hearts of our fellow donors. 

One by-product is that some of those donors will give larger gifts, but the greater outcome is that more people will think strategically and deeply about how to give to Kingdom work for which God has given them a passion.