The Flourishing Culture Podcast Series Episode 28: The Power of Trust January 11, 2016 Al Lopus & Dan Busby Al Lopus: Hello, I m Al Lopus, and welcome to today s podcast. Today we re exploring a foundational theme for building and maintaining a flourishing culture, and that theme is trust. We re having a conversation with Dan Busby, the president of the Evangelical Counsel for Financial Accountability known as ECFA. Dan is a well-known and highly regarded leader in the world of Christian nonprofits. I ve known Dan for several years. Recently, Dan is the author of a book called Trust: The Firm Foundation for Kingdom Fruitfulness. Today we re talking with Dan about the role trust plays in Christian organizations. Hi, Dan, and welcome to our podcast today. Dan Busby: Well, thanks for inviting me to be with you on the podcast, and thanks for the great work you all do at the Best Christian Workplaces Institute. Al: Thank you, Dan, and the same to you. It has been a great privilege to work with you. I even remember a time when we were on the stage at CLA and we both had bow ties on. Dan: Yes, we made quite an impression. Al: So tell us a little bit about yourself and ECFA. Dan: Sure. Well, my career has been one in accounting, finance, and administration but always with a focus on churches and nonprofit organizations. It was about 25 years ago I began doing some volunteer work on some of ECFA s committees while working elsewhere but came on staff in 1999 and became the president in 2008. Last month, the ECFA certified its 2000th member, Mill City Church in Fort Collins, Colorado. We ve grown 50 percent in the last eight years, and while we primarily serve nonprofit ministries, over the last few years large churches have been our fastest growing segment. Today, over 30 of the 100 largest churches in the US are certified by ECFA. Today our members receive over $25 billion in Best Christian Workplaces Institute 1
charitable gifts and are supported by over 27 million donors. It s a thrill for me to have the opportunity to serve Christ-centered ministries through ECFA. Al: Those are some staggering numbers, Dan. That s just great work. Obviously, trust is a foundational part of that. Trust is a big word. What is the one big takeaway benefit for everyone who reads your new book? Dan: Well, big picture, I hope readers of Trust will take away how important trust is for their church and for their ministry. Today, whether it s in terms of our government, the candidate for the president of the United States, big corporations, and much more, the huge issue is trust. Can they be trusted? Today we live in a society that lacks trust, and churches and ministries are raising resources in a generation wary of institutions. Givers, volunteers, and board members are trying to discern whether they can trust ministries. As I ve said, trust has the power of a rolling wave, building a tsunami of good will for churches and ministries and, more importantly, for Jesus Christ. I love the quote from Max De Pree. He once said, When things go awry [and they always do], trust powers the generators until the problem is fixed. Al: That s great. Of course, there has been a lot written about trust. Covey has even written some work about trust, but I love the tsunami image you just painted. The subtitle of your book is The Firm Foundation for Kingdom Fruitfulness. Tell us what that first foundation is all about, and give us a picture of kingdom fruitfulness, especially for leaders in ministry. Dan: Sure. Well, without trust, our efforts for the King are impaired. Trust is absolutely essential. If we expect believers to be obedient in the stewardship of their resources, time, and talents, it simply requires a strong demonstration of truth-based absolute trust. As my friend Dr. Walt Russell would say, trusted ministries bless the world s people groups, and God the Father graciously prolongs the return of Messiah Jesus so they can all be brought into the harvest. My premise is very simple. Trusted governance plus trusted resource raising plus trusted resource management equals elevated kingdom outcome. Al: That s very well articulated in the book, there s no question. Dan, I think I might have interrupted you. You were going to make a comment, perhaps, about my reference to other books about trust. Dan: Yes, there are a lot of books that have been written about trust, which I think just underscores the importance of the concept. Al: In Covey s book on trust, kind of similar to your tsunami image, he considers that when there are low levels of trust it s like having a big tax on the organization, and when there are high levels of trust it s like there are great dividends that are continually being thrown off from the organizations. Dan: That s a great word picture. Best Christian Workplaces Institute 2
Al: Yeah. Dan, ECFA is all about financial accountability for ministry organizations. Have you seen a connection between the health of a ministry staff culture and a ministry s financial strength from your perspective? Dan: Well, a key outcome ministries hope to achieve today is donor loyalty. Sometimes I think we lack proper understanding about that. Harvey McKinnon once said, Donor loyalty is not about the donor being loyal to you; it s about you being loyal to the donor. So how can churches and charities be loyal to givers? There are a number of ways to do that but probably none more important than demonstrating loyalty in handling gifts that have giver restrictions. In the Trust book, I tell the story about Ray s wife Colleen, who struggled with cancer before passing away in 1999. At her death, a local hospital was making plans to construct a facility. Ray and Colleen had modest resources, but their son Troyal was wealthy, so Troyal began to talk with the hospital about making a $500,000 gift. The hospital even offered to name the complex after his mother Colleen. They showed Troyal mock-ups of the proposed building bearing her name, and so on. On December 30, 2005 (this is a true story), Troyal made a gift of $500,000 to the hospital for the new facility. Then in 2006 and 2007, the hospital had continuing discussions with him about the naming rights. In 2008, the hospital told him that the $500,000 gift he had made would be used for other construction projects, not for the facility they had discussed. In turn, the next year Troyal sued the hospital. Even though his agreement with the hospital was oral, the jury determined he was telling the truth, and in 2012, a jury rewarded Troyal the $500,000 gift back plus the maximum impunity damages, another $500,000, for a total of $1 million. The recipient of that gift was Integris Canadian Valley Regional Hospital in Troyal s hometown of Yukon, Oklahoma. Troyal is better known as Troyal G., Garth Brooks. Ironically, the hospital is located on Garth Brooks Boulevard. Truth is stranger than fiction sometimes. While this story involves a high-profile country music singer and a hospital, a similar situation could occur with a church or a ministry that does not have sufficient clarity about a specific-purpose gift it receives. I often say the larger the restricted gift, the greater the potential for misunderstanding between a giver and the ministry. This story I included in the book just underscores the importance of ensuring that all communications between a ministry and a giver are crystal clear regardless of the size of the gift. Again, it comes down to being loyal to donors. Al: Wow, that s a remarkable story. What were they thinking? Well, how about an example or a story of something that relates to trust in the kingdom outcomes? Do you have another one, Dan? You have great stories. Perhaps a ministry s financial strength and integrity? Dan: I spoke just last week with the CEO of one of our ministries. On average, our members today are seeing charitable giving grow at slightly over 6 percent a year. That s before adjusting for inflation. Yet the CEO told me the ministry she leads has grown 30 percent or more for the last several years. Our ECFA staff members have interacted with the leaders of that ministry over a significant period of time, Best Christian Workplaces Institute 3
and we ve communicated with them enough to understand that they are almost fanatical about demonstrating trust in their governance, in their fund-raising, and in their resource management. So I believe their ministry has been intentional about building a culture of trust. To be trusted as a ministry, they have come to understand they must be trusted in the details. This is where so many ministries sometimes go off the rails. They have a big dream, but they do not infuse trust at every level of the ministry. Al: I ve often felt that in ministries we re great on vision but not so great on the operational details. Now where does staff fall in that model that you ve articulated, Dan, governance, resource raising, and resource management? Is staff in that resource management bucket? Dan: Well, staff would be involved in both the resource raising and the resource management. If we re talking about a church, sometimes we use the softer word stewardship on the resource-raising side. If we re in a nonprofit organization, we ll often use the word fund-raising. But resource management or financial management, whatever terminology we may want to use, those are all roles where the staff is very significantly involved. Al: And also involved in governance in the sense of relationship with the board or governing group as well, right? Dan: Yes, top staff absolutely do that. Al: Thanks. That s great. In our engagement survey, Dan, which you re familiar with, we ve singled out inspirational leadership as one of the eight factors that contribute to a flourishing workplace. One of our questions is There s a high level of trust between leadership and staff in our organization. What are some of the benefits and behaviors that high-trust organizations tend to experience, from your perspective? Dan: Well, some might say the key benefits for high-trust ministries are that givers choose trust, so giving rises. Volunteers prioritize trust, so they have more volunteers. Board members value trust, so they have great board members. Collaborators embrace trust, so they work well with other organizations, and God honors trust. These are all true for high-trust ministries, but while they are true, I believe the key benefit for hightrust ministries is that they keep Jesus Christ on center stage. I think it is just this simple. Jesus Christ should always be the focus of Christ-centered churches and ministries. He should always be on center stage, not in the wings, and certainly not off the stage entirely. It doesn t take very many distractions in a church or ministry to move Christ off center stage. When Christ is on the center stage, we have the strongest opportunities to advance the truths of our faith. John Wesley once said our responsibility is to give the world the right impression of God, and I believe that is exactly what is possible when Christ is on center stage. Conversely, for low-trust ministries, Christ is not at center stage and may be off the stage altogether. Best Christian Workplaces Institute 4
Al: Just to play that through, Dan, when Christ is off center stage in these low-trust ministries, what kinds of behaviors characterize them would you say? Dan: I think low trust impacts churches and ministries in at least four ways. First of all, there s often internal dissension. In other words, without trust the office dissension machine runs at full speed and divides a ministry against itself, and that s just not a pretty picture. The second thing is disengagement. Where there s lack of trust, it causes staff members to disengage and tend to work in silos, and that s probably the most inefficient way a ministry can operate. Staff shifts from joyful service to turf protection. Then there s turnover. High performers want to work in a high-trust environment, but when trust is low, turnover is almost always disproportionately high, and ministries lose the very people they really want to have stay with them. Then finally, sometimes fraud enters the picture. Employees working in a low-trust environment may inappropriately feel justified to commit fraud. Low trust encourages a small theft. Then if they don t get caught, they move on to a larger theft. As William Arthur Ward once said, Once trust is tarnished, it is hard to restore it to its original glow. Al: It s hard to build trust and it s easy to lose it, isn t it? Dan: It really is. Al: Those are four very interesting outcomes you see in low-trust situations. We ll often describe four levels of health of organizational culture. The low side is a toxic environment, and you ve helped to describe that, where there s dissension, disengagement, high turnover, even fraud and dishonesty. We see that dishonesty even where people are afraid to speak the truth, so they won t fully speak the truth and, in fact, do have a tendency and feel justified in dishonesty or, as you described, even fraud because it becomes rationalized. Very interesting. Here s a hard question. You outline in your book a number of key truths and principles for creating trust in ministry organizations. One thing you don t address directly is how organizations change from low trust to high trust. Based in your experience, how does an organization with low trust actually move to a culture of high trust? Dan: First, I think a church or a ministry must clearly identify what has caused and/or what is causing low trust. If I were a consultant (and I m not), I would start at the top and work down. In other words, I would start with the governing board and determine whether the governing board demonstrates trust through their lives of the board members and in their actions. If not, it will be hard to address trust issues at other levels of the ministry. Then moving on, if the board exhibits trust, does the leadership team demonstrate trust through their lives and in their actions? Again, if not, it will be hard to address trust issues at other levels of the ministry. Trust almost always goes down the organization chart and rarely travels up. So I would go through the organization chart until the source of the lack of trust had been identified. Best Christian Workplaces Institute 5
Then the organization would have to introduce change to have a different outcome. Only then can a church or ministry begin to take steps to move to a high-trust plateau. In some cases, it may even require changing some of the players, changing policies and practices. It usually takes quite a little time and requires patience, but without change, a low-trust ministry has no viable future. Al: You ve outlined three elements of change: players, policies, and practices. As you say, you do need patience with that, don t you? Dan: Yeah, absolutely. Al: That s hard work. Well, Dan, thanks for being with us today. This has been a great conversation. I know the book has been well received. I certainly have enjoyed what we ve learned from you today, for sure, even the last comments about trust works top down. It starts at the top, governing board, leadership, and so on. Also those descriptors of what we see in low-trust organizations, from internal dissension How do silos exist? They start from low trust and disengagement. We oftentimes will see high turnover, even dishonesty. In faith-based Christian organizations that happens. Then I love your comment that trust blesses people groups and that God certainly blesses those who are trustworthy. I think that s all over the Psalms. What a joy it has been to have you on this podcast. Let me say that if you, our listener, have enjoyed today s podcast, you can find the transcript at blog.bcwinstitute.org. We d love to hear your feedback about our interview today. Please take a minute to leave a comment on our blog post. Remember, your leadership is a gift. Let s work together to be sure Christian organizations set the standard as the best, most effective place to work in the world. For Best Christian Workplaces Institute, this is Al Lopus. We ll see you next time. Best Christian Workplaces Institute 6