Let’s take a closer look at organisational governance through the eyes of Martha during her lunch meeting with a potential donor. Read the case study and answer the questions that follow.
The lunch wasn’t going at all as Martha had anticipated. She had been looking forward to this meeting all month. Edward Zhao (~) was not only a successful businessman in Dongguan, near Guangzhou, but he was also well known for his philanthropy, particularly in support of the migrant children of the families that filled the city’s manufacturing plants. Zhao came from a migrant background himself. He was the first in his family to graduate from a university, and his entrepreneurial skills had allowed him to build Star Enterprises into one of the largest contract manufacturers of plastic toys for global brands like Fisher-Price, Mattel, and Hasbro.
Martha was from Shenzhen, about 75 km south of Dongguan. After finishing at University, Martha first started her career in a big tech company as a project manager. After some years at the firm, Martha realised that her true passion was spreading the name of Jesus through sports ministry. When the sports outreach that she had been volunteering at began to grow she felt called to give it her full attention.
She founded a program and called it Life Lived Large (L3). With funding from some of the members of her church and the government approval for her new non-profit, L3 grew in leaps and bounds; even being featured in the local media after just a few months of operation.
As the reputation of the program grew, Martha was inundated with requests from other cities in the Pearl River Delta area for help to start similar programs. She was hesitant to spread her L3 staff too thin and wasn’t sure that the organisation had the capacity to expand at this point in its life. One of her staff, a young man from Dongguan, suggested that his hometown was an excellent candidate for an expansion prototype. It was only an hour and a half drive from Shenzhen and, if they could raise the needed funds, they could hire the staff and build needed capacity to expand without jeopardising the Shenzhen program. He reminded her that Dongguan had a great profile for their type of outreach. Dongguan, between Guangzhou and Shenzhen, employed vast numbers of rural factory workers, producing electronic items and other hardware like computer peripherals. However, it was among the poorest of China’s large cities, dominated by low-wage-earning migrant factory workers. These were the type of people Martha and her team felt called to reach. Additionally, the young worker mentioned that his uncle, Edward Zhao, a man of deep faith and a faithful philanthropist, was one of the most credible and respected business leaders in Dongguan.
Five months later, Martha found herself sitting across from Zhao, describing the program, and asking him if it was something he could pray about supporting. She was certain that, if he agreed, other like-minded business people in the greater Dongguan area would fall-in behind him.
As she drove south back to Shenzhen, reflecting on the lunch, Martha found herself a bit unsettled. She really did feel she had what it took to run L3. She and her staff had the expertise to achieve the growth and ministry they had seen the past four years. She was a committed believer, truly following God’s call on her life – she did not need to be held accountable like a small, disobedient child. Then why, she thought, did she find Zhao’s questions so unsettling? Why did she sense, intuitively, that despite his positive observations about the ministry, he wasn’t going to donate?
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