Paying It Forward

A pastor’s experiment proves beneficial to charities

Inspired by a Biblical tale and a Hollywood movie, a minister in Southern California started a movement with a pocketful of cash that encourages people to discover creative ways to help others. The idea, officially called the Kingdom Assignment, has been adopted primarily by churches around the country and overseas. But religious organizers who have created similar programs say that other nonprofit organizations could duplicate some version of the charitable venture.

Six years ago, Denny Bellesi, the founding pastor of the nondenominational Coast Hills Community Church, in Aliso Viejo, Calif., handed out $100 bills from the church’s coffers to 100 volunteers from the congregation. Each volunteer was instructed to use the money beyond the church in a way that would help others. During a church service 90 days later, the volunteers announced what they had done with the money.

The church’s original investment of $10,000 eventually inspired others to give, which turned into a windfall of more than $1-million for a host of good causes, such as supporting a Boy Scouts troop in an impoverished neighborhood and building a new homeless shelter.

This story of good works, however, didn’t end there. When word of the creative philanthropy spread — on television’s The Oprah Winfrey Show, and in the pages of Woman’s Day,Reader’s Digest, and scores of local newspapers — more churches decided to try their own variation of the $100 giveaway. While the original project ended almost six years ago, churches continue to launch their own programs. Mr. Bellesi, who now serves as interim teaching pastor at Lake Avenue Church, in Pasadena, Calif., estimates that hundreds of churches and organizations across the country have copied his congregation’s efforts.

“It feels like it’s the tip of the iceberg,” he says. “It’s an underground movement that keeps chugging along. When people hear about it for the first time, they have the same blown-away feeling.”

Better Than Writing a Check

Many church leaders, as well as charities that have benefited from the philanthropic experiment, echo his enthusiasm. “I think the Kingdom Assignment is very effective,” says Gary Marzolf, pastor at the First United Methodist Church, in Newton, Iowa, which recently completed a similar project. “It’s more effective than writing a check. We will never know exactly how lives are touched by it.”

Tom Vanderlaan, executive director of the Newton YMCA, which received money through the Kingdom Assignment, was impressed by the creative act of charity.

“I absolutely loved it and thought it was just awesome,” he says. The YMCA received a few hundred dollars for one of its camp programs and for scholarships to pay for YMCA memberships for needy families. The good works were especially welcome since the announcement that the household appliance manufacturer Maytag, which was bought this year by the Whirlpool Corporation, will be closing its Newton facilities, creating greater need for social services.

Inspiration From Hollywood

The original Kingdom Assignment came about because a philanthropic opportunity for distributing $10,000 from the Coast Hills Community Church’s mission fund had fallen through. Instead, Mr. Bellesi decided to divide the money 100 ways among volunteers from the church’s roughly 7,000-member congregation. At a Sunday service, he asked volunteers to come up front without first explaining what was in store for them.

He drew inspiration from the Bible, as well as a 2000 movie, Pay It Forward, starring Kevin Spacey and Helen Hunt, that revolved around the idea that someone who is given a favor should bestow an act of kindness on three people. The Biblical passage that the pastor shared with his congregation was the Parable of the Talents, which tells the tale of a man who gave his three servants talents (or money) and what they did with it. Those who multiplied the money were rewarded.

He and other pastors who have given their congregations the Kingdom Assignment say it can be adopted by other nonprofit organizations, and offer the following tips for doing so:

Promote unorthodox thinking. Creativity should be encouraged because it makes the donation more meaningful to both donor and recipient, says Jack Hawkins, pastor of Canyon Springs Church, in San Diego. Many of his members came up with resourceful ways to multiply the impact of the gift, but more than a dozen of the 84 volunteers simply wrote checks to charities. Mr. Hawkins says he wished he had done more to encourage his parishioners to use their gifts in a meaningful way: “Don’t just give $100 to the Salvation Army.”

Many of the parishioners did get creative and were able to multiply the dollars they gave away.

At the Fellowship at Cinco Ranch, in Katy, Tex., for instance, a teenager learned of a family who couldn’t afford a tombstone for a young child who had died. The teenager used her Kingdom Assignment money to stage a concert at the church, which raised $3,000.

A fellow congregation member held a Christmas party with presents for children who had evacuated the Gulf Coast and moved to Houston after Hurricane Katrina, discovering that community members were eager to contribute once they learned about the cause. The volunteer persuaded other people to donate invitations, decorations, and gifts for the event.

In San Diego, a Canyon Springs church member who loved shoes used her $100 to throw an open house for her friends and asked each of them to bring a new pair of shoes for poor people in Mexico.

Seek publicity. News coverage helped Terry Zwick, a member of the Coast Hills Community Church who participated in the original Kingdom Assignment, parlay her $100 into the creation of a battered women’s shelter, as well as a transitional shelter for women, which provides residents with skills and resources to prepare them for independent living.

Ms. Zwick and a handful of peers had talked for months about their desire to open a facility in California’s Orange County, but Ms. Zwick said the spark needed to get them started was the $100.

Hours after receiving the money, she shared what happened at the church with friends at a birthday party, who all contributed money. The owner of the restaurant where the party was held offered to donate food to the shelter.

People continued to respond to her requests for help, and some of the donations were substantial: One donor gave $75,000 toward the down payment for the shelter, and a construction company gave $150,000 to refurbish the transitional shelter.

Ms. Zwick’s efforts eventually attracted the press. “Every time I did an interview, I would receive oodles of phone calls asking, ‘How can I help?’” she says. “The Kingdom Assignment grew this ministry very quickly and grander than it would have been.”

In 2000, Hope’s House, the transitional shelter, opened in Dana Point, Calif., and two years ago, the battered women’s shelter opened. Rick Dunn, president of the Foundation for Hope, which oversees the facilities, says the Kingdom Assignment played a large role in making the charity a reality.

“It was God’s perfect timing,” says Mr. Dunn. “It really moved our timetable up significantly.”

The publicity can also encourage other organizations to try the charitable experiment. A local newspaper wrote about Kingdom Assignment participants at the First United Methodist Church, in Newton, Iowa, for instance, and news of their efforts spread to The Des Moines Register — and, eventually, to network television news. As a result of the publicity, an anonymous donor gave $5,000 earlier this year to a Des Moines church to try it too.

Be realistic. Don’t expect every Kingdom Assignment participant to think big, cautions Mr. Bellesi.

Many people will simply use the money to create small acts of kindness, and those modest gestures should be welcomed too. The event, he says, shouldn’t turn into a contest to see who can raise the most cash in the most ambitious fashion.

At the church in Newton, for instance, a congregation member broke down the $100 into smaller amounts of money, sheathed in plastic bags, along with an explanation of the Kingdom Assignment, and hid them in a grocery store, with the idea that shoppers would discover them.

Mr. Bellesi acknowledges that he and his wife, Leesa — who compiled Kingdom Assignment stories for the couple’s two books on the subject — got overly ambitious when they tried to expand the Kingdom Assignment in the wake of Hurricane Katrina last year.

The couple offered $1,000 for one church in every state in the union, in the hopes that participants would aid victims of the Gulf Coast storm. To support the project, the couple used some of the proceeds from the recent sale of their home, which they had put into a foundation. Each church had to promise to pass out the money to its parishioners, who in turn would have to use it to help hurricane survivors. The couple stopped their effort after churches in just 21 states got involved — far short of the 50 they set as their goal. “People got weary of Katrina,” he says. “If I didn’t get them right at the beginning, then it was forgotten.”

Keep the scale small. An organization can get overwhelmed if it hands out too much cash — and not every group will be able to afford the largess.

For organizations with a small membership, it is best to start modestly, suggests Ms. Bellesi, to make it easier to keep track of the participants. A small church with 50 or 60 members, for instance, should probably limit the number of volunteers to five.

Document the event. Typically, churches ask Kingdom Assignment volunteers to gather at a service about 90 days after the cash is handed out, to share their experiences with the congregation. Churches often videotape these sessions, while others also bind the stories into a book or post them on their Web sites. “It’s important that there be a lasting record,” says Mr. Marzolf, of the First United Methodist Church, in order to have evidence of good works and so that the project can serve as an inspiration to others.

Try variations to the $100 giveaway. Some churches get children involved by handing them $25 or some smaller amount of money. Each member of a Boy Scouts troop in San Diego, for instance, was given the challenge of doing something worthwhile with $25.

Mr. Bellesi’s former church, Coast Hills, ended up trying something entirely different. The church eventually started Kingdom Assignment 2, which asked members to donate something worth at least $100.

The church held a large garage sale on its parking lot, and some of its members sold items on eBay, raising more than $100,000 for a variety of charities. Other churches skip the garage sale and just ask members to sell something of value and donate the money to a good cause.

Profit from the good deeds. Many people who have participated in a Kingdom Assignment say they get involved in charitable good works instead of just writing checks, and their experiences can spur others to try. The project can also improve the standing of the church or a nonprofit organization that undertakes it. “It lets people know the church is outward thinking,” Mr. Marzolf says. “It’s not just trying to raise money for itself.”