at-risk populations Archives

by The Rev. Ken Howard
at-risk populations

This blog post is part of a series on strategies and tools for helping congregations survive and thrive in the face of the COVID crisis.

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From what I am hearing from most of my sisters and brothers of the cloth, it would not be overstating the case to say that the Coronavirus pandemic has turned their lives as faith leaders upside down, along with just about every idea they have about how faith communities are “supposed” to operate. It has begun to seem like every task has become incredibly urgent and they are running as fast as they can just to keep up with the havoc the COVID crisis is wreaking with their congregations and the (sometimes) at-risk populations they serve.

So how do we move past this “tyranny of the urgent” and get out ahead of COVID-19 with a little short-term organization and a little longer-term planning?

One way to do this is through data mapping and analytics. Data-mapping is a way to visualize all the data bombarding us – and our congregations and neighborhoods – in context. Analytics are a specialized form of data-mapping that help us analyze, evaluate, and make decisions based on the data before us.

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By Mary Frances

We tend to expect charitable giving to go up during a national crisis, but then the COVID-19 crisis isn’t your typical crisis. It’s hitting us in multiple places at once. Health, home, employment and financial security, both short- and long-term, all feel very much at risk right now. So we might expect that congregational giving could go down at this time. Amazingly, people have the ability to rise to the current challenges. The Center for Disaster Philanthropy and its partners have been tracking donations since the start of the COVID-19 crisis. As of March 26, 2020, people and corporations have donated over $2.9 billion dollars to disaster- and health-related organizations. People are still giving.

Of course, those giving numbers are national and perhaps even reflect some international donations. What can you expect at the local level? Can you expect your congregation to continue giving at the level it has in the past? Can you expect giving to increase? The Neighborhood Missional Intelligence Report (NMIR) from FaithX can provide you with some answers. This two-page report contains over 40 data points and several of them can guide your expectations and planning in a time like this.

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