# Growth-Dependent Funding Turns Donors Into Funders of the Ask ## Claim Once an organization must keep expanding to stay financially viable, each new campus, school, or property adds a permanent cost that the next appeal has to cover, so marginal gifts increasingly fund the act of fundraising and maintenance rather than the original mission. <!-- atomicity: 1 idea ✓ --> ## Scope & conditions - Applies to any donation-dependent institution that treats growth as evidence of health rather than as a new liability: missions organizations, foundations, and open-source sustainability programs alike. - Strongest where growth is publicly read as a success signal, which removes the internal pressure to ask whether the marginal campus or hire was worth its ongoing cost. - The test is the trend in program spend versus fundraising-plus-property spend over time, not any single year's ratio. - Breaks down where growth genuinely lowers per-unit cost (economies of scale) rather than adding a new fixed cost center — the claim is about organizations where expansion adds obligations faster than it adds efficiency. - Does not mean growth is always bad; it means growth's funding burden has to be argued for, not assumed away because the organization is doing well. ## Evidence > [!quote] ID:rw_01m1kr45hty9mhjj5x209xgqw1 > We just keep expanding. And here's [snorts] where it gets really odd is once you start doing this, the growth itself is actually creating the permanent financial need. So, anybody who's don't donating to the original cause, that might have been good, well, now you're donating to the donation of a cause, if that makes any sense. Collins, a guest on Leaving the Message episode 697, makes this point about Youth With a Mission specifically, in a conversation with ex-YWAM staff Jenny McGrath and Shelby Hoffer about the organization's giving culture and staff-fee debt. He immediately follows it by floating — labeled explicitly as his own opinion, not established fact — that the Seven Mountains Mandate may function less as doctrine than as an urgency device that feeds this same donation cycle. That second claim is a hypothesis, not evidence, and stays unverified here. ## Links - [[3. Resources/Permanent Notes/Growth Pressure Corrupts Institutions More Than Villainy Does]] — extends: that note argues growth pressure, not bad leaders, drifts institutions from their founding purpose; this note names the specific mechanism inside a donation-funded organization — the growth itself becomes the thing being funded - [[3. Resources/Permanent Notes/Growth Of Something Substitutes Escalation For Relationship]] — contrasts on register: that note frames unbounded growth as a substitute for relational depth in any institution; this one is the narrower financial mechanics of how that substitution gets paid for - [[3. Resources/MOCs/NAR and Charismatic Authority Critique MOC]] — home for the giving-culture and funding-transparency thread this episode belongs to, even though YWAM sits adjacent to rather than inside the NAR proper ## Tests / falsifiers - Check public filings (US Form 990, UK Charity Commission, Swiss registry) for YWAM-affiliated entities to see whether program spend keeps pace with fundraising-plus-property spend as the organization grows — if it does, this claim doesn't hold for this organization. - Watch for a documented instance of a mission or nonprofit voluntarily divesting a campus or program specifically to reduce its fundraising burden; a willingness to shrink would be the corrective this note predicts is structurally hard to make. ## Source - [[3. Resources/Readwise/Articles/Youth With a Mission’s Culture of Giving Examined YWAM Jenny & Shelby Podcast Episode 697]] — Leaving the Message episode 697; transcript captured via vidIQ after a YouTube 429, no timestamps. Verify the *Friend Raising* and YWAM Foundational Values 13/16 quotes against primary sources before citing this episode further.