As I head into fall 2017, I am excited to begin my 20th year as a speaker. I am honoured to have had ongoing opportunities to speak across Canada and the US for 2 decades on topics like mental health, media, sexuality, pornography, dating, and men. Thank you so much to the hundreds of people, likely including you reading this now, who have supported us both financially and with prayer over the past 20 years. I could never have dreamed up how far this ministry has come since first starting out. As my wife now tells me, “I was terrible”! However now, I see daily the fruit of mine and others investments when students and parents gain new perspectives and hope from one of my talks.
The favourite parts of my job are researching, creating presentations and then to deliver those presentations in order to challenge people to connect their ancient faith with this modern world. I want to encourage my listeners to “enter the danger” on topics that may be difficult to work through. In these confusing times, we need Christ centered perspectives and intelligent insights into current matters more than ever. The students we are mentoring are looking to us to help them navigate these topics and we all need better equipping. One of my least favourite things I need to do is fundraising. One of the least liked, shared or commented on posts that I put on social media are about fundraising. The hard part with this is that for a non-profit organization like Worlds Apart, fundraising is necessary for our functioning. As a small charity, our funds come in from 3 sources
40% – speaking engagement honorariums
40% – tax receiptable donations/fundraising
20% – sales of books, DVD’s, digital downloads
For this ministry year, I am looking forward to these projects below:
- Creation of a App to be used before, during, and after my speaking engagements
- Filming the new dating.for.life presentation
- Filming the media.faith.culture talk for students and parents
- Updating aging technology
I’d like to tell you more about each project in the hopes that one or more of them may interest you specifically and you may be prompted to give.
(1) Brett Ullman Speaking App I have the chance to speak to tens of thousands of students, parents, and leaders each year. One of my struggles is how to engage people attending my talks better both before, during and after my talks. An app will allow me to help people with taking notes during the presentations, live polling and resourcing people in all aspects of my talks. My talks are meant to spur people into deeper, more intentional thinking and providing an app to support the talks will provide more easily accessible information to the audience. This is in keeping with current technology trends in society today.
Total needed for App $5000
(2) Filming new dating.for.life talk. The demand for my talks outweighs my abilities to go in person to every audience. With the talks being filmed, we are able to get these out to people digitally (Vimeo on Demand and on DVD). Our past talks that we have filmed have been bought in countries all over the world which is really exciting as many of those places would not be able to afford to fly me in. I want to reach as many people as possible with true, hope filled conversation. With each DVD/digital download sold, more people are taught and more income is generated to sustain this ministry. To film, edit, print DVD’s, and create a trailer for the dating talk, I need to raise $7,500.
(3) Filming media.faith.culture talk. This is one of my most popular talks that I do challenging people in all aspects of our media choices, faith growth and engaging our culture. It would be amazing to get this talk available to people. Similarly to the dating talk, we need to raise $7,500 for this project. I would love to film this talk in Winter 2018.
Total needed for filming of both talks $15,000
(4) Technology: now this is not an exciting place for fundraising but technology is also something I use daily in my office or when I am speaking. Presently my laptop is almost 6 years old and my desktop is 5 1/2 years old. When I am speaking I need a current, functioning laptop will be able to be used for my presentations without any issues. My data projector is also aging at 8 years old. One of the reasons I am able to keep the attention of students so well is my use of technology to connect with them.
What I need in the technology area
- iMac – This is the main computer I use for all aspects of my work when I am not on the road speaking. Cost ~$3,000
- MacBook – This is the computer I use for all of my speaking presentations. Cost ~$2,000
- Data Projector ~$900
Total needed for technology – $5,900
Total fundraising needs – $25,900
I have to be honest this is an overwhelming amount for a small charity like ours. One thing I have heard from people over the years is that if I ever need help, I just need to ask. So this is me asking.
- Can you help? You can make a one-time donation or monthly donations through Canada Helps by clicking here. Some people support at $10 a month while for others they might be able to support at $50, $75 or $100 a month. For others, it is a one-time donation. Every donation helps, please don’t think that what you can contribute does not matter. “For anything great to happen, what is needed is a long obedience in the same direction.” Let’s make something great happen and do this together.
- Can the business you work for help? I know many companies offer donations to charities. Some businesses want to do anonymous donations which are always ok. Some companies also do matching donations so if you donated $500 they will match and give another $500. Maybe you’d like to stretch your donation dollars by looking into your workplace giving plans.
- Do you know of any foundations that might be able to help? Please send through their information.
- Networking: If you cannot donate, would you be willing to send this to someone who might be able to? Would you consider telling your church, Christian or Catholic school and other networks about my talks so that they may look into bringing me in to speak to their group.
- Purchasing: You could help by purchasing a talk from our store. There are 4 books and 4 DVDs or digital downloads available. All money from these products goes back into the charity. Click here for the store.
I look forward to continuing to empower and equip students, parents, and leaders in tough conversations with your help. Please consider donating. If you have any questions please send me an email at brett@brettullman.com.
Thanks for your time.
Brett Ullman
Worlds Apart
www.brettullman.com
