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Thriving into the Future
We want to see: a healthy network of resilient movements showing Christian integrity and accountability so we can continue our calling among the next generations of students.

IFES will :
4.1 Strengthen awareness and ownership of our vision , values and shared doctrinal commitments , both locally and as a global fellowship
4.2 Cultivate a culture that prioritises Scripture engagement, prayer, spiritual formation, and well being for staff to thrive as individuals and in their ministry
4.3 Invest in staff learning and development, particularly in theological, vocational discipleship, leadership and skills development and shared learning across the global IFES network
4.4 Practice good governance and establish effective ministry structures and leadership succession plans , that are contextually appropriate
4.5 Cultivate a culture of learning and accountability through strategic ministry development and research, monitoring and evaluation to discern God’s direction, to mobilise and steward the resources entrusted by God
4.6 Cultivate trust and generosity across the IFES global network by developing sustainable funding and engagement models in giving, prayer, and action

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1)  Imagine that by 2030, the International Services has been extremely successful. What do you envision your ministry to accomplish? What long-term changes would you have helped bring about? (Consider the changing Context from Step 1)

(Share your response here)
GAT - We raise the income needed to support IFES ministry in a sustainable way. We steward donors well and share the impact and excitement of the student ministry that IFES is doing. We continue to develop awareness, engagement and commitment with our supporters.

P&C - IFES is widely viewed as a positive and fruitful place to work - people want to work with us.  Staff acknowledge being well-supervised, developed professionally, and given opportunities to advance.  Staff consider the long-term well-being of IFES rather than just the immediate tasks/projects in front of them.  Over time, they shape an organisation that is healthy, resilient, and consistently developing leaders.  They are growing spiritually and this spills into all relationships.  Teams function as interdependent and dynamic places of ministry.  The organisational culture of IFES is reflective of our diversity and a source of fruitfulness.  There is greater understanding of the relationship between fellowship and organisation.

Governance/GS Office - International Services must be well positioned to help IFES fulfil its objectives as stated in the Constitution. We must not lose sight of those objectives even as we develop new strategies and programs because they will continue to be our objectives even beyond the time of Thriving Together. Talking about a vision for change in International Services worries me slightly because I believe our raison d'etre is to serve the national movements in their ministry amongst students. So if we are envisioning change, we must be sure to remain clear about our fundamental purpose. Of course we may and should be open to change in how we serve, but we must never seek to change for the sake of change, but only because it will allow us to serve more effectively and efficiently. I think we should continue to do what we have been doing, but identifying ways of improving the service that we provide. I would expect that there is a greater case for change at the level of regional and field staff who are closer to grassroots ministry to students.

I think that there is a danger, when we use the language of change, that we can unintentionally devalue what has been done before - suggesting that we need to change because things have not been done well. We must be careful in how we present this new phase not to cast aside the efforts of those who have served often sacrificially in the past.

In summary I personally don't have a vision of change for International Services, but I can wholeheartedly subscribe to a vision to serve even more efficiently and effectively than we have done in the past.

(Sorry for the long comment that may not have answered the question. This is what I would have wanted to say if I were present in the meeting.)

Admin/ Projects - I wonder if it is helpful to have a strong vision for a specific 'end point'. The truth is the world is changing too rapidly for most organisational change projects to adapt to ... especially in large, flat organisations. What might be more helpful is a vision for a fellowship of people who are rooted (in Christ & IFES vision), related (through strong commitment to Christ, the body and one another) and responsive (to the leading of the Holy Spirit). All systems and governance structures should then support that vision. Often this will mean simplification. ISLT has a key role to play in being courageous enough to make the significant changes that might be necessary to accomplish that vision.

IT - We actively listen to the technology needs of the fellowship and find/offer solutions to address the needs of the majority (as we will not be able to solve every unique need). Additionally, we offer best practice advisories. IT becomes a trusted advisor and a "technology partner" to the fellowship. With more teams and NMs adopting the use of technology effectively, there will be less imbalance in the digital divide.

Finance - Using the model set out in my response to Question 1, we can develop similar models of evaluation for other programs.

And the benefit here is that the mere fact that we are now evaluating programs, RSs will no doubt put more effort into their planning and delivery of these programs.

Additionally for our GAT teams, they would have more meaningful and relevant data when reporting back to donors

Overall IFES wins

MSI - IFES capture stories of transformation in the lives of students and graduates, and the impact of students in their church, workplace and society. IFES leaders makes strategic decisions on resources and initiatives that contributes to Thriving Together strategic plan. IFES embrace a culture of learning through planning, monitoring and evaluation. This leads to a desire for continuous learning, active consultations, and effective and informed ministry planning based on learning from monitoring and evaluation findings.

COO -

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Does International Services' Vision of Change and Mission parameters embrace the following Critical Success Factors? 

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Does International Services' Vision of Change and Mission parameters embrace the following Critical Success Factors? 

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Collaboration

We will strengthen local, regional and global connections to promote learning and mutual encouragement across the IFES network and with partners (supporters, universities, churches and like-minded organisations). We will exchange ideas, resources, and experiences to help us live out our calling.

New Ways

We will seek to grow in new ways and in new spaces. We will give space to try new ideas and show creativity in our ministry and organisational practices.

Impact

We are partakers of God’s kingdom work, seeking to bring impact in the depth of transformations in the lives of students and graduates and in the breadth of our ministries in reaching students.

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4) What are the focus areas of our ministry? What will we do differently? 

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4) What are the focus areas of our ministry? What will we do differently? 

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(Share your response here...)
P&C will focus on staff development, team development/dynamics, leadership development, spiritual formation & prayer, mentoring & pastoral care, diversity issues (including the unique needs of women), cross-cultural dynamics, and HR management.

IFES Governance will focus on ensuring the Board is well equipped and informed in order to carry out their governance task. This will include more effective orientation for new Board members in future. We will also support any sub-committees of the Board.

The GS Office will continue to provide support for the GS and senior staff structures (AGSs, core team, EMT etc), seeking to ensure good collaboration with all areas of International Services and others as needed.

MSI will focus on cultivating a culture of learning through strategic planning, monitoring and evaluation by supporting regions, GRM, and IS teams in their ministry and evaluation plans . MSI will work with regional teams in their support to national movements' learning through planning, monitoring & evaluation where it is contextually appropriate.  We will support IFES leadership & staff in effective use of data and findings inline with Thriving Together to enable strategic discussions and decisions on resources and initiatives. We will work with IT to identify and develop M&E systems and learning platforms to support the above ministry.

Admin will focus on delivering the systems, processes and support required to deliver the vision.

IT will focus on providing and supporting technology solutions that are useful and affordable to the fellowship, so that the digital divide can be narrowed.

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c)  Does this contribute to the IFES vision and Thriving Together strategic priorities?

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c)  Does this contribute to the IFES vision and Thriving Together strategic priorities?

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Select which Thriving Together strategic priorities does your Vision of Change align to:

| 1 | Thriving in Witness We want to see: students as witnesses to Jesus Christ, proclaiming the kingdom of God and showing the relevance of Jesus to all areas of university life.
| 2 | Thriving in Whole-Life Commitment We want to see: students growing as disciples of Jesus Christ, bearing fruit as they integrate their faith with every area of life, learning to lead in their communities and standing for Jesus in challenging contexts.
| 3 | Thriving on New Ground We want to see: vibrant new student groups on campuses and in locations where there aren’t any and support to revitalise groups and movements, working in partnership with others.
| 4 | Thriving into the Future We want to see: a healthy network of resilient movements showing Christian integrity and accountability so we can continue our calling among the next generations of students.

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International Services Vision of Change (2030)

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International Services Vision of Change (2030)

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(write IS Vision of Change here)

IFES Vision: Students thriving together as communities of disciples, transformed by the gospel, and impacting the university, the church and society for the glory of Christ.

Communicate the is common vision of change across all IS departments, followed by respective functions.

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STEP 2 & 3:  ARTICULATING VISION OF CHANGE & MISSION OF INTERNATIONAL SERVICES

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STEP 2 & 3:  ARTICULATING VISION OF CHANGE & MISSION OF INTERNATIONAL SERVICES

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Mission for International Services (2022 - 2024)

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Mission for International Services (2022 - 2024)

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(write IS Mission here)

IFES Mission
To connect and nurture national movements so that students and graduates thrive as witnesses
for Christ.

From Q4, now prioritise focus for three years. Top priorities.

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Please spend sometime this week to complete
Step 1 Questions 1 - 3 (sections in beige)
and
Step 2 & 3: Questions: 1 - 4. (scroll down to sections in purple)

You do not need to complete the sections in blue.

Please complete it latest by 13 February.

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Post any question, interesting observation, comment, reflection you have here.
1.  (SC) Propose to hear from the Executive team on their Vision of Change for International Services/ IFES

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STEP 1 : UNDERSTANDING INTERNATIONAL SERVICES CONTEXT

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STEP 1 : UNDERSTANDING INTERNATIONAL SERVICES CONTEXT

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3) Who are the individuals, organizations, or groups you need to work with to bring about these changes?

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3) Who are the individuals, organizations, or groups you need to work with to bring about these changes?

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(Share your response here...)
P&C
P&C needs to partner with IFES leadership and all staff/teams to accomplish its goals.  A strong interface with Scripture Engagement is a logical place to begin. But partnering with regional teams and GRM is also necessary.

MSI
Key Influence Groups:
1) Regional, GRM, and IS teams (to integrate planning, monitoring & evaluation (PME) into their ministry and evaluation plans)
2) Regional teams and Champions of PMEL framework (to support NMs in PMEL & strategic planning)
3) IFES leadership & key staff (provide data/ findings for strategic decision making and resource allocation.
Strategic Partners
1) IT
2) GAT
3) P&C

IT - partnership with with the regions, GRM and IS, as they are conduits to the fellowship and various global ministries. Additionally to partner with the ELT to get insights regarding their global directions

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2)  Looking at what has been written on Q1.  How can International Services contribute or support the achievement of the Vision of Change? What do we have to bring change?

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2)  Looking at what has been written on Q1.  How can International Services contribute or support the achievement of the Vision of Change? What do we have to bring change?

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(Share your response here...)

P&C's work is in every area of the fellowship, not just international services.  This will be helped as International Services embraces a view of their work as vocation and reduces the distinction between fellowship and organisation.  In addition, faithful and reliable HR support services will ensure staff are set up well for their work. The focus of P&C is strategically starting with IFES appointed staff and teams, but must also respond to requests from national movements (and will eventually shift more in that direction).

MSI can develop IFES-context appropriate organisational learning framework to support ministry effectiveness and strategic planning across national movements, regions, GRMs, IS. By having a customised IFES monitoring and evaluation framework and system, we will be able to gather and monitor progress to encourage intentional learning, experimenting new ways, strategic allocation of resources as we implementation our ministry plans. We will  be able to compile stories of transformation and celebrate God at work by 2030, the end of Thriving Together as we intentionally integrate PME.

IT - To achieve this, IT needs to get the vision and priorities from the regions, GRM and IS. IFES also needs sufficient funding to help the fellowship with their technology needs.

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Vision of Change & Mission needs not be short. It should communicate International Services' vision of change and its mission parameters. Be as detailed as you can in stating the change you want to see.

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Global Trends & National Movements Priorities 

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Global Trends & National Movements Priorities 

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3) What are the trends and priorities that impact International Services office/staff/context or which IS plays a role in supporting NMs? (from the above list or new trends/ priorities which you can propose)

(Share your response here)

GAT -

IS USA - The more that IFES centralizes and provides support and services to the fellowship, the more the organizational budget pressure increases which impacts the work and capacity of my team.

P&C - P&C can play a role in staff development, pastoral care and succession planning & leadership training support

Governance -

Admin/ Projects - Developing a movement-oriented approach to global activities requires two basic organisational approaches - Strengthen the core (culture, values and systems), loosen the edges. We have to build an organisation that has the capacity to scale (multiply) in a sustainable way which will probably not be to reproduce what we currently have. Growth of the church in the global south and marginalisation of the church in the global north are significant trends - how are we adapting to this? Where is the power in IFES? Does this appropriately reflect the cultural mix of the current fellowship or the anticipated cultural mix?

IT -

Finance -

MSI - MSI plays a role in Strategy development and Ministry Effectiveness for IS, Regions & NMs and GRMs. Would MSI continue to support NMs on this aspects or through regions and global resource ministries? This determines the MSI parameters.

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2) How have the top 3 SWORs changed considering the pandemic or any significant events? What does this mean to International Services?

(Share your response here)
(SC) Based on sharing from regions:
Strengths:
1. Leveraging on the right platforms to deliver Scripture and program content becomes the key issue faced by NMs
2. Graduates ministries may be affected as many impacted by pandemic and have their own struggles
3. Lack of programming has impacted Advancement opportunities with certain donors, foundations and churches.

Opportunities:
1. Digital ministry is increasingly a high need

Weakness:
1. Limited reach continues to be a challenge for students who has limited internet access as meetings moved to zoom/ online. Regions look forward to breathing life back to in persons ministry!

Risks
1. Unsustainable funding continues to pose risk to ministries

What it means International Services?
1. Opportunities to provide digital and connect platforms to support ministries?
2. Strengthen strategy implementation by introducing coherent PME framework and a suitable M&E system
3. Raising sustainable funding is a high priority for IFES

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1)     Where are we now?  Share your current realities.
(Share your response here)

GAT - Resources are stretched. Team is exhausted after working online primarily in last 2 years. Team is in 3 different locations. IFES and IFES/USA are different non-profits with different boards. Trying to build a major gift program in the UK but have one person doing the work across three different roles. Need to address challenges: unrealistic expectations for the GF, personal support raising gaps, look at IS costs and how/what we present as indirect costs to donors. Need investment to grow fundraised income.

P&C - Brand new team - haven't even met yet.  New people in new roles scattered globally.  Need to establish team vision and plan (building on initial work).  Need to build trust and understanding about nature and role of P&C in fellowship (for example P&C ≠ HR).  Need to identify "critical transactions" that shape organisational culture. Inhibited by lack of funding.  Need to recruit two more people to complete initial staffing plan.

Governance/GS office - IFES Board has not met in person since July 2019. Need for more complete orientation for first term members and team building for all. Minimal provision in budget for Board or senior staff meetings in 2022 is problematic as we try to establish relationships and ways of working together both with Board members who have never attended a full Board meeting in person, as well as with the reshaped senior staff team. A  Governance Review process is underway guided by an external consultant and we expect nine (out of 15) new Board members to be appointed in 2023.

Admin/ Projects - All my input has the caveat that I am new to IFES / admin role. But here are my observations: Our systems seem very complex, fragmented and potentially vulnerable - could we take this as an opportunity to streamline and simplify? I find that a lot of thinking, planning and strategy development is silo'd and this reflects itself in the budgetting processes too. How can we think more strategically as a whole when we are setting priorities and budgetting together. Hybrid working developments present a challenge to fulfil office based responsibilities. It would be good to plan the timing of all projects in an integrated/global way to avoid clashes of many new things at once or of focussing on a new thing before an existing project has been fully implemented into the systems AND culture of the organisation.

IT - We serve students who are extremely tech-savvy and yet, we observe the use of technology across the fellowship is imbalanced. For example, a handful of "more advanced" NMs would adopt the use of recent technologies effectively, but many others still work using old-school methods like keeping donor info in Excel (worst still, without having backups). The challenges faced by many of these teams and NMs in adopting the use of technology: they have no experienced IT staff, they lack funding, and they don't know where to get help. In terms of staffing, with budget cuts and no replacements for staff who have left, an already lean team now gets stretched even further.

Finance - As a Christian organisation, being able to demonstrate evidence-based good stewardship and accountability requires that we adopt a comparable framework based on the value for money concept of Economy, efficiency, effectiveness and equity. For example, in at least three IFES regions, we have leadership programs that run literally every other year. Using a table that seeks to capture the same information on all three regional training events, we can then draw meaningful comparisons that should inform subsequent training events ie.
(1) The cost of each training event
(2) The duration of each training event

(3) The number of participants in each event

(4) The number of countries or NMs represented at the training Event

(5) The content of each training event and the expected outcomes
(6) Initial feedback of participants at the end of the training program and

(7) Perhaps a 360 evaluation and accessment by peers of noticeable changes 6 months to a year after the training event

With this kind of information, we can begin to answer key value for money questions of each of our regions i.e.

(1) Any significant differences in average daily cost per participant

(2) Effectiveness of the program based on the peer reviews

(3) Coverage of the program in terms of regional impact and equity i.e. how many of the NMs in the region benefitted from the program?

A team in transition - I have just under 3 months to retire; struggling to come to terms of providing input to a process I would not be around to see through. No agreed basis for evaluating programs and budgets.
And reporting largely financial with no real link to impact or outcomes in terms of our students as ultimate beneficiaries.

MSI - With Thriving Together strategic plan finalised, it opens new opportunities to introduce more strategic discussions among the leadership and introduce a coherent planning framework that incorporates monitoring & evaluation. It is a culture shift in IFES to influence the teams towards a common and more systematic  approach on planning, monitoring and evaluation.
At national movements level, we have discontinued MI evaluation tool due transition from Living stones and low NMs participation. In the past five years, it has been a challenge rolling MI tools without the regions' involvement.
Staff are stretched as the portfolio expands to IS, Regions, GRMs, special projects (LCI) apart from previous focus on NMs.

IS USA -

We are currently understaffed to carry out the mandate to raise funds for the global fellowship and manage those funds in an excellent way.  Our staff team is tired and we are not seeing the results of our efforts as we would like.

We have open positions that we are unable to fill, and the USA job market is very difficult right now.  This is putting pressure on our office budget as we need to raise salaries and add benefits.

The core of our donor base remains deeply committed.  They are ageing, however, and their giving amounts are not at previous levels.  Reaching new donors in the pandemic is challenging.

Some of our long-term donors feel that they have lost touch with IFES.  They have not had contact with IFES leaders for quite a while.

We have hope for good opportunities to reach out to donors - current and new - during 2022.  We are looking to identify the resources and staff capacity to reach out goals.

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1. George Ogalo (G0)
2. John Bagg (JB)
3. John Criswell (JC)
4. Kirsty Thorburn (KT)
5. Kevin Van Horne (KVH)
6. Kenneth Seow (KS)
7. Nick Addo  (NA)
8. Sophie Aldred (SA)
9. Stephanie Chin (SC)