Mission Link connects churches in America with churches serving their neighbors all over the world. At the moment, they’re largely working with Christian leaders in Africa. American churches send teams of volunteers and educators, as well as resources, to their partners in Kenya and Uganda, who lead the charge on serving  and building up their communities.

“As a Christian missions organization, we began to empower and partner with missionaries and ministries around the world. We settled in Uganda, Africa, to provide Biblical training for pastors, care for forgotten widows by finding sponsors to help them and building homes for the homeless.” Todd Childers, Mission Link Executive Director

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Background

Dr. Rick Sadler founded Mission Link International two years after his first trip to Africa in 1996. The organization was always intended to support native churches and missionaries by empowering them to do their work, instead of depending upon foreign nonprofit organizations. 

“MLI's focus on encouraging, training, and supporting nationals to reach their country for Christ has remained constant.”

Under Dr. Sadler’s leadership, American and Ugandan pastors shared resources and educational materials. Eventually, Sadler set up programs to sponsor widows, deaf students, and abandoned children, in addition to medical mission trips and construction projects.

Today, Mission Link International carries on the work of forging connections and empowering indigenous pastors in the communities they support. With year round connection and intermittent mission trips, American congregations partner with churches all over the world to carry out the Great Commission, equipping and training pastors and care for widows. 

Mission Link International has been fundraising for nearly 30 years, so they’ve been around the block a few times. They’ve also seen a lot change in the years since the internet took over the nonprofit fundraising space. So they were disappointed by how PayPal’s features didn’t keep up with the times. 

Mission Link International’s Executive Director Todd Childers believed PayPal had the lowest fees in the nonprofit fundraising game, but he began looking for alternatives because of the clunky back end. PayPal was lacking in features, and their customer support didn’t win them any fans at Mission Link. Basically, PayPal just allowed them to receive donations.

And then, of course, there were the fees. PayPal’s cut of Mission Link’s funds wasn’t insignificant, especially to the people it could have fed. Those fees quite literally took food out of the mouths of widows and orphans.

“Mission Link Intl. incurred over $900 USD in PayPal fees in 2023, equivalent to sponsoring almost two widows for an entire year.” Todd Childers

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Childers did a lot of research to try to find a fundraising platform that could keep up with contemporary fundraising needs. Plenty of other fundraising sites offered more than a way to transfer money. Childers dug through a half dozen platforms that had campaign and donor management functionalities (he even considered building their own processes) before finally landing on Zeffy.

“We compared Zeffy with GiveButter, Gively, DonorPerfect, and DonorBox. We had also considered creating our own forms through Jotforms and remaining with PayPal and/or Stripe, but the entire process was difficult for our small Nonprofit with limited staff.” Todd Childers

Doing all of that work on his own was onerous, but it paid off in the end. Though Childers was initially suspicious of the bold claims Zeffy made, the high ratings on Capterra and other software review sites convinced him to give the platform a try.

And it was worth it. Finding Zeffy made Childers’ life much easier in the end. 

“Unlike PayPal, Zeffy allows the creation of interactive, detailed forms for numerous campaigns. We can embed them on our website's giving page or as Pop-Up forms.” Todd Childers

Results

In the first six months after implementing Zeffy, Mission Link has raised over $50,000, and every cent of it went right to caring for distressed widows, providing education and medicine for communities in Uganda and Kenya, and supporting Indigenous pastors. 

“Zeffy allows us to create attractive fundraising campaigns that bring excitement to our donors.” Todd Childers

With easier fundraising and fee-less donation processing, Mission Link International can provide more comprehensive support for churches and communities all over the world.