We’ve all at least heard of compounding interest. Maybe you don’t know what it means or how it works, but I’m sure you’ve heard of the concept. I’m not going to get into all the details on how compounding interest affects you, but the idea is that the interest on one day compounds or adds to the interest the next and so on. You financial people give me a little break here. That’s the best one liner description I could come up with!

So what about effort and what does compounding interest have to do with anything other than money?

Great! I’m so glad you asked! If you take the basics of compounding interest and apply that to other areas of life you’ll see that we can do a lot of great things if we just let all of the effort and ability we have work together. Let me explain using a little churchy terminology.

In the church world we have three T’s we talk about from time to time. They are time, talents, and treasures. Normally we will make it a point to talk about our time and how we use it. Then our talents or abilities and how we use those. And finally our treasures and how we spend, invest and give those away. But how often do we look at them on a compounding scale?

Think about it for a second. When we take our time and use it for one purpose. Then our talents for a different purpose. And finally our treasure to fund or support a similar yet different purpose, how much good can we actually do? It’s like helping 3 different groups a little when we could make a bigger impact if we compounded our effort.

Imagine instead seeing a specific ministry of the local church and diving into that ministry fully. I mean using your time, talent and treasures all in the same place. Not only do you give of your dollars to support that ministry, but you also volunteer serving others through that very same ministry. And to add to it, you have a unique (or not so unique but still needed) skill that you use in your volunteering to accomplish something in that very same ministry.

Essentially you just more than tripled your gift to that ministry! It’s like the difference between giving $50 to 3 organizations or giving $150 to one. Your gift makes a much larger impact when you compound it.

So whether you’re a church kind of person or not, consider how you can compound your effect. Think where you’re spending your time, ability and money. Are they all lined up in the same direction? How can you have a bigger impact by realigning your priorities?

In short layering our giving with our volunteering and the use of our skills can have an exponentially larger impact!