WP 8 | How to Create a Partnership with Churches
Creating a partnership with a church can be a great way for a private practice to grow and sustain its business. In episode eight of the Wise Practice Podcast, Whitney Owens shares some tips on how to effectively create and maintain these partnerships.
"It is important to approach these conversations with a spirit of collaboration and mutual benefit, rather than simply trying to sell your services to the church."
One of the first steps in creating a partnership with a church is to establish referral relationships with local churches. This can involve speaking with pastors and discussing the services that your practice offers and how they can be of benefit to the church and its members. It is important to approach these conversations with a spirit of collaboration and mutual benefit, rather than simply trying to sell your services to the church.
Once you have established a referral relationship with a church, there are several ways that you can partner with them more formally. One way is to offer church packages that the church can purchase. These packages could include things like counseling services, workshops, or other resources that your practice offers. By offering these packages, you can provide the church with the support and resources they need while also generating income for your practice.
"By offering these packages, you can provide the church with the support and resources they need while also generating income for your practice."
Another way to partner with a church is by offering to be a counselor for the church, even if it is not a full-time position. This can be especially beneficial for churches that don't have the finances to hire a full-time counselor. By offering your services to the church, you can help them provide support and resources to their members while also building your practice.
When first establishing these partnerships, it is important to start with lower rates in order to make them more attractive to churches. As your practice grows and you gain more experience and expertise, you can gradually increase your rates.
"It is also important to find a method of partnering with churches that works for you and your practice. This may involve experimenting with different approaches and seeing what works best for your unique situation."
It is also important to find a method of partnering with churches that works for you and your practice. This may involve experimenting with different approaches and seeing what works best for your unique situation.
Overall, partnering with churches can be a valuable way for private practices to grow their businesses and provide services to communities in need. By following the tips shared by Whitney Owens , private practices can effectively create and maintain partnerships with churches that benefit both parties. So, by establishing referral relationships, offering church packages, and offering to be a counselor for the church, private practices can effectively partner with churches and grow their businesses. It is important to find a method that works for you and your practice in order to effectively create and maintain these partnerships.
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WP Ep. 8 - How to Create a Partnership with Churches
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Hello friends and welcome back to the Wise Practice Podcast. This is episode number eight, how to Create a Partnership with Churches. If you haven't already listened to episode number seven right before that, I talk about the importance of creating referral relationships with churches. I go into some details of which churches to connect with, what kind of pastors to talk to, what to say to pastors, how to get that conversation going.
So if you didn't, Episode, I encourage you to go back and do that. And so as promised on this episode, I'm gonna talk a lot more about how do you partner with a church. There are so many ways that you can do this, so I will give you a couple of tips on things that I have done, things I've heard other people do, and you have to find what works for you in your practice.
But. Into that. I just wanna remind you, if you haven't already, please take a minute to rate and review the podcast. It really helps in letting people know about the podcast. Take just a minute to share it through a text message with someone that you think would find it helpful, and I really appreciate you doing that.
And if you haven't also already headed over to my website, I do have a free P D F on four Tips to Market Network with Churches. Some of the things I went through in the last episode, so that way if you want it in A P D F, you can get it right there. And you can also join my mailing list. I send out emails about once, twice a week, usually once a week with just information about starting and growing a practice, things going on in my life.
You can respond to me, let me know things going on in your life. Cool events happening. , all those kinds of things. So would love for you to get involved on that as well. All right, so let's talk about partnering with churches. Like I said, you can do this lots of different ways, so I'm gonna share with you how I did this early on in my practice and some things that I would change now and how I do it now.
So, when I first was a solo practice owner, I was working actually under a church as a contractor. I was in a separate building, so it kind of felt like my own practice, but I already had a relationship with a church, so that was super helpful in getting started. In this process. I also had another solo practice owner sharing space with me, and so together we thought, Hmm, maybe we should partner up and do some really cool stuff with churches, and it would be super nice if we could get our rent.
every month, right? So we created church packages that churches could purchase and there were three different packages and they could determine what they needed and then we could move forward with that. Now, before I get into the details of that, I also wanna say here, one of the other reasons we found about doing this, Is to serve churches that didn't already have a counselor on staff.
So some of the churches in our town have one or multiple counselors, but there are other churches that don't, or they don't have the finances to bring on a counselor. So when we would talk to churches, we would say to them, Hey, we know that you can't necessarily afford to bring somebody on full-time. So doing a partnership with us basically allows you to kind of have a counselor, you know, in quotes, per se, for your church without actually employing them.
and so I thought that was a great way to introduce that to churches that are looking for that kind of service. So within our church plans, um, I had a couple of different options and I'm gonna read those out to you so that you kind of know where I'm coming from. And I just wanna remind you that this was when I was a solo practice owner really starting my business.
And I think that when you're really starting out, you don't wanna raise your rates to such a rate that no one's. Purchase, but you want it to be low enough that people will purchase, but obviously that it still shows that you have the expertise and knowledge that you have. So these rates I would probably increase, but here's what it was years ago when I had a solo practice.
So the first plan that we offered to churches was level one, and that was a hundred dollars a month. That included 25% off of counseling for any parishioner that they would send our way. Also, we offered free 10 to 15 minute consults with. Someone, um, on staff. So like if a pastor had questions about something going on, they didn't know what to refer or not sure how to handle something, they could call us at no charge and we would do these consults.
To be honest with you, most people don't take advantage of that. Um, so even if you offer that, you probably won't get a ton of response with it. And the 25% off of consulting, I mean, off counseling services was helpful in getting them in the door. Parishioner felt good about coming because they knew their church was referring and that they got a special discount working with us.
Okay. Now, I had someone ask me recently, okay, well what do you think about this for a group practice? I'm like, well, you've really gotta run your numbers here, right, because you've gotta figure out. How many people from a certain church usually come to your practice? How much money would you lose by offering this and some different things like that?
And then figure out, okay, well this is what the church would pay per month to be able to get this. So if I were to go back now and do level one, I would definitely make it more like a three to $500. because I have so many therapists and they can see a lot more clients. Back when I was solo, I only could take on so many clients.
I think I saw about 18 to 20 a week. So that's not gonna be very many from a specific church. But like I said, you have to run your numbers. Um, and that three to 500 that I just said, I would still need to run those numbers to make sure. But I'm thinking just quickly offhand that that's maybe what I would.
All right, so let's go to level two. So everything within level two included everything in level one. So the 25% off the counseling sessions, the free 10 to 15 minute consult. In addition to that, it was two, six to eight week courses or support groups led by one of our therapists and one one to two hour training for staff or volunteers.
So this is what they would get in an annual contract cuz when they would sign it, they'd sign it for a year. So when we offered this contract, um, we had several churches that did this level, which was great because if you can get enough people to do that level, it really does cover your expenses for your practice.
So I did a couple of different courses, just to give you an idea. One of the six to eight week courses I did was with a church. I called it Renew Your Mind, renew Your Life, and it was a C B T Christian Inspir. Group I had, mm, 10 to 12 people show up. You know, I did all the paperwork that's required for a group and everything, and it went really well.
I really enjoyed that group. People seemed to really get a lot from it. Another group that I did, um, was like a addictions group and it had a book that went with it. Now, it wasn't necessarily substance abuse addiction, it was just addiction and codependency in general. And I did that at a different church.
Um, and that went really, Two, and I enjoyed that they had the space already. I really enjoyed having a book to go with it, so I didn't have to create the curriculum. So if you already have a course, this would be really easy for you to do. So I, I personally enjoyed that it taxed me out, to be honest, as a solo practice owner.
So this is not something that I probably would've done if I'd had a full caseload all the time. But I think that it's a good thing to do as you're getting started or if you have a group practice and being able to implement this interior group practice, I think it would be a really cool thing. Um, and then we did do these one to two hour staff trainings or volunteer leader meetings.
Um, I. I don't think I ever talked about the Indian ground, but I think that would be a good one to do. Um, there was definitely a time we did training on what to look for with mental health issues, like how to coach your leaders on understanding that for small group leaders and things like that. All right.
Level three. So level three was everything in level two with the addition of a one to two day retreat. Yes. The retreat that I remember the most is working with an organization that helped women. Put their babies up for adoption. So these were women that chose to keep their children and to birth them and put them up for adoption.
And so we wanted to be able to support them in that process. What it's like when you put your baby up for adoption. So we did some grief work one day at a retreat, and it was beautiful. Beautiful. Such an amazing group of women. But yes, there's other retreats you could do. You could do a couple's retreat.
I think that churches would really benefit from something like that. You could do a retreat for the team. Um, for team building, maybe the staff so much here. Right? So that level was $500 for us. Of course, you would wanna make it higher than that if you wanted to. Um, and then along with this church partnership, it was like a contract that we wrote out with people.
Um, and then we gave them some suggestions as well. So we had suggestions for six to eight week courses that we had experience in. And then the pastor could either pick one of those or they could talk to us about other things that were going on in their church that they needed. And then we kept up with those contracts on a regular basis and reached out to churches alongside that.
Now, this is something, to be honest, that I don't do right now, and to me it's actually more about the administrative side and headache of running all that, but that I do know some practice owners that implement this into their business and they have different types of church plans. You could kind of create it like an e a p, like an employee, you know, plan.
Sort of, and so like the church D does pay that certain amount when they refer somebody and you have a contract with them. So you could run it like an eap. I know some of you might have EAPs already in your counseling practice. If you do, it'd be really easy to implement that. So to tell you a little bit about how I currently work with churches, um, I have am very relational in the type of work that I do.
And so pastors do tend to reach out to me directly when they wanna refer somebody for counseling and. I work with them on what they want. So some of the churches that we work with, they wanna pay for the first six sessions for a client. Other churches I work with wanna pay for the first session for a client.
So there are some clients that come to our practice as a referral and the church will pay for a portion, or we talk to clients about what is it that you feel like you could afford? Because we know that when clients put some skin in the game, they're more likely to invest in their treatment, not only financially, but emotionally and time.
And take it a lot more seriously. One of the problems we did run into when churches were paying for treatment was when clients didn't show up for sessions. Um, so we did have to implement a policy that if the client didn't show up for the session, we were not gonna be billing the church. We're gonna be billing their card on file.
So even though the church is paying, we get that card at the very beginning and we let clients know, don't just skip out on your sessions cuz we are gonna have to bill for. So while this, um, implementation has gone, gone well, um, I really enjoy being able to talk to the pastors and being able to create different programs for them for what they need.
Now, in addition to this, I think, um, you can do partnerships in the sense of just offering classes and courses. So encourage you to reach out to pastors, find out what the need is in their, in their church, and then create something that works for. So example is at my own church years ago, and it currently is like this.
There are a lot of families with young children and we know that when you have young children it is so hard to ever get a break or to go on a date night or connect with your spouse. So a couple of years in a row we did. Did an event in the winter, so it'd be January, February, March and April, and it would be one Saturday a month.
So it'd be like the second Saturday of the month from four 30 to eight o'clock, we did an event and the church hosted it and they had us come in. So from four 30 to six. The counseling practice ran the event, so we did some kind of teaching, and then from six to eight, all the couples could go on a date.
And we have a church that's downtown Savannah, so it was really great to be able to walk to different places. Some of the couples would go with other couples, and then while they were on their date, we would give them homework to complete. That related to the lesson that we had just done. So the one that comes to mind right now is we did one on communication.
So the intro was, what is communication? How do you communicate, and some tips on communicating. The next one we did, um, was separating the men and women and talking through different ways that they each communicate and how to communicate with your. We did one on different communication skills for your children and separated based on age of children.
And so I can't, I, I'm failing to remember the last one that we did, but we basically came up with a theme and did four different parts on that theme. And it was really great for having a group practice because it didn't all land on me to create all the curriculum, but it was on the therapist. Now you might be wondering, okay, well how do you charge for that?
Good question. This is my advice to anytime that you're speaking and how to charge charge at least your clinical rate per hour. At the very least, I like to charge also for my time in preparation because that's time I could be seeing clients, right? Typically, I'm only preparing an hour or so, depends on the length of the presentation.
If I'm doing an hour presentation, it's not gonna take me more than an hour or two to prepare for it. Um, it might not take me any time at all if it's something that I've already done before. And so I like to let people know that in advance, like, Hey, this is my hourly rate. This is what it's gonna probably take me to prepare this.
I wanna make sure you're comfortable with that. I personally like to provide one pro bono speaking event to an new organization that we're partnering with. Cause I think it helps in creating that relationship and those referrals. But over time I have found that when I track my. We usually don't get very many referrals through public speaking, so we tend to charge for that in most situations.
So another time we actually partnered, um, not too long with a church. We did a talk for youth on, or actually for youth parents. On dealing with stress and anxiety post covid, and we separated them by middle school and high school and parents. So one of my therapists spoke to the middle schoolers, one talked to the high schoolers, and then I spoke with the parents.
We actually recently had a client through that experience, but most of the time for a while. And then sometimes someone will call and say, oh, I remember when you came and spoke at this event. We'd love to work with you. So what I want you to take away from this is it's really helpful for you to create partnerships with churches cuz churches might not have counselors on.
And they need someone to refer to. And when you talk about it in a way of partnership and you're communicating with them about what's going on, they're communicating with you. Clients are gonna feel a lot more comfortable being referred in, coming to your practice. The next thing I want you to know is it doesn't have to be perfect or a certain way.
I want you to create whatever kind of church plan works for you. In your practice in that pastor. So talk with them about what that could look like. Offer them a couple of solutions if you wanna come up with some packages. I think that's great in offering those over. Um, and like with anything, making sure that you're constantly evaluating if something is working or not working.
Is the financial beneficial to your practice? Are you losing money in the process? Cause we don't want that. Are you getting clients through your public speaking? Um, and then maybe having, when you do go to churches, like I. Having a couple of points to make as far as, here's what I specialize in. Here's another church that really benefited from this course I did on couples counseling or communication, and that way they can benefit from that.
But there is no right or wrong in this, and it's figuring out what works best for your practice. So in conclusion, I would love to hear from you. If you are listening and you have a partnership with a church, send me an email. Let me know what it is that you're doing, because I would be excited to hear about it.
I'm always looking for more ideas in how to partner with churches. And also as a reminder, if you wanna connect more with other faith-based practice owners, you can head on over to whitney owens.com/membership. Learn more about the Wise Practice membership community. I'll be opening those doors sometime in 2023, so be on the lookout for.
For that, make sure you join the email list, um, because actually we talked about church contracts there in that, in that group, so you can be able to talk to other practice owners about cool things that you can do to grow your practice. Thank you again for taking the time to be with me, and I look forward to hearing about the different ways that you partner with churches.
Show Notes Prepared by James Marland
