Plenty of good proposals die at the leadership meeting, and rarely because anyone objects to including people. They die because the proposal arrives as an idea rather than as a decision. Boards approve decisions.
What follows is the shape of a proposal that passes, in the order the meeting will want it.
Lead with the people, then the number
Start with something concrete and countable. "We have eleven adults who cannot follow the sermon, including four who joined this year." That is a fact about your church, and it changes the conversation from whether translation is a good idea to what you intend to do about eleven people.
"Translation would be good" is an opinion, and opinions get deferred to the next meeting.
If you do not know the number, find it out before you ask for anything. Two conversations with the welcome team and one with whoever runs the newcomers' course will usually produce it, and the exercise itself is worth doing.
Give them a comparison, not a price
A cost in isolation always sounds like an expense. A cost next to the alternative sounds like a saving.
Set your figure against what the hardware route would cost: a transmitter, a set of receivers, headphones, spare batteries, replacements each year for the ones that vanish, and the volunteer hours to charge, distribute and collect them. Most boards have seen a quote for that at some point and remember being startled by it.
Then give them one more comparison, from your own budget. A single line they already approve — the flowers, the coffee, one Sunday's worth of any regular cost — placed next to the figure does more than any argument. Boards are far better at relative judgements than absolute ones.
Ask for a trial, not a commitment
The easiest proposal to approve is a small, reversible one. "Three months, this much, and we report back with the numbers" passes where an open-ended line item does not — and it happens to be the right way to do it anyway.
Name the end date in the proposal. A trial without one is a permanent commitment that has not been admitted to, and experienced treasurers recognise that immediately.
Say what you will report
Commit in advance to exactly what you will bring back: how many people used it, which languages, how long they stayed, and what it cost.
This does two things. A board that knows a review is coming approves more readily, because the decision feels smaller. And a proposal that survives its own review becomes permanent without another argument — which is the real goal, since the second conversation is usually harder than the first.
Name the person, and the second person
The question that sinks more proposals than cost is "who will run it?" Have the answer before you are asked, and have two names rather than one.
A single volunteer is a risk the board can see, and they are right to see it: it is the most common reason these things stop. Two trained people, named in the proposal, removes the objection entirely.
The objections you will get
- "Will it be accurate?" Be honest: very good, not perfect. It handles ordinary preaching well, it struggles with poor audio, and it is a great deal better than the current situation, in which those eleven people understand nothing. Offer to show them five minutes of a real transcript rather than describing it.
- "Do we have the volunteers?" One person, three buttons, and here are the two names.
- "Will people actually use it?" You do not know, and neither does anyone else. That is the argument for a three-month trial rather than against the proposal.
- "Is this the right priority?" Compare it to a line they already approve and let the number answer.
- "What about privacy?" A fair question and worth pre-empting: say what will be stored, who can see it, and that sensitive services will not be recorded at all.
- "Couldn't a member just interpret?" They could, and it works until the Sunday that person is away, on holiday, or unwell. Volunteer interpreting is a good thing that does not scale to fifty-two Sundays.
Arguments that do not land
Worth knowing what to leave out. Boards are unmoved by technology, by what other churches are doing, and by growth projections. A proposal that leans on any of the three sounds like enthusiasm rather than analysis, and invites the question of whether the person asking has thought about the cost.
Similarly, avoid promising that translation will grow the congregation. It might, and you cannot show it, and a promise you cannot evidence at the three-month review damages everything else you have said.
One page, five headings
Keep the written proposal to a single side of paper: the eleven people, the cost, the comparison, the three-month trial with an end date, and the two names. Anything longer will be skimmed, and the parts that get skimmed are the ones you needed them to read.
A worked example you can adapt
Roughly this, on one side of paper, with your own figures in place of the placeholders:
Proposal: live translation, three-month trial.
We currently have eleven adults who cannot follow the sermon, four of whom joined this year. Two of them have stopped attending the midweek study for this reason.
We propose a three-month trial of browser-based live translation, ending on 31 March, at an expected cost of [figure] for the period. Attendees use their own phones; there is no equipment to buy. For comparison, a conventional receiver system was quoted at [figure] up front plus annual running costs.
Anna and Petros have both been trained to operate it and will share a rota.
We will report back in April with: the number of people who used it, which languages, and the actual cost. If fewer than [number] people use it regularly, we will recommend stopping.
That last sentence is the one that gets it approved. A proposal willing to name its own failure condition reads as analysis rather than advocacy, and it costs you nothing — if the trial genuinely fails, you would not want to continue anyway.
Numbers for your proposal
InMyTongue offers metered usage, so a three-month trial costs only the hours you actually use, and new accounts include free credit — which means the first weeks of your trial cost nothing at all to report on. Get the figures for your proposal.