Church Digital Giving Strategies for Maximizing Contributions

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, guys, I'm Thomas. [00:00:01] Speaker B: And I'm Ian. [00:00:02] Speaker A: And today we're talking about digital giving strategies for churches and how you can help your church maximize your contributions. Important topic, not necessarily a popular topic for a lot of us. I think a lot of church leaders are scared or intimidated of talking about giving, but we want to hit it head on. I think there is a lot to be said here. Some of this is going to be kind of like it's a theological question. Some of the stuff we might dive into a little bit here, whether or not it's something that is warranted or allowed in scripture. Maybe you'll have some different opinions on some of this stuff from us, but we want to talk about what's working for churches and when it comes to the area of digital giving. And I think it should be a good conversation for us today. [00:00:48] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. And one thing I will say is that I rarely. Now, we've been helping churches for a very long time, for well over a decade, and it used to be very uncommon for churches to have digital giving options and it was much more controversial, I will say. I still run into the occasional church that wonders if they should be doing online giving, but that is extremely rare. I will say 98% of churches or more, maybe even 99% that I come across, have online giving to a certain degree nowadays. [00:01:25] Speaker A: Right? Yeah. That's not theological question I was even thinking of. [00:01:28] Speaker B: No. [00:01:28] Speaker A: Whether we do it or not. [00:01:30] Speaker B: No, I just had made it come to memory. [00:01:34] Speaker A: We'll dig into some other ones, I think, in here for sure, but absolutely. Let me start off. We have six total, I guess, kind of tips or strategies to be thinking about. So the first one, it's very obvious, I think, but it's website integration. So it is super important that you integrate any digital or online giving solutions into your church's website, in addition to having places where people can do it on Sunday morning. Because I think that I know for me, when I set up my giving, I'm someone who gives almost exclusively online. [00:02:07] Speaker B: Same here. [00:02:08] Speaker A: Digital. So I don't remember giving like cash or a check into our church offering buckets in years. So everything is digital for me. But you do want to integrate this, not just on Sunday morning. So I know a lot of churches are putting a QR code up on your slides, or maybe you have one on the back of seats in your sanctuary there, but you definitely want to have it on your website as well. We always emphasize that we don't want it to be the primary focus of your website. You don't want like about us and ministries and get connected. And then a big button that says give now or something is your main thing on the site, but it should be something. It's a healthy part of any organization. You need to have some kind of revenue. And so having an option for people to give online, I think that really is important. So you do want to have that on there. One thing that I think we should acknowledge is that when you integrate it online, we have found one of the biggest mistakes we see churches make is that all you do is just, you have a button or something that says give and then it takes you directly to a spot where you could put in your credit card information. That's a big no no. Because what you want to do when you integrate it online, really, it's about kind of telling the story and your theology and your heart behind giving. And not just driving someone to a place where they've already decided they want to give, but instead helping them through that process of giving. It's a great chance for you to teach about what your church may believe about tithing or offerings and how much people should give and when you should give. And should it be your first fruits or should you give your leftovers? Or talking about all those kinds of topics. People have dozens of questions that can be answered on your church giving page. So really a good opportunity. You want to make sure you integrate all that into your site. [00:03:58] Speaker B: Yeah, that's good. That is something we stress when we're building websites or just consulting churches on theirs. I still see that that's pretty common, unfortunately. Just a link right out to where they're giving. One other thing I'll add before touching on the next one. I like that you mentioned we don't recommend. It's the main focus. I do remember seeing on a church website one time that they called it the Joy button and it was the biggest thing on the whole website. They called it the Joy button. [00:04:27] Speaker A: Yes. [00:04:27] Speaker B: God loves a cheerful giver. [00:04:29] Speaker A: It just said. What did it say? It said, joy Button is what joy. [00:04:32] Speaker B: And then it was a PayPal link. [00:04:34] Speaker A: Yeah. What brings you joy more than now? [00:04:39] Speaker B: Again with the storytelling? We're talking about. Talking about what it means for your church. Definitely you can address the joyful part of it, but we don't recommend a giant joy button or giant giving button. Well, next one is social media campaigns or just using social media, obviously to drive donations and giving. When I said drive, I promote it. [00:05:01] Speaker A: Whatever. [00:05:01] Speaker B: Give people the opportunity, however you want to look at that. But I think that's often kind of missed everyone. It's obvious these days you want it, like you said, integrated into your website. But social media could be where you actually do tell a little more of that story. Yes, you can do that on a giving page on your website, but on social media you can have testimonies of maybe it's someone who just recently started tithing and saw how God honored that and impacted them. Or it could be for outreaches that you're promoting, obviously, where people can see you taking ministry in action at your church and focusing on the need, community needs or whatever it would be. So definitely don't rule that out. Compelling posts, stories, good visuals to it, definitely you want to make sure that you're promoting and highlighting that well, telling the story of it well there, even though that's not the best place for someone to actually give the donation at through social media, that is usually better carried out on your website or other areas. But yeah, it's definitely where you can tell the story. [00:06:10] Speaker A: I think you say it right, so it's a place to tell compelling stories about giving. So I think what doesn't work is a link to your giving page and say, a text that says, hey, don't forget to donate, or hey, have you given this month? Or whatever you want to say that doesn't work, right? Yeah. So I think you gave a couple of great ideas. So telling people, people sharing testimonies of what God has done, as they've been generous in certain areas of their life and giving people an opportunity to respond. So it's to reinforce some of those stories. The one place where like a direct donation request does seem to work is when it comes to times of challenges and tragedies, those things. So if there's been a major disaster in the area or there's a specific organization that has a lot of presence in kind of the national attention right now, giving those opportunities for people to give to those specific causes. At that time here in Hawaii, we had the Maui wildfires that happened about six months ago here where people lost their lives and thousands of homes were destroyed. And it was really a major story here for us. And because we're such a small state, it just felt really close to home. And so that was a thing that we did consistently at our church is we had some social media posts and we talked about it in church, but we talked about the impact that giving to our church and our fund for helping Maui, the impact that that would kind of make there. We told stories around it and that's something that can be successful but I would advise against just kind of general, have you tithe yet? Kind of social media posts, probably not the best way. Tell stories. That's what social media is for. [00:07:59] Speaker B: That's good. [00:08:00] Speaker A: Use pictures, use videos. Do those kinds of things. [00:08:02] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:08:03] Speaker A: Next one. And this is where we get into a little bit of controversy, I'd say, is the strategy of donor recognition. This is tried and true in the secular world of nonprofits, that donor recognition is a proven tactic. I'm not here to argue that it doesn't work, because it does work. People, when they are recognized, they do tend to give more. And when we have those kinds of things, when nonprofits recognize their biggest givers, that is a net positive for their bottom line in most cases. That being said, we operate by a different standard within the church, and I think there's a case to be made for whether this is right or wrong. I know some churches that do some of that. I've been to churches before where when they're in a building project, they would have people give money to get chairs into the building or pews into the building, and you'll see pews that are marked, and it has the person that donated the money for that pew right there in the church there. So I don't recommend that. I think having your name on the building probably doesn't belong in most churches, and I've seen other churches that do, like generosity teams. So there's the people that are big givers that they have special celebrations for people that are regular, large donors to the church. And part of that rubs me the wrong way. I'm not a huge fan of those kinds of things in some ways, but at the same time, I can't argue with the effectiveness of that. It does seem to actually make an impact. And when people are recognized and you're able to speak directly to some of your largest givers and recognize them, it does tend to produce results. So this would be a good chance. You probably have some things to add, but I'd love to hear in the comments down below what you think about that. Should churches have generosity teams and should they recognize their largest donors? That'd be a good conversation. I'd love to hear kind of what the reachwright family, what you guys think about those kinds of things there. So I don't know, what are your thoughts, Ian? [00:10:08] Speaker B: No, you covered a lot there, Thomas. Not too much. Just my church did something similar, and it was interesting when it happened because it was the first time for me. I do tithe and give regularly to my church as we hope everyone would. But at the same time, I was invited to a special dinner at the church that was put on. My wife and I were both invited, and it was when we were going into a building campaign. And it was more of an appreciation, I think, for being generous consistently. And the dinner was provided. It was nice, it was socializing with other leaders in the church and everything, but we were kind of like the first to be made aware of the building campaign and to pray about what we would give and pledge to it. So it didn't necessarily rub me the wrong way, but it was interesting. I was kind of like, okay, I kind of didn't know what to think about it. But at the same time, anyway, it was a personal experience that I went through with that. [00:11:08] Speaker A: One thing I'll mention, too. So we did a whole video, not a podcast episode, but I did a video about whether or not pastors should even know how much individual members of the church give. That's always been one of my philosophies is I never knew the individual donation amounts of individual people within our church just because I didn't want that information as a church leader, I didn't want to be beholden to anybody with those things. So if you want to check that out, I'll put it up a link in the description. If you're listening, you'll see it there. If you're watching on YouTube, you'll see it up in the cards here and in the description as well. But we talk kind of a deep dive on whether or not pastors should know how much individual members are giving. So we can leave it at that. [00:11:50] Speaker B: Yeah, that's good. Next one is transparent reporting. This one probably not so controversial here. We believe every church should be transparent about what donations are going towards. Now, one of the things I'll just say, also from personal experience, I like you, Thomas, have tithed and have given on line for years now. I like that the software that my church is using allows me to see my contributions and track them and see what it's going towards. But a step further than that from just the individual donor is to just make know if you did raise certain amount of money for the building and now you're debt free, share that with the church. Share if there was a specific. I know my church does a lot of missions in Mozambique, Africa, and we've built schools there for kids and all sorts of stuff. And we talk about how our giving has helped fund that and how much went towards that. And that always makes people feel good about, obviously where their donations are going. [00:12:55] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm a numbers and stats guy. I mean, we operate on that. You look at reach rights, we have dashboards here where we track just about everything. [00:13:04] Speaker B: You drive me crazy with them. [00:13:06] Speaker A: But yes, big fan of transparent reporting on things as an organization here. And I think that churches can really use this because you have a certain subset of your church. Certain people in your church are like me, where we're number nerds and we love to see how much should we bring in and what's the trajectory and what are we spending it on and that kind of stuff. So I think this is only a net positive. As long as you're doing things righteously, it's a net positive. And I think it gives people a different level of confidence when they can take a look at what do the actual books look like and putting this stuff out there for people, you don't have to get into every detail. There's certain, obviously I mentioned before, like knowing individual donations amount. That's a no no. I'm not a fan of people. I know some churches do this, but I'm not a fan of everybody in the church. Knowing the compensation of every staff member, I think that just leads to complexity, especially as your church and organization grows. It's one thing if you have one pastor, I think, and that's just it. But the moment you have more than one, there's all kinds of comparisons. I would probably shy away from that. But beyond that, I think just kind of having an open book philosophy with these things. I always had that and I think just you don't maybe want to put your entire PNL out there every single month because it's just kind of dry data. But I think that having information available to church members and probably not even on social media, but like, hey, here's what we're doing. And seeing some graphical charts of where things are going. Trajectories. There is a percentage of your church population that's going to be interested in that, and that's only going to affirm their commitment to giving and partnering with you as long as you're doing it the right way. That's good, personally. Yeah. [00:14:54] Speaker B: Good addition there. [00:14:55] Speaker A: All right, next one is digital pledges. I think this is a cool thing that is really kind of emerging right now. It's something that really didn't exist the same way even a few years ago. I've been to building campaigns and things where you're given a card and you fill out. Over the next three years, we're going to give this amount and it's going to boil down to this much per month. And what an opportunity to take a lot of those things online and invite people to make those kinds of commitments just right where they are. And they actually having a record of this kind of stuff here lets you just reach a much larger audience to do those kinds of things. So I think that it's probably not something that I would do at a church, kind of like on an annual for your normal ties and offerings. But I think especially when it comes to things like building programs or maybe special commitments that you guys want to make to. Maybe you're trying to buy a van for the youth ministry or something like that. Depending on your church size, it's going to be different kind of projects. But I think this is a really great way to help people kind of get involved and measure and maybe even start to take some steps that you may have to take. Like if you're building a new building and you need to raise $5 million to build said building, well, you probably want to know how much people are committed to giving before you start stepping out on architecture and site work and that kind of stuff that has to happen there. So getting this stuff early and kind of some commitments towards that, it's not the same as actually having cash in hand, but having commitments is something that you can actually do. I don't really know a lot of churches that follow up on said commitments because that'd be a tough phone call to make to say that, hey, you said you were going to do this and you haven't. So what's going on? But I think a commitment is only as good as its accountability in most cases. But I think just the fact of having something like that and having people decide, I am going to do this and commit to it, there's just a certain weight that comes with that. I think that is valuable for most churches. [00:16:56] Speaker B: I do know of a church that when they had a pledge campaign for building for a new building, and when someone committed to pledge a certain amount, if they did not follow through with that, they sent out statements. I was aware of statements where, hey, here's your balance. Here's where basically you didn't follow through. [00:17:21] Speaker A: And if you phone calls, I think though, Ian, you'd be good at making. [00:17:24] Speaker B: Those calls to people. [00:17:25] Speaker A: Hey, I couldn't help but notice that you're $7,000 short this year. [00:17:30] Speaker B: I think I'd like to stick to the calls we help churches with here at reach. Right. But there you go. Well, last and not least and this one's interesting, is personalized messaging, and I kind of didn't know what to think about this one when I haven't given much thought to it until we addressed it for our podcast. But this could be where you're crafting, like, particular messages for members that have certain ministry interests. So let's just say it's someone who really cares deeply about your youth ministry, and there's a big event or something coming up, a ministry initiative for your youth department that you want to possibly engage a donor with. This might be where Tom, who loves your youth ministry wholeheartedly, is made aware of that. So it could be, like, past ministry involvement. If someone served in the outreach, that's good. They would care, obviously, about this cause. So I don't think it's when I said I didn't know what to think about, I don't think it's controversial. I think maybe being careful with it and not obnoxious, and hitting up everyone based on everything they've ever did at your church to give to all sorts of things, but nothing wrong with if someone has given their time or talents to a certain area of ministry, letting them know about upcoming opportunities for them to give financially towards. [00:18:53] Speaker A: Yeah. So I think people think, when you think of personalized messaging with giving, I think people are worried it goes hand in hand with kind of recognizing donors and saying, hey, Joe, I noticed you gave $5,000 last month, and I'd like to ask you to do it again, that kind of a thing. And I'm not necessarily going there with that, and I like what you're saying. It's just that really what we would call this is segmenting is when it comes to email marketing, which we talk a lot about. We've done several episodes on email marketing, segmenting your list and making sure that it's personalized, not based on amount given or past generosity, but based on interest, on where they are in life and life place. So it makes sense if your youth group is saving up money to get a new van to take kids to camp, that you do a lot of personalized messaging to the parents of kids that have kids in youth ministry or kids that are coming into youth ministry, or those kinds of parents, as opposed to just broadly putting the stuff out there to everybody within your church. So nothing wrong with that. But I think just the more segmented and focused you can be on any kind of a campaign, especially when it comes to giving campaigns, I think that really goes a long way. So personalizing is just an overall philosophy that I think that is really important right now. We're getting into this time where everything can be tailored and personalized and people within your church are becoming more accustomed to things being personalized for them in every other area of their lives. So it's going to be an expectation, I think. [00:20:28] Speaker B: Yeah, that's good. [00:20:28] Speaker A: Yeah. Just doing your best to make sure people are getting the right messaging for their interests and needs and life place. That really is something that can be a powerful tool when it comes to online giving. [00:20:39] Speaker B: That's a good way to put it that probably something like this will be expected. [00:20:47] Speaker A: Good. Anything to add as we wrap up? Ian? [00:20:49] Speaker B: No, we hope this was helpful, of course, as we always say. And we hope that maybe this gave a few different ideas to churches that already had online giving but just needed a little more strategy behind it. [00:21:01] Speaker A: So yeah, I really want to know what you think, though, about that question of whether or not it's okay to have generosity teams and those kinds of things. Does your church do it? And what's kind of your thought behind it? Please do take a second to drop a comment down below. Hit the subscribe button. Thanks for being a part of the Reach right family and we'll catch you next time. [00:21:18] Speaker B: See ya.