Maximizing Church Online Donations: Strategies for 2024

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Well, every church I ever talked to wants to do better when it comes to online donations, and there are several tips and tricks we've picked up over the years that'll help you be able to maximize them. Let's talk about it. You're listening to the reach, right? Podcast, the show dedicated to helping your church reach more people and grow. Hey, guys, I'm Thomas. [00:00:24] Speaker B: And I'm Ian. [00:00:26] Speaker A: And today we're talking about maximizing online donations for your church. I think it's a very important topic, relevant. Every church wants to do it. Every church, if you're not already, you should be accepting online donations. I think that's very obvious. I remember when the pandemic broke out. Everybody that wasn't doing it yet immediately tried to figure it out. We did a whole video about passing the plate and how that's probably something you might want to consider stopping, not necessarily have to do it, but at a minimum, you should be offering online donations because the majority of donations for churches nationwide are coming in online at this point. So you want to make sure you take advantage of that. So, yeah, I just think it's a good conversation, something to consider. I think everybody will walk away with at least one thing you can do. One small tweak, that's my hope. One small tweak you could make that will improve your online donations. Um, yeah. A lot to be said about this, so anything. [00:01:23] Speaker B: Yeah, it's funny. Yeah, you said it earlier. Just that, you know, most churches are doing this by now, have online giving available. It's funny. You know, as long as we've been consulting and working with churches, maybe about five to seven years ago, I would still come across, you know, the occasional one out of ten church that was absolutely opposed to it. And it was mostly the two things that I would always hear. The first was they wanted to avoid transaction fees and losing a percentage of the offering or the tithe or gift that was given. But then the other one was that, and I didn't hear this one as much, but I would hear it from time to time that they didn't consider that an act of worship with giving if it was done online. We'll be maybe talking about these two as we go, but I think it's. I rarely run into that. Now, there might be, once in a blue moon, a church that is not open to online giving, but I will tell you, I struggle to think how far back it was that I ran into a church that was like that. [00:02:33] Speaker A: I can't either. Yeah. So let me say this too. Just kind of another mention, if you are curious about that objection, about covering the fees or that kind of stuff. Um, I actually, we did a video a couple of months ago where we kind of did the measurement on whether churches should ask people to cover the fees or not. I'm going to make that a card if you're watching here on YouTube, or I'll put it down in the description if you're listening or watching somewhere else. We think in general, not only do the fees, like, not really matter that much, you shouldn't even ask people to cover the fees. And the data seems to support that, that you will see more income for your church if you just ignore all of that. And I know it stinks that the 2.2% to 3% fees, it's not fun to pay them, but you'll be better off in the long run if you just make it convenient. And so we'll talk about some of the reasons why in this conversation here. So you're going to kick us off though, Ian, is that right? You got the first one? [00:03:32] Speaker B: Yeah. Let's do it. First one should be a no brainer. Use a user friendly online giving platform. It should be a no brainer. I mean, you definitely do not want to make it difficult for someone to navigate on your website. And when it's time to give online, it doesn't need to be cumbersome for the giver. So that has to do with choosing the right platform and jokingly saying that this is a no brainer. I still have come across some really clunky online giving systems that are out there. That, and case in point, I won't mention the name. There was a very well known ministry. The person that led that ministry came and preached at my church, and then I felt compelled to give based on their cause. And I went onto the website and went to the giving section, and I, for the life of me, couldn't figure out how to give, and there was all sorts of errors and things happening. So I eventually figured it out. But a lot of people may give up after not being able to do it in the first, you know, being able to do it in that first minute or even less, you know, that they're there. So make sure you have a good user friendly platform, you know, as far as. And there's some good ones out there as well that we've talked about and discussed time and time again, for sure. [00:04:59] Speaker A: So we're marketers, Ian, and we're in that digital space. That's what we do. And I can tell you that every major company has figured out this idea that when things become challenging for people, the amount of people that actually complete the action you want them to do, it starts to go down. That's why Amazon has invested millions and hundreds of millions of dollars in like getting things to be fast, faster and like less clicks and easier. That's why like that, you know, when you go on Amazon, there's the buy now with one click option for things, right? That's because they've realized if I can help them make it easy and skip the cart process and adding it, and if they're just, if they could just do it now, it'll actually increase the amount of people that will actually complete this action. So yes, like this simplicity is, it's really important, uh, to make it something that people could do within a few clicks, but they can do that and just start to give right away, um, and not have to like, like going through lots of steps of account creation and all of the different checks you have, the more you could minimize that, the better off you'll wind up being. [00:06:09] Speaker B: Indeed good. [00:06:11] Speaker A: Uh, next one is optimize for mobile giving. Um, I think this is something that should be a no brainer for us as churches because, right, uh, the invitation to give usually happens on Sunday mornings. So while people can certainly set up giving in other ways, or you can request people donate via email during your weekly newsletter or on social media, all those kinds of things, the primary place is still going to be on Sunday mornings and people aren't going to have laptop computers with them while they're listening to your tithing spiel on Sundays. So you want to make sure that they could easily do that on their mobile device. This should totally be a no brainer. Every modern giving provider, they will give you good options to do this and make it a good experience. But it does depend on your website too, making sure that it's really easy to do on your site. So really it's a question of having a mobile friendly website for most churches. And that's something that a lot of churches still struggle with in a lot of ways. I will say this, we're talking about lots of the providers for online giving. We did a video on this as well. I have a lot of content around online giving that we've done over the years. We broke down all of the best and even made our number one recommendation for most churches for the best online giving provider. If you're looking to change, or maybe you're that one fraction of 1% that doesn't have online giving right now, do watch that video. We'll leave a link in the description and then right here as well where you can see the different providers and what we think of each one and kind of a detailed review on each one of them there. So hopefully that's helpful. [00:07:43] Speaker B: Yeah, it's good to mention. One last thing I'll say is, if I, a lot of churches, I know my church does this, there's a QR code for them to give when that's announced or when they're given the invitation and it goes to a landing page on our website. And you want to make sure that obviously you're optimized, good for mobile with that type of on ramp for people to give too. So, yeah. Next one is promote reoccurring donations. What church does not want people to be giving and tithing regularly? Obviously we believe here that tithing regularly is biblical and giving obviously regularly is biblical and it's also a healthy thing for the church. So a lot of people sometimes think when they're making a donation or of course because they purchase one thing, they may not be thinking of this as much. So that's why we say promote it. Make sure when giving is announced or talked about, or just that you're outlining this on your website and other places as well, online, that people know that they can set up reoccurring donations and helps people stay disciplined too, you know, when they get paid, they know, most people know when they're getting paid and they can automate things at that time and give their first fruits to the Lord that way and be able to be a blessing to the church. So reoccurring is a good thing and it takes, you know, consistency and getting that out there often. [00:09:08] Speaker A: Are you set up recurring, uh, for your giving in? [00:09:11] Speaker B: I'm not, but that's only, it's not, no judgment. [00:09:14] Speaker A: I'm just, it's not a sin. I know, just kind of careful. [00:09:18] Speaker B: Oh, no, Thomas was about to get pastoral on me. No, no. Uh, no, no, absolutely. I think it depends on how someone's paid. Right. So, uh, and, and just, yeah, so I don't personally do that, but, but I do give regularly online, so I'm. [00:09:33] Speaker A: Sure no judgment on that. I'm just, I know for me, it makes sense for me. Yeah, it makes sense for me that I have it set up through my church giving platform that on the first of every month that I give my tithe, you know, kind of like you were talking about a first fruit. It's super nice for me. A lot of people don't like recurring giving or like kind of the thought behind it is that it's not something that you do intentionally every time that you do it on your own. Because usually, like, the way it works for me is that I usually get an email and it comes at like two in the morning on the first of the month. That, and I wake up that morning and look at my email say, oh yeah, that's right, it's the first of the month I gave today. And so it's something that I'm doing. I definitely made a conscious choice to do it. I think God understands. I don't think that I'm somehow missing some act of worship or something that I could be doing. It just helps me to overcome my forgetfulness and that kind of stuff. So, yeah, makes sense for me, but that's good. I do think that as someone who owns and runs a business that has recurring revenue as our model, where people sign for subscriptions, whether it be for web hosting or Google grant management and things like that, that we do here at Reachwrite, I understand, and I think business owners, they understand the value of a people that do recurring payments. It just kind of helps you to take a look at things and better plan your church budget in a lot of ways. If you could take a look as a leader of a church and say, hey, we have $20,000 every month that's recurring, it's going to be coming in, it's certainly not guaranteed, but it is almost like it's going to come in unless something catastrophically changes. And it helps you with your planning. So as an organization, I think for your own health, it makes a lot of sense in that regard to encourage people towards that recurring giving option. So good. [00:11:26] Speaker B: There you go. [00:11:27] Speaker A: Number four. This one is big. It's about communicating the impact. This is one thing I've learned in ministry over the years is that people, you might get a shot in the arm when you talk about giving from the place of need, like we really need you to give so that we can continue to pay everybody on staff and pay our rent, to keep the mortgage on. Yet to, metaphorically speaking, yeah, you could probably get something that works. But I think as far as a long term strategy, it doesn't work as well as communicating the impact that you're giving has when people have given. So when just this week we sent a team of people to Maui from Oahu, where I live and pastor here, we sent a team to Maui to celebrate, to celebrate some of the things that, like some of the cleanup that's happened. But actually to help on the mission field with people that are recovering from the Maui fires that happened last year. Remember, 100 plus people lost their lives. But I think people don't realize how many hundreds of people lost their homes. And with the cost of everything here in Hawaii, it was just catastrophic what happened. But our church was able to make a huge impact and we got to tell that story. And that is the kind of thing that inspires people to say, you know, when I have invested in the past, it's made this kind of impact. I want to keep investing here. That's a much better approach to take with those kinds of things. So, yeah, so make sure you're talking about the impact that people's donations are having. That's the surest way to help people kind of get over that hump and become recurring and regular givers. [00:13:06] Speaker B: Yeah. And I had one thing to add to this. My church does a very good job of this. And the reason I'm mentioning that is, again, how we've mentioned, I'm a part of a larger mega sized church here in the Austin, Texas area. And I think the stigma and the, you know, there's often a judgment with larger churches that they're a big money machine and just out to make a lot of money and all of that. So we are very intentional. We don't shy away from talking about tithing and giving and preaching about that and everything, which is biblical. But at the same time, we most certainly are putting together videos, you know, post outreach stuff to share. Hey, here's where our members generosity is gone. Here's what we were able to do, whether or not it's, we do a lot of missions work in Africa. We have a school there. We have another church campus there. We've of course, launched other campuses. And we talk about how, you know, our generosity, what it's done, how lives were impacted. So I say that it's important for every church to do big or small, but for the larger churches, I think that's a real good thing to do just because of that stigma that may be beyond them as well. So very good. I'm on board with that, too. Thomas, next one's kind of like what I said on the first point with having a user friendly solution but simplifying the donation process. You never want to make there be too many steps or people having to dig deep. This does kind of mean what we said on the first point. Yes, have a user friendly platform, but also just make sure that whether or not it's outlined on your church's giving page or when someone uses the QR code or they go on, just make it a very simple process. The less steps, the better. There may be a few boxes to check off, depending on someone's designating their giving or if they are setting up reoccurring giving, like we said, but make it very easy. Outline the ways, the different ways for people to give. Because some churches, they, they still do by mail, they do online, they do through apps, they do. You know, you can, you can highlight those things. Just make it a very simple process, for sure, especially. Or I'll say one more thing too. Just sometimes, you know, if someone's giving above the tithe or it's someone that is reluctant, reluctant rather to give, the more they have to go about that process, the more they may check out. So get them while they're feeling led and inspired and make it simple. [00:15:39] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I think this is like, we can't overstate this. Like, this is something that is so important. Small church, large church, doesn't matter. Make it easy to do this and you will see more of the behavior you want to see, which in this case is people giving their tithes and offerings. So super important. And it kind of goes with the next one. I'm going to kind of combo these a little bit. [00:16:00] Speaker B: I was going to say it is a good segue. Yeah. [00:16:03] Speaker A: The next one is offering multiple giving options. And by this specifically, when you think of this in the past, it means like, well, text to give and giving by check and giving online or those kinds of things. Yes, do all of that. But also I think that there is a case to be made. In fact, our church is moving towards this right now of alternative ways of giving, like different assets giving. So things like giving stocks, giving cryptocurrency in this day and age, I think those two things specifically are really great opportunities for churches and kind of, kind of fulfills that giving multiple ways idea. The case behind giving stocks is really such a no brainer at this point. It's when someone gives a stock, if a stock is appreciated, let's say someone bought, you know, Google stock ten years ago and it's gone way up in that time. If they wanted to give some of those proceeds to the church, if they have to sell the Google stock, they then have to pay taxes on that, on the amount that it's appreciated and then give it to the church. Whereas if you allow people to just give stock directly, they can just give the Google stock that has gone up in value by a lot directly to the church, give the whole thing and save themselves, typically around 15% in capital gains. [00:17:29] Speaker B: Huge. [00:17:30] Speaker A: So huge thing for people, especially for some of your largest givers, who probably have most of their wealth not sitting in cash in a bank account, but if they can save 15%, I know for people that of means a lot of their focus and attention goes on to tax avoidance and trying to pay as little as possible in a legal way. So giving them opportunities to do that is important. The exact same thing goes for cryptocurrency. I'm not saying that every church has to buy in hook, line and sinker into the merits of bitcoin or some other cryptocurrency out there, but it definitely makes sense, even if it's just to get it and liquidate it, to give people that option so that they can avoid the tax ramifications of bitcoin, which has gone up by hundreds of percent in the last few years. Right. So a huge opportunity. I think most churches should be looking at this. So you want to offer that, but then here's what I'll say. Kind of back to the simplicity point that you were making before. Churches have often been able to do that. But if churches in the past wanted to receive stock from someone, it is a ridiculously cumbersome process. I've done it before. Before these options are available now. There are platforms out there that make giving stock really easy to do. So it's probably something you want to be looking into. You want to keep it simple. But giving lots of giving options is something you should consider. [00:18:48] Speaker B: Yeah, that's good. Well put there. So next one is regularly promoting online giving, just like we said, making sure people know that they can do this. Reoccurring and making that regular. Make sure that you're getting it out there to your church that it's available. Yeah, we want to avoid being obnoxious and always talking about giving and all of that, but you do want to be consistent because people, newer people that come to your church that may have not, you know, been aware of what you're doing with online giving, they need to know about it, people need to be reminded about it. So make it a regular thing. I mean, again, don't beat it over the head, but I. But, yeah, definitely make this regularly known to your church through announcements, what you're putting out on social media, everything else that it's available to them to easily do. [00:19:42] Speaker A: So, yeah, I think that it's kind of overblown. I think most churches are not talking about giving enough, as opposed to talking about it too much. But our reputation of a few churches has led onto most of us that, like, there are prosperity preachers out there that, you know, everything is about sowing seeds and giving more and, like, every message they ever send out. And that's the reputation that some people like. When they think of churches, that's kind of the stereotype that they think of. But I have been pastoring long enough, I've helped churches long enough to know that that is a small minority of us. And you have to be aware of that because that's our reputation in the world. But you probably, if you're not a prosperity preacher, you're probably not talking about these kinds of things enough. Specifically. The next one, number eight, is on social media, using social media for these kinds of opportunities. Social media is a great place for you to do. The thing that we talked about before was talking about the impact that this is going to have. Right. So telling those stories of somebody gave and this is the impact that it had. [00:20:49] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:20:49] Speaker A: Someone made a small donation to laundry love, and 300 people were able to get their clothes washed because of it. That's amazing impact. It ties it together. Those are the kinds of stories that really thrive on social media. Someone gave this small amount and it turned into water for this village in Africa, and that's the kind of impact you could have. So these kinds of stories are great for social media. What doesn't work on social media is, hey, have you thought about giving today? Click here to do so. [00:21:20] Speaker B: Click here. [00:21:21] Speaker A: Yeah, that's. That's not what we're talking about. [00:21:23] Speaker B: So hit the joy. [00:21:24] Speaker A: Yeah, hit the joy button. We've talked about that one before. [00:21:27] Speaker B: Yeah, we've. Yeah, we saw a button on a church's website that it was the giving button called the Joy button. It was just funny. [00:21:33] Speaker A: Nobody knew what it was and so. That's right, it didn't work. But, yeah. Anyway, tell stories on social media. It's. If that's your approach, I think you should be using that, you know, sparingly, but I think it is an opportunity for you. So, good stuff. Anything to add on that, Ian? [00:21:48] Speaker B: No, it's a good one to end with. I like that you said storytelling because I think this is where you can tell more story behind what it means to the giver at your church is on social media. More people will see it, comment, and it does away with, like we said, that stigma of churches are just out for my money when you can tell more story about where the generosity is going. So I love it. Thomas. Good stuff. [00:22:10] Speaker A: Awesome. Hope it's been helpful to you guys. If it has, it would mean a lot to us if you would rate, review, subscribe, do all those kinds of things. Leave us a comment down below. Is there something your church does that you think is maybe different we didn't talk about? That has helped you with your online donations. We'd love to share the wealth with other churches out there. Thanks for being a part of the reach rite family and we'll see you next time. [00:22:32] Speaker B: See you.