How churches fundraise and grow is transforming at an incredible speed. The financial wellbeing of your church communicates how seriously you take the mission of your church. In this post, we unpack hard truths about church giving by looking at the relevant facts, trends, and best practices in church fundraising.
In the heart of every congregation lies a shared desire to support their church’s mission and ensure it flourishes for generations to come. But, amid the sacred call to stewardship, lies a myriad of complexities whenever we speak about church giving.
The combination of church and money can often make people uncomfortable but discussing the nuanced realities that shape your church’s financial stewardship is vital because church giving is changing. And the way the church fundraises and grows is shifting at a remarkable speed.
We live in a time where the financial wellbeing of your church not only communicates how seriously you take your mission, but how well your church is adapting to new technologies and changing times.
In this blog post, we hope to help frame the discussion around church giving by looking at relevant facts, trends, and best practices in church fundraising.
With changing times, churches too have begun to adopt technologies to spread God’s word to the people.
From live-streaming church services to accepting tithes online and sharing sermons online to running a virtual church, churches are putting their best foot forward in advancing with the world.
Today fundraisers, nonprofits, and other organizations are turning to newer methods to make it easy for people to donate. The reason is simple – people are always on their mobiles, looking for things to happen fast.
Churches shouldn’t be left behind either. They must also look for software and tools to fundraise and manage their supporters online. We’ll talk in detail about this in the following sections, as well as our all-in-one fundraising platform Donorbox that is helping thousands of churches across the world accept online tithes and offerings with utmost ease.
Let’s dive in!
According to Leviticus 27:30 (TLB), “A tenth of the produce of the land, whether grain or fruit, is the Lord’s, and is holy.” And Proverbs 3:9 (NIV) says, “Honor the Lord with your wealth, with the firstfruits of all your crops.” These verses say to give a portion, specifically a tenth, of whatever one makes back to God. And firstfruits is saying that one should give first—before one does anything else with their money.
Tithing is a religious practice for most Christians. But long gone is the time when all that the churches had to do to raise money was tithe on Sundays and organize a congregation lunch once or twice per year. Giving practices have changed along with the economy, looking at some recent church giving statistics can help you understand this new landscape better.
Your church needs a strong fundraising strategy.
The best place to start developing a fundraising strategy for your church is with the right data. A data-informed strategy will serve you well and for the long term. In addition to the data you already have, consider how you might involve your congregation. Simple surveys will help you understand how your members feel about church giving.
Even if your giving hasn’t dropped, it might be time to design a better fundraising strategy. In that case, you could ask your members what motivates them to keep giving and how to make giving even easier for them.
Online church giving is the future. It’s more important than ever to focus on delivering strong, multichannel experiences for donors. Relying on cash and checks is no longer an option. Churches must provide multiple avenues for their members to make financial contributions if they want everyone to participate.
Consider the following example of an online church donation form. It includes suggested donation amounts that make it easy for people to decide how much to give. It also offers a dropdown to let donors designate their donations. These features help people connect better with your church and improve the giving process.
Go Digital With Your Church Fundraising
A general rule of thumb is to make everything as easy as possible. For example, create a Facebook post that your congregation members can cut and paste or send text reminders on a Saturday that tell your members to bring a friend to church on Sunday.
This is not the case just with young donors. Mobile giving has slowly started to become the norm.
Did you know that churches that accept tithing online increase overall donations by 32%?
To stay ahead of the digital curve, your church needs to have a mobile-friendly website, a proven email marketing strategy, and seamless and effective donation forms.
Your donors’ mobile giving experience should be smooth. Ideally, you’d enable giving through a custom app where a donor would put in their information at one time, set it all up, make a recurring donation or a one-time gift, and get their receipt.
If you’re not able to do that, the very next best thing is to make sure your website is optimized for mobile, as well as your donation forms. Your donation forms should be simple, mobile-friendly, and seamlessly integrated into your website.
Also, consider utilizing text-to-give technology. This technology is especially powerful for organizations that have regular gatherings, like churches. With text-to-give, donors donate right from their cell phones.
Donorbox Text-to-Give makes it even easier for your donors. They send your campaign ID to 1 855 575 7888 (basic plan) or the keyword “GIVE” to 801801 (short code plan). While the choice is yours, the shorter number is much easier to remember and type in. Plus, you can choose a custom keyword in this plan.
Once your donors send the campaign ID, Donorbox will send them your mobile-friendly campaign link and there they can make donations.
Your donors can also quickly repeat this donation in the future without having to fill out any forms.
Here’s what it looks like –
The average age of U.S. donors is 63. Because the average age of the U.S. donor puts them 4 years past the 401(k) withdrawal minimum age, this means that fundraising strategies should be tailored primarily to retiree-aged church members.
Create and run an active campaign to reach and partner with age 63+ donors for your church, otherwise, you might be leaving a lion’s share of potential funds raised on the table.
Furthermore, age matters when it comes to the language you use. When you say the word “giving” in your church, what do you mean? You likely mean “financial giving”. And that’s what many of your Gen-X members understand too. But chances are, your younger members don’t.
Millennials, for example, rank hospitality as the most important act of generosity. That means when you talk about giving and generosity, Millennials aren’t necessarily thinking about money.
So, if you’re looking to raise money, make sure you use very clear language to get your message across.
Pro tip: 63+ might indeed be the average donor age in the U.S. However, it could be very useful to survey your donor base and find out the right target age for your church (if you already don’t have that information).
When fundraising, share about the local and international work you are doing, whether that work takes the form of short-term mission trips, long-term missionary support, or inter-church partnerships.
People have increasingly more options for places and organizations to give to, and most of those organizations are not religiously affiliated. When your church asks a member to give, you’re competing with dozens of other organizations also asking them to give, to a variety of missions. When people want to help solve issues in our society, they often look for places outside of the church to meet those needs.
This is why it’s more important than ever to demonstrate the impact your church has on society.
Make sure you let every donor know what they have given and what’s happening with their donations. Make sure they hear stories from you. For example, send or show a video recap of ministry highlights along or pull your staff or key volunteers together and write personalized thank-you notes to accompany a church giving statement.
Pro tip: Measuring your impact is more important than ever – you can’t communicate impact if you don’t measure it. Read more in our crash course on measuring social impact.
Church leadership might be the biggest obstacle to a church’s progress. And this might be a hard pill to swallow.
Have you ever heard of a fixed mindset and a growth mindset?
“A “fixed mindset” assumes that our character, intelligence, and creative ability are static givens which we can’t change in any meaningful way, and success is the affirmation of that inherent intelligence. A “growth mindset,” on the other hand, thrives on challenge and sees failure not as evidence of unintelligence but as a heartening springboard for growth and for stretching our existing abilities.”
What does this mean in practice?
If a church leader believes that their church’s circumstances are set in stone – saying that the current situation is ‘just the way it is’ and ‘it can’t be changed’ ’ – this is an example of a fixed mindset.
The hard truth is, with a fixed mindset, it’s likely your church won’t see any meaningful progress.
What can you do instead? Encourage continuous improvement and a growth mindset in your church leadership team. See challenges as opportunities and you will foster a more positive approach overall, all of which is more likely to get you farther.
Few topics scare church leaders as much as raising money.
After all, most church leaders were neither called nor trained to be professional fundraisers. So fundraising can, understandably, be intimidating.
For church leaders, the topic of money is both a financial and a spiritual issue. As a church leader, you can’t lead a healthy and growing church without leading people into generosity. These two things go hand in hand.
The health of our relationship with money is not determined by how much money we have or don’t have. In fact, studies have shown the more money people have, the less generous they are. When it comes to money, it’s all about beliefs, attitudes, and mindset.
According to Thrivent Financial, most people hold one of five distinct attitudes toward their relationship with money and all they own.
And these are attitudes, not objective ‘amounts’ or milestones. For example, someone might be feeling a ‘surplus’ while earning much less than someone else who’s feeling like they’re ‘struggling’.
A great way to collect and improve offerings at your church is to be intentional and plan your communication about money throughout the year, carefully deploying your key messages at strategic times.
Essentially, preaching about church giving and preaching about money is not the same. Generosity is certainly an important component of being a good steward, but there’s much more – spending, debt, contentment, saving, stewardship, communication, faith, and trust.
Church leaders spend much of their time and energy thinking about how to increase giving. And that’s a valid concern. It’s necessary to consider how to best invite church members to give.
But the very first thing you should do if you want more people to engage in giving to your church is develop a hardy strategy for recurring donations.
A happy congregation will keep giving, will give more, and its members will encourage and inspire each other to give – doing some of the fundraising heavy lifting for you.
Start saying thank you to your donors immediately. Take the first opportunity to connect their gift to the mission. Communicate regularly with your donor base and appreciate their gifts.
Send hand-written notes and organize donor get-togethers.
Did you know: Donorbox makes automated communication like thank you messages and personalized emails easy and efficient with our donor management software?
Year-end church giving has the potential to maximize donations. Research says over 30% of faith-based donations are made in October, November, and December. Out of that 17% takes place in December alone.
For best results, make your strategies at least 3 months in advance and follow these tips to improve year-end church giving –
Donorbox is helping thousands of churches across the world accept online tithes and offerings with its powerful and simple online fundraising features. Creating a year-end giving campaign on Donorbox will only take about 15 minutes, with no start-up costs and no monthly contracts!
Church giving is still a priority for people who follow God. In fact, the concept of tithing may be ancient but even today, many Christians and Jews put 10% of their monthly income aside to give to the local church.
In the Bible, tithing is mentioned as a profound way of showing God that one trusts him with their finances. By talking about the importance of tithing and church giving, you can make it a priority among people who follow your church.
Here are a few points to remember to make church tithing a priority for your followers –
Start Fundraising for Your Church
Churches on the front of change, meeting it head-on, will be poised to grow, while churches that neglect these shifts may start or continue to struggle with financial health.
For church leaders, it’s important to bring people along with a sense of hope – without beating them up or guilt-tripping them.
Whether that’s through implementing digital giving, investing in a mobile strategy, or being more intentional with current donors, there’s a world of opportunities to take advantage of if one is only honest with oneself and ready to walk forward with determination and optimism.
Your ministry matters to Donorbox, and we want to make sure it works more effectively for you.
With technology changing the world faster than we could imagine, churches need to quickly adapt and make giving easy for people.
With Donorbox MinistryMatters’ simple digital giving tools and features, you can create sustainable growth for your church. And your members will be more inspired to give. Sign up today to keep funds flowing to your church!
Our Nonprofit Blog is the ultimate hub of fundraising tips and resources. You’ll find several articles and free templates dedicated to church giving and stewardship of members. Subscribe to our newsletter to receive a collection of the best Donorbox resources in your inbox every month.
Ilma Ibrisevic is a content creator and nonprofit writer. She’s passionate about meaningful work, sustainability, and social movements. If she’s not working, she’s obsessing over coffee or cooking. You can connect with her on Linkedin.
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Ilma Ibrisevic