I want to share with you how one thing can help you avoid the summer slump in giving. Summer is always a challenging time when it comes to being fully funded. At the same time that giving typically slumps downward you are ramping up for your busiest time of missions and ministry. How will you assure that come July you will have the funds you need? There is one thing you can do NOW to help…
Encourage your members to set up their giving to be automatic!
Here is a real life story of a pastor that followed my advice…
Jerris Duncan is the lead pastor at Grace Community Church of Champaign, IL. Grace is an affiliate of LifeChurch.tv. While small, about 150 members, this church is making a significant impact in the Champaign area. As you might imagine with a small membership and a budget of $250K a year making ends meet is difficult. That is especially true when it came to the summer months.
Don’t take my word for it listen to what Pastor Jerris said,
“Often during the summer we as a staff would gather on Monday mornings to get the report of how much came in the offering the day before. It would sometimes be about half of what we typically brought in. We would have to decide which bills we could pay and which had to be put off.”
Does that sound familiar? How many times have you had to delay paying a bill or doing ministry simply because the funds were not there?
Everything changed for Grace Church when they implemented online giving and encouraged members to sign up for their gift to be automatic! Members signed up for recurring giving through their online partner. In the summer when they went on vacation or to the lake for the weekend their offering still showed up.
Here are my keys towards heading off the summer slump in giving using recurring giving.
- Set May for a recurring giving sign up push for your church.
- Make sure you have an online platform set in place that you are happy with. I have an online company that you can check out called, Charis Giving Solutions
- Build out communication materials that focus on recurring giving such as the sample on the left that was sent out in a year end giving statement. The card at left could easily be made into a post card.
- Considering posting directions to how to set up recurring giving in all your print and online information. Be sure to provide clickable links that sends people directly to the page to set up recurring giving.
- Announce from the platform how easy it is to set up recurring giving. You might even live demonstrate how it is done.
- Think about setting up tables with computers to help people access your online page and provide help on how to set up giving to be recurring.
- Utilize Social Media to post encouragement for giving online and setting up giving to be automatic. The sample at left is from one of my clients. Think of creative ways to communicate online giving AND setting up recurring giving.
These are just a few ideas to help start you thinking about how you can create your own campaign pushing recurring giving.
Does it work? Here is another quote from Jerris Duncan on the value of recurring giving for his church…
“Online giving took the worry out of Monday mornings in the summer for our church.”
For the first summer of their existence Grace Church was able to fully fund their summer. It was and continues to be for Grace Church a game changer.
Get started today planning for a May push for recurring giving and in July you will be thankful you read this post!
Mark Brooks – The Stewardship Coach