Hurricane Florence should have shown all of us why the offering must be more than a Sunday event. Last weekend up and down the Southeastern coast hundreds of churches had to close their doors due to Hurricane Florence. Many of their members were forced to evacuate. Each of those churches failed to pass the offering and they will potentially lose thousands of dollars. Collectively millions of dollars that would have gone to Kingdom work are now forever missing. With the evacuation of givers the offering was evacuated as well. Unless you are like the church I attend.
70% of my churches over $20 million dollar yearly budget comes through some electronic means of giving. The majority of that is through automated giving members have set up. So, while Hurricane Florence cancelled our services at the main campus and nearly all of our satellite campuses the offering plate was still active. Was yours?
Online giving can help you offset any loss you might experience due to weather. Those of us on the coast have to deal with hurricanes in the late summer and fall. Those of you in other parts of the country have to deal with snow and ice. Nearly every locale can and does experience declines in attendance due to weather. Having a robust online giving strategy that focuses upon setting up recurring giving WILL help offset these losses.
Americans have changed the way they do commerce and it is past time that you change your thinking about taking up the offering! Few people write checks today. Few carry any significant cash upon them. Yet every Sunday we pass a bucket, basket or plate by people giving them little to no ability to give even if they wanted to. You must change this!
Here is my advice towards making the offering more than a Sunday morning event…
- First, set up a robust and multi-option online giving system. That system should allow for all types of electronic giving including text giving.
- Make it easy to find and easy to use. First, make it easy to find the giving button on your home page of your website. Then make sure the giving page is easy to use and navigate through. The easier you make it for people to give the more apt they are to give.
- Regularly point people to your online giving page. For instance in every giving letter I write for clients the PS at the end points people to the giving page. We use QR codes in printed material and heavily use links to the giving page in email blasts. It is not enough to simply have online giving you need to remind people of it and drive them to it.
- Encourage signing up for recurring giving. Two reasons you want to move members to this platform. First, it will ensure that despite weather or vacation their offering hits your offering plate. Secondly, recurring giving, referred to as ACH, has the lowest percentage fees paid to your online provider. So, with recurring giving you assure the gift automatically and systematically comes to you AND that you retain the largest percentage of that gift.
- Run sign up periods for recurring giving twice a year. I advise doing this in May before the summer slump hits. The other time I like to focus on this is in January when people are making resolutions for the New Year.
Don’t stop taking up the Sunday morning offering just yet but you need to get into the 21st century NOW!
Mark Brooks – The Stewardship Coach