A 10min guide to get your giving ministry growing!

Churches ask us all the time; how do we start growing our giving ministry using GivFlow or not? Moreover, what do we communicate with donors? Like a lot of really good answers in life, it depends.

Side note: I have a few folks I look up to and when they say this to me it makes me so angry – I’m asking you for advice, just tell me! lol.

So here’s the deal. Let us give you a great starting point on things to tackle first, before you start diving deep into other communicate channels.

1. Reduce lapsed donors

Everyone wants to start reaching out to lapsed donors first. However, we’ve found the best route is actually to reduce the number of folks that lapse in the first place. A lot of times, lapsed donors are caused by secondary problems (not the donor actually lapsing). The main two secondary problems are failed donations (e.g. expired credit card), and “forgot to give” (because they don’t have a recurring gift set up). So what’s the solution?

• First, implement a failed donation solution. When a donation fails, Planning Center will send an automated email, but email providers are blocking or tagging these emails as spam more and more. Moreover, this email does not come from your domain authority (e.g. your-name@yourorg.com).

  >» Implement a solution to reach out to failed donors and ask them if you can help them fix it. Pro tip: when it comes to communication, less is more. Be polite, but keep it short.

• Second, increase the number of recurring donors. Why do we want more recurring donors? Simple, the more recurring donors you have, the less likely they are to lapse because they forgot to give. If your donor is giving based on being physically in attendance on Sunday, they are likely to lapse or fall off over summer months. Recurring donors also donate more contributions throughout the year – increase your recurring donors, increase your giving. Pro tip: GivFlow identifies consistent donors without a recurring gift for you!

  >» Implement a recurring donor solution. Once someone has established a regular giving pattern, ask them to set up a recurring gift. They already give regularly, it’s a simple ask. Remind them what they’re giving to, and how their consistency helps church budgeting and forecasting. Again, less is more!

2. New Donors

Awesome. If you’ve followed number 1, you have implemented a solution to drastically decrease the number of lapsed donors. However, we’re still not ready to implement a lapsed donor pipeline. While you can go this route next, we actually see that nurturing new donors creates a longer stay at your church.

In other terms, if I was to identify an average lifetime stay for donors or church members at your church based on the time they start regularly attending until they leave, we’ve seen this lifetime stay increase by implementing a better new donor campaign.

>» Implement a new donor campaign. This campaign should inform donors about where their dollars are going. Share a story or two. Ensure the donor feels like they made an immediate impact, and their gift matters.

3. Lapsed Donors

Great. Now we’re ready to look at lapsed donors. Because we’ve implemented the above solutions, we know the vast majority of donors that GivFlow now marks as Lapsed (e.g. has missed 2 of their regular gifts), have lapsed for one of two reasons;

• Financial hardships – There’s a lot of underlying bullet points here but it really boils down to financial hardship. Could be job loss, health issues, divorce. Too many to list, but we all know, major life events can have an immediate impact on finances.
• Political reasons – I know this one gets brushed under the rug more often than not, but if your senior pastor said something from the pulpit this donor doesn’t agree with, they might lapse.

In either case, the goal behind reaching out to a lapsed donor is simple; remind them that this is their home church and you’re here if they need anything.

>» Implement a lapsed donor campaign that reaches out to donors that have lapsed and reminds them of all the resources you have available. The goal isn’t to recover their donation. Your goal should be to do what the church does best, pastor them. As a bi-product, there’s a very good chance this person will recover from their financial hardship or start a conversation that helps them understand the statements that were made. Reach out to them a couple times and give them an easy way to ask for help. We can all be prideful sometimes and with these types of things, timing is everything.