What do you know about Online Giving?
- Do you know when people give the most? (Summer months are the slowest, right?)
- Are givers comfortable donating electronically?
- And what about reoccurring giving?
I have found that most church, ministry, and nonprofit organizations answer these types of questions based on
- What they do personally, or
- What seems like other’s have done historically.
The two biggest problems with this approach is
- You’re not basing decisions on any kind of recorded data, and
- It doesn’t allow your organization to move forward – leaving you stuck with an archaic approach that isn’t effective.
Even if you do know what has been done traditionally in the past, you have to consider the huge shift we’ve seen with technology. We have seen how brick-and-mortar business have taken a hit because of their inability to make the right kind of changes. Stores like Walmart have taken much of their inventory online, but even the food and service industries have made accommodations. Starbucks is a prime example, giving users the ability to not only pay via their smartphone app, but even make orders before arriving to the store.
Today, more than ever, we are seeing electronic payment becoming the norm, not the exception.
Is your church ready?
Let’s Look at the Numbers
Taking a closer look at how givers are giving today versus yesterday, it’s important to look at some general figures. Maybe your church members or biggest ministry supports write you a check every month, not because it’s easier or what they prefer, but because it’s the only option you are giving them.
It’s vital that you keep the threshold of giving as low as possible, making it easier for givers to do what they love to do the most: give.
Thankfully, the eGiving pros at Tithe.ly have put together 10 Giving Facts You Need to Know – giving us the chance to make decisions on facts instead of what we do personally or what’s been done historically. From the Tithe.ly website:
“In the first-of-its-kind analysis, the Tithe.ly Church Giving Data shown below leverage Tithe.ly’s vast amount of church giving data from nearly 2,000 churches and multiple millions of dollars in total fundraising from the past 24 months. Our heart and belief is that this data and analysis will help inform giving strategies across the faith-based sector for years to come.”
This data is incredible:
Impressive, isn’t it?
Conclusion
There is a lot of data here. I have read and re-read these ten points several times now. It’s interesting to see what I thought I knew about giving is both true and false. Seeing the end of the year as a huge giving month is of no surprise; however, I would have never guessed that the Summer months would be this strong. In fact, I had always been under the impression that the Summer time is the leanest.
I don’t know about you, but this is going to take a few more reads before I can finish digesting everything in this study. In fact, let’s break this down in the next ten weeks.
Julia says
Hi Eric!
Thanks for the great article. My church is seriously considering getting into mobile giving options, but there seems to be an utter lack of providers catering to central European countries with Euro currency. Do you happen to know of any well tested option providing services to EU countries, preferably with German-speaking options?