Summer is a season of contrasts. Cold drinks and hot afternoons. Lazy days and hectic trips. The laughter of gleeful children and the laments of bored children. The list goes on.
The same is true in most church offices. While the summer months bring a welcome respite from the constant barrage of evening programs, activities, and events, they are also typically some of the most challenging months of the year from a budget standpoint.
College students go home for the summer. Families load up the minivan and head to grandma’s for weeks at a time. And just about everyone is off their routine, off their budget, and off schedule. All of this leads to empty pews on Sunday, and – often – emptied bank accounts to boot.
At Mogiv, we see this cycle play out each year at the hundreds of churches that we serve. Giving spikes in November and December, dips in January, increases slowly throughout the Spring, plummets during the Summer, and then climbs back up again during the Fall. It’s as reliable as…well…the seasons
BUT, we also see a handful of churches who break the mold. There is a growing number of our partners who actually see an increase in their giving from Memorial Day through Labor Day. We had at least one church who brought in more gifts last August than they did in December!
So what’s their secret? How is it possible that their offerings are going up even while their attendance is going down? As you might expect, the answer is as multi-faceted as the challenge itself. There are no one-size-fits-all churches and there are no universal solutions. But there are certain tools and habits that each of these “Summer Slump Busters” employ. I have listed four of them below.
Give them a shot in the coming few weeks, and see what a difference they can make between now and September!
1. Emphasize Recurring Giving
Readers of ChurchMag will already be familiar with the importance (dare I say “necessity”) of online giving. Digital giving tools (like Mogiv!) can do much to engage with new givers and help existing givers give on a more consistent basis. A big part of this can be attributed to the power of automated giving. Want to make sure givers don’t forget to give or don’t accidentally “take their gifts with them” when they go out of town? Encourage them to create a recurring gift online! It only takes a few seconds and it will pay dividends (pardon the pun) all year long.
2. Involve Your Members In Missions + Outreach Giving
Summertime means more than just slurpees and slip-n-slides. It means youth camps, short-term missions trips, outreach projects, and more! Each of these is an opportunity to connect with more of your givers. I am confident that there are members in your congregation who snooze through the offering each week, but who would LOVE to help provide a scholarship for summer camp. Or maybe support a team heading to Haiti for a week. Find ways this summer to connect your givers with the needs in your community and around the world. In many cases, a single gift to an outreach project is enough to transform a former “Offering Abstainer” into a consistent monthly tither.
3. Provide A Mobile Giving Option
We talk often at Mogiv about ways to take the “offering moment” out of the Sunday morning service and out into the world. There is NO better way to do this than with a fast and easy mobile giving option. Text giving, app giving, mobile-responsive websites. The list goes on. Find the solution that is going to work best for your church and encourage your givers in this direction today! You probably can’t send an offering plate on vacation with your members. But, with tools like Mogiv, you CAN turn each one of their phones into a channel for generosity. With studies reporting that people check their phones in excess of 100 times a day, that is 100 opportunities to give!
4. Talk About It!
Speaking of vacations, it seems that churches are all-too-eager to take a hiatus from talking about money during the summer months. Is it any wonder that giving takes a dive?? While there may be certain “natural” times throughout the year to have frank conversations about finances (e.g. December, the end of the fiscal year, etc.) those should NOT be the only time the topic is broached. Generosity – no different from prayer, Bible reading, fellowship, et al – is a year-round discipline. As such, it should be a year-round topic of conversation. Especially during the summer months! The more frequently money is discussed, the easier it will be to talk about “generosity as discipleship” without sounding disingenuous.
Have you encountered “summer giving success” at your church?
What are some of things that have contributed to that growth?
Share in the comments below.
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