We all know that church attendance ebbs and flows throughout the year, with summer slumps and Easter and Christmas surges, but that doesn’t mean that church giving has to be as inconsistent. Rather, if approached correctly, giving can not only continue throughout typically slow months, it can even increase.
Here are five tips for using technology as a church’s best friend when it comes to tackling the issue of giving. If you haven’t already…
1) Create social media pages for your church.
Members might be absent from the pews many weekends throughout the year, but this does not mean they are any less engaged with their mobile devices. By creating social media pages for your church, following members and encouraging them to interact with posts, you can remind congregants about giving via social media posts that they are more likely to see than an emailed or snail-mailed announcement.
2) Enable online giving.
Whether it is through a text-to-give campaign or by setting up a downloadable app for your church containing a giving feature, these methods make it exponentially easier for church members to keep tithing faithfully all year round.
3) Add a giving button to your church website.
If your church has a large online following, there are likely a lot of virtual listeners who would support the church they tune into each week if only there was an obvious place to give. Consider placing a “giving” or “donate” tab at the top of your website menu, adding a tithing banner to the home page or put a bright button in the sidebar that can be easily seen.
4) Include a recurring giving option.
This feature makes tithing so simple and stress-relieving for users who have a hard time remembering to give each week. At their discretion, visitors can set up recurring giving at their desired frequency and on specific dates. A popular usage of this feature is setting up an automatic 10% withdrawal to the church account on that user’s payday. Utilizing technology in this way for giving is a win-win for both parties involved; the church is unlikely to miss a donation from that user, and the user is less likely to forget about giving and risk feeling guilty.
5) Implement a church management tool for integration.
To create a church culture that is not merely cognizant of giving but is excited about using their finances to glorify God, it’s up to church leaders to keep their messaging strong and accessible for church members. Since not everyone uses the same social media accounts and the overload of daily notifications from Facebook and the like can deter individuals from wanting to join your social groups, investing in an online church management tool that can help facilitate and control internal church communications in a single location can be a great solution. Integrative forums like these can not only help centralize church communications in general, it can be a great place to remind members about giving, highlight stories of where their donations are being used and answer questions about what the church aims to do with their tithes and offerings.
If tithes and donations ebb and flow throughout the year, it is up to church leaders to be proactive and innovative about how they will reverse the trend. In this day and age, technology is the most useful and hassle-free method for maintaining relationships with congregants no matter where they are in the world. By prioritizing connection with church members via things like social media, online forums, etc., relationships and giving can remain strong all year round.
Renn Salo is Product Manager for Faithlife Giving, a product of Faithlife, which uses technology to equip the Church to grow in the light of the Bible and offers 14 products and services for churches, including Logos Bible Software.