Tag Archive for: generosity

5 Important Online Giving Statistics

It’s no secret that the generous financial gifts of your local congregation are the backbone of sustaining the day-to-day ministry of your church. Not only does it help provide your staff and leadership with a living wage, but regular giving is also a biblical mandate to support the work of the Church and further the Gospel.

In spite of financial gifts being such an important topic, it remains a sensitive subject. In many churches, it rarely comes up on Sundays or in staff meetings. But with so many changes in the method of giving and recent online giving statistics, church leaders can’t afford to let this topic remain taboo—It’s important to talk about money at church strategically.

To help you kickstart the conversation (particularly internally), here are five important online giving statistics that your church needs to know about:

49% of all church giving transactions are made with a card.

When was the last time you wrote out a check? Odds are it’s been quite a while (outside of the occasional bill!). The number of people who make no cash transactions in a week continues to rise at 41%. (source) This points to a continued trend of many people moving towards a “cashless” economy.

This isn’t a trend to shy away from! Instead, consider: How can we leverage this reality?

When it comes to church giving, this statistic reinforces the importance of having online giving options. If you take up your regular tithe, or a donation for a visiting missionary or specific cause, the majority of your congregation won’t be able to respond without offering online formats for giving.

Only 27% of digital giving happens on a Sunday.

The other 73% happens on the other six days of the week. Did this one surprise you?

Many givers are opting to set up their tithe as a recurring online donation as a monthly gift. But this also points to an opportunity during the other six days of the week to give people a chance to respond to extra giving opportunities or special campaigns. 

When you have a visiting missionary or a special need for your people to respond to, be sure you are giving people time to consider how they would like to respond. Send a direct link to where additional gifts can be made via email or text. And as an added benefit, anyone that missed that particular Sunday still has a chance to give!

Churches that accept tithing online increase overall donations by 32%.

How about this one?

There are two reasons for this statistic: One is that online giving is quickly becoming the preferred method of tithing and the other reason is that online giving often automates recurring donations. People are busy, and while they have every intention of making regular tithes to your church, they can miss a few donations in the process.

Spiritually, an advanced-decision to be generous can be every bit as meaningful as sitting down to write a check every month is for some people. God calls us to be intentional with what we have, and directing our monthly dollars towards the Church is a God-honoring action.

By offering online tithing options, you not only make the process easier for your givers but you also allow them to automate the regular process of giving. This will naturally increase the total amount your church will receive as you make consistency easier!

77% of people who tithe regularly give 11% to 20% of their income.

Did you know that of those who tithe regularly, 77% of them give 11% to 20% of their income? Sometimes they give even more! This makes it clear that people are going above and beyond the standard one-tenth originally shared in Leviticus 27:30 and echoed throughout the New Testament.

The people of your church believe in supporting the work that you are doing. God’s people are passionate about helping those in need, furthering the Gospel, and supporting your ministry.

While you may feel uncertain or that you can’t address finances, it’s clear from this statistic that people are choosing in their hearts to give even more than what Scripture has laid out for them.

Incredible!

55% of people who engage with nonprofits on social media end up taking some sort of action.

You may wonder how this applies to giving, so let us explain:

The giving conversation isn’t just about “the ask” itself. In today’s world, people want to be engaged in the causes they care about. They want to see behind-the-scenes. They want to share about the causes they love.

In fact, organizations who engage their audience on social media see them more likely to take action, such as giving or volunteering.

If you’ve ever questioned the power of social media before, this is a clear sign that it has an impact. People desire to listen and respond to you outside of Sunday morning. By making sure you have clear action steps present on social media, whether that be to connect with a leader or make a gift, you can convert their engagement to action.

More than 74% of churches across the United States offer online giving in some form. If your church doesn’t yet have an online giving option, or is considering a switch, take a look at our free 14-day trial to see how One Church Software can help your church with online and text-to-give options.

And if your church already offers online giving, take the time to make sure you are reaping all the benefits by responding to these statistics and making sure your online giving tool allows you to access donor history, donor information, recurring givers, automates donor follow-up, and more! The right online giving tool should work in harmony with your other systems to save you time and help you run more efficiently.

Want to know more about finances and the church? Here are a few other resources you may find valuable:

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3 Ways to Promote Consistent Giving at Your Church

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A typical problem churches face is maintaining a consistent stream of funds to support ministry operations. The work of the local church, whether discipling teenagers or providing meals for the homeless, costs money, and if a church struggles to maintain a consistent stream of giving from its members, the work of ministry can be hindered.

How can churches encourage consistent giving from their church members without breaking trust or sounding “greedy,” a common fear of church leaders? Here are a few basic ways to promote consistent giving in the local church:

1. Talk about money outside of giving campaigns.

One of the biggest mistakes churches make is neglecting any talk about generosity, giving, or money outside of specialized fundraising campaigns for new facilities, new ministry opportunities, or other such projects.

A common line churches use is, “This is not about a building…it’s about cultivating generosity in your heart.” Unfortunately, if the only time you’re talking like that on a Sunday morning or in your small groups is when you’re trying to add a new facility, people are probably going to roll their eyes! And more importantly, you’re going to lose trust.

One of the best ways you can cultivate a culture of generosity and consistent giving in your church is to talk about money and generosity regularly so that finances aren’t as taboo a topic as they too often are. God cares about our money and how we spend, invest, or give it, and church leaders should be talking about our relationship with money as a regular part of the discipleship process, whether there’s a fundraising campaign or not.

Make conversations about finances a regular part of your discipleship efforts. You will not only cultivate generous hearts that are more like Christ, but you’ll also see more consistent giving from your church members.

2. Encourage regular service within the local church.

This is an essential but often overlooked point when it comes to encouraging giving. In general, even outside of the church walls, people are more likely to personally invest in projects or efforts with which they are actively involved in some way. Sure, plenty of generous donors give to nonprofits or philanthropic causes with whom they have little personal connection. Still, most small and medium-sized givers will be most faithful and consistent if they have a vested interest and participatory relationship with the recipient of their giving.

A really simple, underrated way to encourage consistent giving at church is to encourage your church members to serve regularly. The more involved they are through serving in the children’s ministry or taking meals to new parents throughout the week, the more likely they will be willing to open their wallets and give.

Two of the resources about which people are most stingy are their time and money. If you can get your church members to loosen their grip on their time and be generous on that front, you are more likely to successfully loosen their grip on their money and encourage them to be generous with it.

Encourage service and watch giving become more consistent.

3. Prioritize electronic giving and monitor it.

More and more people are paying their bills through automatic electronic withdrawals from their bank accounts. The number of people who write checks to pay their bills will only continue to decrease moving into the future. The same is true with church giving. Though church demographics tend to skew older than the average age of a community’s population, the digital financial revolution will hit your church soon if it hasn’t already.

If you hope to encourage regular, consistent giving at church, reliable electronic giving needs to be a top priority. There are seemingly dozens of options available for churches to make electronic giving available to their church members. Whichever option you choose, make sure that user experience is important in your decision-making process. Electronic giving that is difficult to use creates unnecessary friction and could even erode trust in your church members, which will only hinder consistent financial giving.

An extra bonus if the solution you choose makes communication easy with your donors, allows members to give via text, and makes it simple for you to monitor it all!

Consistent financial giving is important in the life of the local church because we should always be growing in generosity as we strive to become more like Christ, and those funds fuel the important ministry in your community and around the world.

Looking for an easy giving solution for your church? Look no further than One Church Giving, Our safe, secure, and fully integrated giving solution. Learn more here.

Want to read more?
– 5 Ways We Should Talk About Money at Church
– 5 Reasons to Consider Text Giving for Your Ministry
– 3 Ways to Encourage Young Families to Give to Your Church

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3 Ways to Encourage Young Families to Give to Your Church

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The generous financial gifts of a local church congregation are the backbone of sustaining a local church. Money and giving are twin topics that are often taboo in a local church, and this can obviously inhibit giving and cripple the financial situation of a ministry. It isn’t very fun to think about, but doing ministry does cost money, and the generous giving of church members is needed if the church is to serve their community in tangible ways.

One of the greatest giving pain points in local churches is encouraging giving among young adults. Research shows young people trust churches and church leaders less than their parents or grandparents did at their age. This lack of trust can often lead to a lack of giving. Then, their lack of giving can hobble the ministry of the local church.

How does a local church encourage young families to give? Here are three practical steps:

1. Make recurring giving simple.

Very practically, churches must make recurring giving as simple as possible. Once upon a time, churches could count on members remembering to bring their tithes via check or cash every week, or perhaps once per month. With the digital revolution and the relatively recent phenomenon of electronic bill paying, few young people (including people well into their 30s and even 40s) carry cash or checks with any regularity. If your church only has physical giving options available, with no opportunity to automate giving electronically, you’re missing out on a lot of potential to make giving easy for this generation.

Young people are much more likely to regularly and generously give to the local church if they have a way to do so electronically. This obviously has nothing to do with the discipline of generosity that should be important to all believers. Not having an opportunity to give to a church through the internet is no excuse for not giving at all. But local church leaders should recognize that friction can be reduced for young people who want to give by providing plenty of opportunity to set up recurring giving via an app or other kind of payment service. This will ensure regular giving from young people.

But how do these people begin to give generously, rather than just consistently? See steps two and three.

2. Make your values, not your programs, the focus of giving.

Church culture changes over time. This is only natural and has happened generationally for hundreds of years. Worship styles change. How people prefer to gather changes. Preaching styles shift. The Word of God and the message of the Gospel stay the same, but all of the contextual pieces around “how to do church” are pretty fluid.

One way these changes have been manifested in our current context is in how young people view church. Evangelical churches in the late-20th and even early 21st centuries were built on programs. Many young families around the turn of the millennium flocked to churches with the coolest children’s programming, the nicest facilities, or the most fun youth ministry. Do many people still choose churches and generously give to churches for these reasons? Most definitely. But the tides are turning away from programs and more toward values and community.

Plenty of statistics abound about how young people make more decisions based on values than generations who have come before. Young people today are more likely to give to your church because of your values than they are because of your programs. Quality church programming became such an integral part of local church ministry that it was almost commoditized—quality church programming could be found anywhere. Now, with a generation of young Christians who have seen some of their most beloved Christian leaders fall out of ministry because of moral failure or even criminal behavior, they are more likely to give generously to a church with whom their values align and who they can trust than a church with the coolest children’s ministry programs or facilities.

That last point, focused on trust, is our third and final step on how to encourage church members to give:

3. Make your church finances and budget transparent.

There is absolutely no reason that church finances and budgets should not be transparent to church members. This doesn’t mean church staff need to project their salaries up on the big screen once a month, but it does mean that church members should have a breakdown on where finances go, so they can make an educated and confident decision as they give.

Church leaders who provide no transparency into how church money is used or how budgets are made have no leg to stand on when it comes to wondering why church members aren’t giving. Young people are more skeptical of church leaders and their authority than any generation in modern history. Church leaders today need to earn the trust and respect of young church members, and when it comes to money, trust and respect is earned with transparency.

Young families will give generously when they realize their values align with the church’s values and when they are assured that the people collecting and spending their money are trustworthy and of Christlike character. Then, churches can encourage frictionless, consistent giving by providing young families with electronic means to set up recurring giving.

Want to read more?
– 5 Ways We Should Talk About Money at Church
– 5 Reasons to Consider Text Giving for Your Ministry

Looking for an easy giving solution for your church? Look no further than One Church Giving, Our safe, secure, and fully integrated giving solution. Learn more here.

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5 Ways We Should Talk About Money at Church

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Money can be a taboo topic, can’t it? Money has torn families apart. Money has torn businesses apart. Money has torn churches apart. It can be a difficult subject and, because of that, we sometimes avoid it.

But this doesn’t need to be the case!

Given that money is a sensitive subject in churches for any number of reasons—from sin, to past church hurt, or others—we should talk about money at church strategically.

Here are five intentional ways churches can talk about money that lead to openness and Christlikeness rather than fear and sin:

1. We should talk about money frequently.

One of the most common mistakes church leaders make is avoiding talking about money and generosity until it’s time to initiate a building campaign or another kind of fundraising initiative to support the work of the church. This not only hinders consistent giving, but it can inhibit the trust of people in your church. Learning to manage money with wisdom and in accordance with Christian values are important to life and pursuing Christlikeness. Discussions about how to manage money or cultivate a heart of generosity should not be reserved for when one aspect of the ministry needs a new or expanded space.

Obviously, talking about money at church too frequently can hurt trust in another way…by making it sound like all your church cares about is money and gathering money from its people—a fear of many Christians that is all too legitimate.

Talking about money is important. Stay consistent with it. Find a healthy rhythm and balance to keep it at the forefront.

2. We should talk about money without shaming people.

Many churches struggle with church members who consume sermons every week and benefit from the ministries of the church without giving of their time or their money to further the work of the church in the community. It is a sad reality, but this is common, and it should be addressed by church leadership. But handling poor giving and stingy hearts by shaming church members who rarely give or don’t give at all is not the way to approach this difficult situation.

Instead, we need to approach how people give with grace and invitation, just like Jesus did. It’s an opportunity to live a life of generosity. This isn’t forced; it’s an invitation to take a step deeper into their walk with Christ.

3. We should talk about money in relation to discipleship.

Sex and money are two of the most common idols that we humans worship instead of our Creator. Part of the reason we are too afraid to talk about money in relation to our faith is because, deep down, we recognize that we hold on to our money a bit too tightly. How we handle our money is a discipleship issue. Mishandling money by being greedy, cheating people out of money we owe them, or other issues like those are spiritual problems, not just ethical or moral problems.

The sooner we start treating our relationship with money as a discipleship issue and not just a “money” issue, the sooner we will start handling our money in a more Christlike, God-glorifying way…and the sooner we’ll be generous with the money we’ve been given.

When church leaders talk about money, it is imperative they lead their people to see their relationship with their money as a matter of spiritual concern. This leads people to understand that money is to be handled with great care because it is so intertwined with their worship.

4. We should talk about money in our children’s and student ministries.

Adults give the most money to the local church, so it is only natural that church conversations about money tend to focus on how adults can be more generous with their money. But because our relationship with our money is a discipleship matter, not just a financial matter, church leaders should be sure that the topic of money makes a regular appearance in children’s and student ministry curricula as well.

Because the church is called to lead children and young adults to have the mind of Christ and pursue godliness in all aspects of life, the church should educate its young people on how to handle money in accordance with their young faith.

Just because young people can’t give very much doesn’t mean we shouldn’t teach them the value of generosity!

5. We should talk about money with eternity in mind.

This point has been hinted at in passing throughout this post, but to wrap it up, let’s reiterate: Our relationship with our money is a discipleship matter, which means our relationship with our money is a matter of eternal importance. By God’s grace, those of us who trust in the finished work of Jesus Christ are saved by Him and what He has done for us. But this gracious salvation does not exempt us from opening our hands and giving back to God those dollars which He gave us in the first place.

God sacrificed His Son so that we might know Him and come to salvation, spending eternity with Him in His presence. In return, we can entrust Him with our finances by pursuing the life of generosity He calls us to.

Leaders, let’s be generous. Let’s encourage a culture of generosity in our churches. And let’s not be afraid to talk about money in the church.

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