Villanova University School of Business and Wheaton College collaborated with ACSTechnologies to study 5 years of giving data from almost 8000 protestant and 1000 Catholic churches to understand the effect of the Covid pandemic. The big message? You’re not alone! Overall the experience was similar across denominations, a dip in giving that returned fairly rapidly to pre-pandemic levels (not accounting for inflation). The number of donors declined and the difference in church income has been covered by fewer donors giving larger amounts. Digital giving increased over 20% on average.
But the experience of the average church is not the same as the individual church. There are significant denominational differences in the increases in digital giving, and differences by denomination in the reduction of the number of givers. And those who were prepared ahead fared better than their counterparts. The difference is in the details. Listen to the findings as presented by Dr. Enoch Hill from Wheaton College.
