Gone are the traditional days of only receiving offerings through a passing of the plate during Sunday morning worship service. Today’s church culture offers many avenues for people to give, but does that necessarily translate into an increase in church donations?
Taking a look at the calendar months can assist folks in terms of giving. December tends to be a time of over spending which causes folks to make new goals and commitments for the New Year. The month of March is a “money” focused talk time across the land. With taxes due in April and many businesses trying to get their budgets in order, giving to the church may fall below the line instead of it being a priority. However, for the Christ-follower, we must lead our people by showing them the importance of giving, but we must also make it easy and convenient for them to give back to the church.
With the advancement of technology, there are so many different platforms available. Usually, by offering multiple ways for people to give, it will result in increased and consistent offerings for your church. Here are several tools growing churches are using today to make it easier for members, and even guests, to give back:
1) Online giving: This is the most popular avenue churches use today. It has also been around a long time. This requires the use of a church website to navigate to and clickable steps to give directly to the church.
2) Mobile app: Another pretty popular way to give. Some larger churches have created their own ministry app for their members. This allows the user to simply use their smartphone or tablet to give with ease.
3) Physical kiosk: This machine looks like an ATM machine that sits in your church building. This kiosk will accept credit and debit cards and is tied into giving directly to the church ministry only.
4) Gift giving: This allows for members to turn in or give physical items that they are no longer using and desire to donate to the church. One example of this would be a church collecting jewelry and in return selling it to a reputable dealer for cash to go back to the church.
5) Text giving: This avenue allows the user to simply text a phone number (set up by the church) and give via text. You may seem skeptical now, but try it before providing judgement. You’ll be pleasantly surprised.
6) Recurring giving: This can be set up in multiple platforms, but basically sets your giving on auto-pilot. This works well for those on a budget and their giving is consistent each month.
7) Paper giving: Traditional way of giving by dropping cash or checks in the plate during service. Churches now offer boxes in different locations in building where members can drop in at anytime.
As you can see, giving comes in all different shapes and sizes. Expanding your ways of ministry giving should communicate to your members that you want to make it easy for them to give anytime and anyplace. The tools mentioned above are not new or innovative, but they all work toward the same goals to help your church receive gifts and continue to grow.
