Does your church currently use Realm as its church management software and a third-party online giving solution instead of Realm eGiving? Realm eGiving is fully integrated with Realm and Realm Accounting, making reconciliation and keeping records up to date easier. But you may not want to change your giving solution because it will impact your congregation.
Maybe you’re a financial administrator approaching online giving migrations with care because the church risks losing money during a migration. You don’t want to upset congregants by asking them to reschedule their recurring gifts in a new system nor do you want anything to interfere with their current giving. We understand your concerns, so we’ve recently released a tool to help you transition those recurring gifts.
A streamlined tool for communicating, guiding, and tracking donors. Here are the key benefits:
- Staff can import recurring givers from a third-party solution to Realm eGiving via an import.
- You can lower your church’s risk of missing gifts during a migration.
- Donors don’t have to start from scratch with a new giving solution.
Efficiently migrate your recurring givers.
Our latest release allows your church staff to:
- Import recurring donor details in Realm to produce a migration dashboard.
- Match imports to existing profiles, funds, and Realm gift frequencies.
- Send emails to encourage migrating using editable templates that fit a donor’s migration status.
- Add or remove donors from the dashboard and email communications.
- Have access to a dashboard that provides metrics for staff to understand migration success.
Let us show you how!
To access and start using the Giver Migration Tool, navigate to Giving, Giving Settings, then click on Migration Tool.
Import
You will need to import a CSV file of your recurring gift records from your old online giving solution. Before the import is complete, you will see a preview where you can get an idea of what a few of the imported rows will look like. If the preview looks good, you will continue the import process.
On the next screen you may receive a notification that let’s you know of any invalid rows that you’ll need to fix before complete the import. These errors are provided to you in a CSV file where you can make the corrections directly on that file to then re-import into the Giver Migration Tool. An example of an error could be a fund name in your CVS file doesn’t match a fund name that’s configured in Realm.
You will be able to add individual donors or additional lists after you’ve done your initial import in case a new recurring gift is added in your old online giving solution during the migration.
Dashboard
Once you’ve imported your recurring gifts, Realm will generate a migration dashboard that gives you the following information:
- List of donors, the fund their giving to, amount, when the next gift is schedule, the status of their migration, date gift was imported, and the last date they were email about migrating their gift
- Total gifts migrated, not migrated, deleted by contributor, or that were ended
- Amount migrated and not migrated over a 12 month period
- If a gift amount was decreased or increased by the donor upon setting it up in Realm
You also have the ability to delete donors and upload additional records from the dashboard.
Communication
The Giver Migration Tool also gives you the ability to send emails to your donors. These emails are customizable and are triggered by you. You can also send two separate emails. One to donors who don’t have a Realm log-in and one to donors who do.
Before you send an email you will be able to view a summary of the donors who will be contacted, whether they have a Realm log in, and the last time they were emailed. From here you are also able to remove any donors who don’t need to be contacted.
Our new tool simplifies the steps that a donor needs to take when setting up their recurring gifts in Realm.
We know that recurring givers are committed and want to support the church, but setting up a recurring gift in a new system may not be their top priority. They may procrastinate, especially if they don’t understand what Realm is, the benefit of changing to Realm, or the time-sensitive nature of this change. The new Giver Migration Tool helps reduce the rate at which contributors abandon the process and increases the likelihood that they switch their recurring gifts to Realm in a timely manner.
In a nutshell, your congregants receive emails with steps relevant to their migration status and are prompted to enter a payment method for the recurring gift when they sign in to Realm. The giving amount and frequency are pre-populated for congregants so migrating only takes seconds.
Your donors’ experience when you use the Giver Migration Tool
Email Communication
Congregants will receive an email, which is triggered by your staff, relevant to their status prompting them with a link to update their payment methods. The link allows them to log in or create a Realm account. Below is an example of that email communication, which your administrator can customize.
Gift Prompt
Once they log in or create their new Realm account, contributors will be prompted to update their payment method for their recurring gift(s). Their gift amount, fund, and frequency will be pre-populated, but can be edited if needed. Once they add their payment method, they will see their recurring gift on their giving profile.
Your contributors will need to cancel their recurring gift(s) in your old giving solution, or you are able to do this on their behalf once they have migrated their gift(s) over to Realm eGiving.
Don’t miss out on recurring gifts.
In summary, this new tool provides your staff with the ability to:
- Identify who your recurring givers are
- Send accurate, targeted communications to donors
- Track the status of a migration and where your recurring donors are with their migration
- Communicate with donors about where they are in the migration process and the next steps they need to take
For your donors, the tool:
- Pre-populates information about their old recurring gift, such as gift amount and frequency, so that they can add a new gift that matches their old one
- Eliminates an extra step of them having to go into the old giving solution to recall this information before they can complete the setup of their new gift in Realm
- Reduces risk of them abandoning the process at this step
Implement Realm eGiving today without missing your recurring gifts!
Lily joined the ACST team in 2020. She spent six years working at a large church in Atlanta, GA, serving as the Business Systems Analyst. Lily understands the mission and challenges of the church. She spent her time in ministry utilizing Realm to help solve those challenges. She is passionate about helping our Ministry Partners leverage technology to fulfill their mission and grow their ministry impact.
