3 Things to Do at Christmas

Merry Christmas!  As we are contemplating the coming of our Savior and the celebration of His birth, we also want to be part of the communal celebration.  So many folks who may not be regular attendees choose this time of year to go to Mass and to reconnect with their parish.  What a wonderful time to welcome people to the parish community.

Here are 3 simple ideas for "last minute tactics" to help welcome everyone to church and provide them an opportunity to make a contribution:


1.   Update Electronic Communications : Welcome everyone with a message of Hope and Love
                 Make sure you have updated the parish website and calendars with Mass times. Use your headline feature in your Faith in Action website to add the notification to all pages on the site.  Send an e-newsletter encouraging parishioners to bring friends and family to Mass.   More importantly, make sure you also are updating content to welcome everyone whether or not they have been to Mass recently.  Also make Online Giving available from every page.

2.  Remind people about the option to give online: 
                  Update Online Giving with special collections and even consider a special cause for the community as a separate collection.   This is also a time to remind people in bulletins and also through announcements at Mass that they can give online.  It's a convenient option for everyone.

3.  Add special collection envelopes to pews or at church entrances:
                  Make it convenient for anyone to pick up an envelope and make a donation to the church.  You can also invite people to make prayer requests or special intentions by writing them on the envelope or placing a note in the envelope rather than money.  Be creative.  Give people a chance to participate.

Wishing everyone a blessed holiday.  Merry Christmas

New study results: Online plus direct contributions are best

I was very interested to read the 2011 donorCentrics Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report that was released recently from Target Analytics.   While this research is focused on fundraising of all types,  I think it applies to parish contributions.

Several points in the summary of findings are what we would expect:

• Online-acquired donors are significantly younger and tend to have higher household incomes that mail-acquired donors.
• Online-acquired donors tend to give much larger gifts than mail-acquired donors.

But here was one of the big points to note:

• Robust direct mail programs drive up the retention and long-term value of new donors acquired online. Without the ability to become multi-channel givers by renewing their support via direct mail, this group of donors would be worth far less. Other than monthly recurring giving programs, established direct mail programs area the best method for gaining repeat gifts from online-acquired donors.

 This next chart shows that while there is a significant percentage of online donations there is still a far greater percentage of donations from mail:

 

  So why do I think this is pertinent to parishes?  

          1.  Online giving attracts a younger and likely more affluent group of people.  While our data indicate that every age group uses Online Giving,  this is still our best way to engage younger people to contribute financially to our parishes.

          2.   We should continue to emphasize envelopes.  Think of them as ongoing direct mail.  Parishioners may want to use both Online Giving and Envelopes for various reasons. And if the parish has other projects then mail is a very effective medium. 

This is all kind of analytical -  in the end we must engage our parishioner base in our parish by focusing on our formation and by accomplishing our mission as Church.  At a more superficial level,  we do need to make the best use of the tools available to us.  This is also good stewardship!

Tell me how your parish makes use of electronic services, envelopes and direct mail...

 

Online Giving and Envelopes: Synergy for your Parish

As I meet with parishes and dioceses I find that people think of their electronic giving application and their offering envelopes separately. Recently we were visiting a parish where these were two different staff members who managed the different offerings! When we asked them if they were working together on how to get the most out of both, they said no. By the end of our meeting they recognized the need to plan together to coordinate the two.

Even more concerning are parishes who place electronic giving and envelopes at odds with each other. "How do we decide which to use? Can we eliminate envelopes?" This approach completely misses the idea that we are providing options to parishioners so everyone can give from a sense of abundance and gratitude. we don't want to exclude anyone.

In our desire to compartmentalize functions and organize ourselves, sometimes we miss the opportunity to create an environment to foster cross-communications. Both web sites and electronic giving are technology based; however, their use is for communications and for contributions. While the skill set to understand the administration of electronic giving is different from the skill set to manage offering envelopes, the purpose of both of them is the same. So periodically it makes sense to step back and talk about these tools together as a parish staff. This includes how we represent them to parishioners.

As we all have gained experience with electronic giving it has become clear that we have to think about electronic giving and offering envelopes together as options for parishioners to use for contributions. Use them to reinforce each other by including your electronic giving URL on your envelopes and by reminding Online Giving users they can use envelopes at Mass and select "gave electronically". Remind envelope users if they forgot to give to a special collection they can use Online Giving and give to that collection as a One Time Gift.

This is a wonderful opportunity to remind parishioners about prayerful giving. As we talk about the introduction of electronic giving to our parish, we can use that opportunity to thank people for using envelopes. Our parishes can provide us options that are convenient for us as parishioners, and we can even use both as the need arises! What a great time to update your envelope designs and to express gratitude to people for their contributions. As a result we can raise overall awareness, remind people of the tools available to them, and get more engagement and contributions from both our electronic giving and our envelopes.

Use the introduction of new tools like Online Giving to create synergy for your parish! The same goes for web sites and Online Giving, but that's good for another time!