Generous Giving

This came today from a pastor who attended one of my workshops last fall.

Hi Jeff,

I thought I would let you know that one of your ideas went over very well in our congregation.  I sent thank you cards out with all the year end receipts.  One lady, who is 92, said, “In all the years I’ve given to the church no one has ever said thank you.”  She loved her card.  Thanks for the idea, as I work on the others you shared.

The following benevolence interpretation materials are now available for download.   I encourage congregations to print them as part of their annual report, or otherwise make them available to members.

“Our Ministry Story: Eastern Synod, 2013″ (colour graphics)

Narrative, colour, Word

Narrative, colour, PDF

“Our Ministry Story: Eastern Synod, 2013″ (monochrome graphics)

Narrative, monochrome, Word

Narrative, monochrome, PDF

“It’s a Wonderful Synod” (colour graphics)

Wonderful, colour, Word

Wonderful, colour, PDF

“It’s a Wonderful Synod” (monochrome graphics)

Wonderful, monochrome, Word

Wonderful, monochrome, PDF

Last time out I referred to the “20 Statements About Giving” exercise that is part of the Nurturing Generous Giving workshops I’ve been offering across the Eastern Synod.

Spoiler alert:  this post and the next few are going to report on some of the more interesting results from the exercise.  If you wish to complete the survey before reading what other people said, click on this link.

I have assembled the data from each workshop and produced a summary of the responses from all of them.  With around 125 people responding, I feel we have a reasonably representative sample of what congregational leaders believe about giving in their own church.

The profile of responses was not the same in each workshop.  No doubt this indicates a variety of experience and belief, to some degree at least, across the synod.

Half of the twenty statements produced a strong majority response.  Here are the ten on which there seems to be considerable consensus.

1. “If we ask for money for a specific project, people respond generously.” –  94% agree
2. “Many of our members are seniors on a fixed income.” — 91% agree
3. “What people give to the church is considered a private matter between them and God.” — 83% agree
4. “We teach that giving has both a spiritual and a practical side.” — 80% agree
5. “We regularly thank people for the money and volunteer time they give to the church.” — 76% agree
6. “We offer the PAR system for offerings and encourage people to use it.” — 67% agree
7. “People are already giving as much money to the church as they can.” — 75% disagree
8. “We have enough money to be the kind of church we want to be.” — 73% disagree
9. “Our total congregational income is growing at or above the rate of inflation.” — 66% disagree
10. “The pastor knows how much each person/household gives.” — 65% disagree

In future posts I’ll examine each of these in greater details.

In a recent article published by the Alban Institute, Dan Hotchkiss takes an incisive look at beliefs that direct fundraising efforts in congregations.

“At the risk of oversimplifying, people give money away for two main reasons: to extend their own accomplishments and to bond with a community. “

Dan Hotchkiss

The article reviews four “beliefs that are optimistic, wishful, and mistaken”.

1. “A unified stewardship drive is better than a lot of special appeals.”
2. “Donors want their gifts kept secret.”
3. “Only evangelicals can ask people to tithe.”
4. “Faith and gratitude are the most important influence on people’s giving.”

To read the full article, click here.

In an earlier post I referred to the “Nurturing Generous Giving” workshops that I began offering in 2012.  At the beginning of each program I asked participants to complete an exercise in three steps:

• In the first step they completed a worksheet by themselves, without discussion.  The sheet contained twenty statements about giving, with the introductory phrase “In our congregation today . . .”  Participants checked off one of three boxes after each statement, labelled “agree”, “disagree” and “don’t know”.
• In the second step, they discussed their responses with the other people at their table (often people from their own congregation).
• In the third step we collected the responses to each question from the entire group, by show of hands .

All of the statements are about matters of fact, and people’s responses reflect whether they believe them to be true.

In future posts I am going to report on some of the more interesting results from the exercise

If you wish to complete the survey before reading what other people said, click on this link.

Over the past few months I’ve been travelling across the territory of the Eastern Synod offering a workshop called “Nurturing Generous Giving”.  There have been events in:

• Wellesley, ON
• Sudbury, ON (Hannah Lake Bible Centre)
• Eganville, ON
• Lunenburg, NS
• Burlington,ON
• New Hamburg, ON [both and2]

Others are scheduled for 2013 in London, ON and Montreal, QC.

To learn more about the program, or to explore the possibility of scheduling a session in your area, drop me a line at jpym@elfec.ca.

A breakout group in the Hannah Lake chapel

I have been impressed by the commitment of the people who showed up at these workshops.  In total, more than 120 people gave up several hours on a Saturday to think about the future of their church, time they could have used to do other things.  In the case of the group who met at Hannah Lake Bible Centre in Sudbury, several carloads of people came from Sault Ste. Marie and Timmins.  That meant that they spent 6 hours or more on the road, in addition to the 4 hours of the workshop.

Photo op at Hannah Lake

In the quilting room at Zion L.C. in Lunenburg

Congregational discussions in Lunenburg

Today I received an email that opened with these words:

It’s Black Friday so we wanted to hook you up with a killer discount on all Giving, Preaching & Systems resources.

This is from a company whose slogan is  “We coach the church, providing the best content and building community among church leaders.”

You can’t make this stuff up.

In other places I have sung the praises of email newsletters.  I subscribe to about a dozen of them and find them a helpful way to stay in touch on various topics.

One that I particularly like comes from Sumac, a company that sells fund-raising software to charities.  I haven’t tried out their product, and I’m certainly not shilling for them, but their newsletter is great and their graphics are cool. 

The newsletter arrives every month or two and contains several articles of interest to people who work in the charitable sector, particularly fund-raising (natch).  The last issue came with links to three articles, all of them interesting.  But the one that was particularly striking bore the title “6 Truths About The Donor Psyche & How They Inform Nonprofit Marketing” and came with this teaser:

Peter Singer, arguably the most famous and influential modern philosopher, delves into to the human psyche to determine what’s holding people back from giving at their full potential. He cites 6 reasons, which give way to 6 very clear things you can do to inspire giving in your next campaign!

If you are put off by the word “victim” in reason #1, I suggest you replace it with “beneficiary”.  It will make just as much sense and probably fit our context better.

To go straight to the full article, click here.

Clicking on the “Library” tab at the top of the Sumac web page will take you to . . . you guessed it:  a library of past newsletter articles, all helpfully sorted into categories.  Enjoy!

In every congregation there are two groups of members:

• Those who make financial contributions to the church’s ministry.
• Those who don’t.

When I refer to people who don’t make a financial contribution, I’m talking about households whose offering envelopes are unused or virtually empty all year long.

In my experience the second group comprises 30-50% of the people on the membership roll of a typical Lutheran congregation.  In one large congregation whose record I examined, the first group of members comprised 50% of the total roll but contributed a total of 99% of the offering receipts.  The second group of 50% contributed the remaining 1%.  That’s what I call a negligible contribution.

From my limited sample I conclude that smaller congregations have a smaller proportion of non-givers on their roll, but the percentage is still substantial.

What can we say about this phenomenon?

1. For some people, an extremely small amount of money may be all they can afford to give.  It would be a mistake to draw other conclusions about their reasons for giving so little.  People in this category are possibly ashamed of their poverty and genuinely wish they could give more.  They may feel excluded from many of the activities of the congregation because they lack transportation, suitable clothing or the resources even to bring a dish to the pot-luck dinner.   They may be single moms, people living on government benefits, people with disabilities, etc.
2. Most people in our churches who give nothing are not in the category described above.
3. Our definition of membership is not the same as you find in all other denominations.  Our practices tend to be somewhat relaxed.  We keep people’s names on a membership list for reasons  of sentimentality, loyalty to family members, political expediency or simple interia, long after they’ve moved away or stopped participating.  Although it makes some of our statistics look bad in relation to other churches, there’s nothing inherently wrong with this practice, except . . .
4. Our model congregation bylaws state that a member in good standing “supports the church with offerings”.  And only members in good standing have the privilege of attending, speaking, participating and voting in congregational meetings.  It is not a common occurrence, but I have chaired meetings of a congregation in deep and vicious conflict where it mattered a great deal who had a legitimate claim on those privileges.  Trust me, you don’t want members who do not meet the definition of good standing at such meetings.  The only way to avoid this is to follow the bylaws fairly and consistently.
5. It is a mistake to communicate the same message to all members.  You need to segment your audience and customize your message to the circumstances of each sub-group.  There is no point asking non-givers to tithe.  The theme of all communication with the non-givers should be inviting them to return to full participation in the life of the congregation.  Those people are your primary target for evangelism.   Some of them might even be receptive to your message, providing they haven’t left the church full of bitterness.  When in doubt, keep segmenting and customizing.
6. Even habitual non-participants can occasionally surprise you with a gift — sometimes even a very large one.  Congregations need to make it as easy as possible for people to give, through as many channels as you can think of.  I have a small collection of true stories about congregations who have received unexpected gifts from people who had only the slightest connection with their church, or who had not crossed the threshold in decades.  In the cases that come to mind most readily, each of the gifts received from three unlikely donors was in excess of $500,000.  Each of those congregations now has a large endowment fund.  Let people know that you would welcome a donation to your ministry, and you might be surprised by the results.

Somebody sent me a link to an article on the Ministry Matters website.  It’s by J. Clif Christopher, author of Not Your Parents’ Offering Plate.  Click here to find the article.

Don’t be put off by the article’s title, “Rich Church, Poor Church”, which happens to be the title of his new book.  It contains a brief explanation of the reasons people choose to make donations to a particular charity (and not others):

• A Belief in the Mission of the Institution
• Regard for Staff Leadership
• Fiscal Responsibility of the Institution

Does your experience bear out the truth of Christopher’s claims about why people give?  Can your congregation provide evidence to convince a prospective donor on all three counts?