In my last blog post I mentioned that most churches don't have a stewardship development system in place. Some will have a philosophical reason for this. For others it's a matter of priorities and resources.
I have no idea how many articles, books, conferences, and capital development programs I've been around through three (okay, four) decades of ministry. I do know that they have been extremely helpful to churches I've been a part of and so many churches that we have served through the years.
Our role as a church management software is to help churches set up and automate the best practices for which they have received training. Last week I showed you the three filters in our reports to help with first, second, and lapsed contributors.
This week we're going to talk about how to automate these using scheduled reports and workflows. These are newer, very powerful technologies that will help you improve your stewardship development by making the information you need as accessible as opening an email.
- Automate lists of first, second, and lapsed givers. The idea here is simply to set up the system to email these lists to the staff and/or leaders who need to see and act on them at the frequency they prefer. For instance, you may want lists for first and second time givers to go to an Executive or Lead Pastor and an Executive Assistant every week. However, you might want the lapsed givers report to go to a Discipleship Pastor as well and be sent out monthly.
The goal is to take the time to create the report once, save it, and then set up the schedule. Here is our Knowledge Base article on, How to find and thank First Time Givers. You can easily adapt this for Second Time Givers.
- Automate texts, emails, and tasks. A list is helpful in that it gives church leaders information to know who needs care or attention. It is definitely sufficient as a prayer list.
However, someone is going to have to take action if you want to contact the person. Most people set up a way to copy and personalize the same basic content for texts and emails. These re-usable texts and emails are typically managed as templates.
You can create these templates in Churchteams and then set up a workflow to send them when you want and also notify staff or leaders to make phone calls. Here is our KB article on, How to create a workflow to care for lapsed givers. You can adapt it for first and second time givers as well. - Automate creation of data driven bands of givers. The next level of stewardship tracking has to do with percentage of givers in what is commonly referred to as "giving levels or bands." For instance, how many and what percentage of church member families:
- Give nothing that we know about
- Give $1 to $1,000
- Give $1,000 to $5,000
- Give over $5,000
These ranges vary depending on the community the church serves. Often, if a tithe is taught in the church, the top level is equal to 10% of the median (not average) income of the county.
Here is a KB article on How to create and populate giving generosity bands using scheduled reports. The reports use giving data in the software to populate the different bands and then report on them. The result is a secure (financial level only) member attribute that can be used to show the number and percentage of families in each level or band. Here is an example of this type of church-wide summary.
Your team spends a ton of time making sure this data is in your church management software. So, the data is there. The problem is generating meaningful and consistent reporting.
We provide the tools you need to do this. Take a few hours (at most) to set up these reports and your church has a proven metric for growing stewardship. By communicating it, your donors have an idea of how they are doing in their personal stewardship. Then, you can challenge them to go to the next level.
This will propel you and your church to a completely new level of joy in the grace of giving. And, just imagine what the Lord might do through your church with the extra resources.
