Communication and Church Donations (p1)

Communications and church donations go hand in hand. Let’s look at some reasons why people give to a particular cause.

1. They see tangible differences made by their contributions.
2. They have a personal connection to a cause.
3. They feel they’re a part of something great.

What are some of the possible reasons people don’t donate?

1. Manual forms or websites asking too much information to process a donation.
2. A lack of understanding (communication) for the church’s mission or completed projects with past donated monies.
3. Losing the personal connection to the mission.
4. The thought that someone else will donate so why should they? The other person syndrome. 🙂
5. Lack of commitment, spiritual maturity, understanding, or a clear need demonstrated.

There’s an overwhelming hidden theme in all of these. Clear communication plays a large role in each of them. Let’s look at how communication relates to each of the 5 reasons people don’t donate.

1. With clear communication paper forms and websites should only ask the bare minimum. When programmed correctly, a website can display information about the user, by pre-filling the fields for them. The website can give an option to remember the donor’s information to pre-fill for the next time they want to donate. Or, when the person types in parts of their address, why couldn’t the website pull up the address like Google Maps does? Or, if the credit or debit card’s billing address is the same as the address to receive the donation, have the website populate both areas during entry. The idea is to streamline the process so the user only inputs the bare essentials to process the transaction.

2. Many times, past donations for the project are never mentioned so a new donor has no reference to the ministry’s track record. Questions like, ‘what have they done in the past with donations?’ are left unanswered. Providing clear information about past projects, missions, and so on, helps new donors understand a lot about the organization’s focus and what’s important to them. For the faithful donors they like to know how certain missions or projects turned out.

3. Losing the personal connection to the mission, typically points to lack of communication about the mission. If you ever heard the saying – ‘the squeaky wheel gets the grease’ then you probably can relate. Disseminating information to donors, using appropriate frequency based on the mission, is one way to ensure donors don’t lose interest with your cause.

Stay tuned for the second part of this 2 part series.