Author - Mark Brooks

Segmentation By the Numbers

Segmentation by the Numbers – Here is a reality, the few always give the majority no matter what size of the church. Consider these numbers from client churches. One key and easy way to segment your donors is to first identify what percentage and number of donors give 50% of...


The Value of Donor Segmentation

“Effective fund-raising churches refuse to treat all people as equals – and people truly are not when it comes to giving. Most of these churches develop some kind of segmentation strategy in which they categorize the congregation into types of donors.”1. (George Barna, How to Increase Giving to Your Church.) In...


The Why Vision Worksheet

The Why Vision Worksheet – We are weeks away from Easter and you need to have the “ask” of your offering nailed down ASAP!  Here is my vision worksheet to help you craft your vision.  After deciding what the focus of your Resurrection Offering will be, use the following points...


The 3.0 Church

Are you ready for Church 3.0? James Emery White has a new book out entitled Hybrid Church: Rethinking the Church in a Post-Christian Digital Age. Here is a quote from an email his organization sent out. It is time to put forward a simple but provocative thesis: the church must respond...


The 24-Hour Offering

How was attendance last Sunday? If you are the typical church, your attendance is 85% of what it was pre-Covid. 67% of Americans reported attending church at least once a year, down from 75% before the pandemic, is what the Survey Center on American Life and the University of Chicago...


What Questions You Should Be Asking

What questions about giving should you be asking? If I were a pastor heading into another quarter of the year here is what I would be asking… How is giving doing as we move into this next quarter? Are we ahead or behind budget? How does current giving compare with last...


The Value is in the Question

How is giving going after the first two months of the year? Are you ahead or behind?That is the question that I ask my clients. It’s the first question I think about but often the last question a church ever thinks about. Frankly, most churches don’t think about that at...


Asking the Wrong Question

Cooperative Program giving is not increasing because you have made it all about you. That will be my opening statement on April 25th when I address CP/Stewardship leaders from each State Convention of the SBC. I plan on pausing for dramatic effect and then continuing with this story. That was the comment...


Are You Ready for Spring?

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT! I’ve written hundreds of talks for the offering time, and I do this to help you elevate the offering time. To simplify and better meet your needs, starting in March, I will be moving away from posting weekly talks to the Stewardship Coach/Stewardship Journal newsletter. Instead, I will...


Gratitude Idea Section

My column at the start of this week’s Coach talked about establishing a Culture of Gratitude. Expressing thanks to your donors is one key way of doing this. A few years back, my wife asked if I wanted to see how non-profits treated their donors. She held in her hand a...