The Importance of Knowing Your Giving Metrics

The following was published at https://www.onlinegiving.org/support/the-importance-of-knowing-your-giving-metrics

Here is a question we ask every church leader. “How is giving at your church?” We follow that up by asking, “Is giving growing not only by amount but by the number of people giving?” Then we ask, “Do you have many new givers, and are any of your faithful givers lagging in their giving?” As you read this, I have a question: Do you know the answers to the above questions? If you are an OnlineGiving.org church partner, you can! This post will show you the importance of knowing your giving metrics and a glimpse of how our platform can help you know the answers to the key giving metrics for your church.

Let’s start by answering the question, “What should you be tracking?” I start by encouraging church leaders to weekly track the following key metrics:

• Giving compared to budget. Are we ahead or behind?
• How does current giving compare to last week, last month, last quarter, or the same time the previous year? This information shows if you are growing in giving.
• Track the various means through which giving came in. What percentage came through traditional as opposed to online? This information can help you know which platforms are most utilized to build a stewardship strategy around each.
• Track new donors and donors at risk.

Let me break this last point down further below.

The value of tracking your first-time donors – How you respond to first-time donors will largely determine if that donor gives a second time. You want to be alerted to every first-time donor so that you can thank them for their gift. Our platform allows you to do this automatically when the gift is given. We also allow you to add a short message showing the donor the value of their gift. Since every church loses donors from one year to the next, you must continually work to grow your donor base. A weekly strategy to thank those that have given can and will lead to future gifts. Our platform makes that easy for you.

Donors at Risk – If you are going to be financially stable, you must get serious about retention. The 2017 Charitable Giving Report finds that first-year retention continues to be abysmal – between 25% and 31% (depending on how the donor chooses to give). Their advice to non-profits is that with a shrinking donor population and growing uncertainty about the stability of the primary donation channels, this is the time to get serious about keeping the donors you have.^1. That report was done in 2017, before the pandemic. Our data on churches reveals that donor turnover runs around 15% for healthy churches. Now more than ever, you need to keep your existing donors.

How do you know if a donor is at risk of dropping out? You can know if people have stopped giving by analyzing past and current giving trends. Each church must determine when action is triggered for those deemed at risk. Is that three months without a gift, six months, or something different? You can set the time, but the longer you wait to address a donor at risk, the less likely it is to re-engage them.

How do you move donors at risk back to consistent givers? First, you never use guilt. A note saying, “We’ve noticed you haven’t given in a long time,” will probably not help regain them. However, a better approach is a note pointing out the positive things your church is doing and how the generosity of members fuels it. Casting a compelling vision and then making giving easy for them will help you keep more of your donors engaged and thus, increase giving overall. But to do all of this, you need to know your giving metrics.

OnlineGiving.org church partners get this kind of weekly information with the click of a few buttons. Using those metrics allows them to design stewardship strategies focusing on the right issues and problem areas. By paying attention weekly, they avoid the typical giving swings many churches are seeing now due to the economy.

Our Church Metrics Donation Report gives you the following:

• The easy ability for churches to now enter cash, paper checks, scanned checks, and digital (card, ACH, crypto) makes it easy and convenient to take advantage of our built-in metrics and ChMS integrations.
• 5+ years of church stewardship metrics based on pure ChMS data, which includes all forms of giving, both digital and non-digital.
• The ability to measure real growth year after year, month after month.
• An easy giving snapshot tool allows church administrators to view an interactive chart that shows current giving, a forecast of giving for the next 30+ days, and the past two years’ performance, all on a single chart.

So, how is giving at your church? At OnlineGiving.org, we can help you know your giving metrics to help you build and maintain a healthy stewardship culture of generous disciples. Contact us today for a free demonstration of our metrics reports at support@onlinegiving.org or at (615) 206-4000.