Giving - Donor Management & Gratitude
The generous giving of its members supports every church. In a healthy church, members give their time, talents (gifts and abilities), and treasure (money and possessions). Giving is more than money, although it certainly includes finances. When members give, they entrust their resources to the church's leaders. Therefore, church leadership must steward financial support with integrity and ensure it is accounted for correctly. This is where donor management comes in.
The primary task of donor management is accurately recording what was given and who gave it. This is essential to good stewardship. If $3,000 is collected from donations, can you imagine getting a deposit receipt from the bank for $500? What happened to that money? Will you trust an organization that can’t accurately account for something as simple as how much money was given? There is also an expectation from donors that you will record their individual giving. While the primary motivator of charitable giving should not be a tax deduction, money individuals give to churches is tax deductible. Each church is responsible for tracking individual donors and providing them with year-end donor statements. How you handle donor management either builds or erodes trust among your members.
Here are four things I would recommend for every church to consider regarding donor management.
1. Find an online giving platform that makes donor management simple.
With the vast number of quality online giving options, every church should have a robust donor management platform (see my previous post for more). My top recommendation for online giving is Planning Center Giving. PCO Giving has everything you need to receive online donations, enter offline donations, and track individual donors. Regarding donor management, it allows you to create profiles for individual donors that can track online or offline (entered via batch). This means if donor A gives $1000 online to the general giving fund and a one-off check for $500, both can be tracked in the same system. In addition, if donor A’s spouse gives (either offline or online), you can connect those profiles together so both spouses’ donations are tracked as one. PCO Giving will also track what kind of giving is tax deductible and what kind of giving is not (registrations or making a purchase through the church’s system). There are certainly other good options out there as well. Whether you take my recommendation to use PCO Giving or go with another solution, here are some key features you need to make sure your system has:
Receives online donations with minimal fees
Flexibility to create different giving funds
Easy to navigate user web-based user interface
A simple way to enter batches from offline, giving
Ability to generate and send year-end giving statements (email or print)
Reporting capabilities that show giving totals
2. Keep Up with Batch Entries and Donor Profiles
Keeping up with batch entries is relatively straightforward with a solid giving platform. I recommend that every time offering is collected, it is also recorded with a batch entry. This gives you multiple layers of record (the written count, the deposit itself, and the batch entry). This means someone on the finance or staff team must log in to the giving platform each week after money is counted. They would navigate to the batch entry portion of their online giving platform and create a new batch. For donors already in the system, they type in their name and record the new donation to their profile. If a new donor gives, the person entering the batch will create a profile for them. In most systems, you will at least need their name, address, and email address. The email and address are important as those will be used to send donor statements. If cash is given, it can be entered into a profile setup as “Cash” if no donor is given. Once all donations are in, the batch can be named and committed. Once committed, it will be added to the online giving to provide accurate totals.
The entire batch entry process will only take a few minutes once a person learns how to do it. Most giving platforms provide step-by-step tutorials on how it works in their system. Even if you're a church planter just getting started, it’s crucial to establish a rhythm of doing batch entries. What will you do when the year ends, and donors request their giving statements? You would likely spend hours reading through online bank deposits to determine who gave what and when. Whether you have to start doing this yourself or find someone in your church who can help, make it a regular rhythm. Your future self will be glad you did.
Here are a few helpful guides from our recommended giving platforms:
PCO Giving Batch Entry Guide
Subsplash Batch Entry Guide
PushPay Batch Entry Guide
3. Provide Your Church With Regular Updates on Giving
With all giving entered in one place, you can now see accurate numbers for what has been given. Giving platforms like PCO Giving offer you reporting tools to help track giving. You can sort by dates, donors, and other custom criteria. This real-time information enables you to communicate, updating your church as needed. I recommend regularly communicating both the needs of your budget and total giving coming in. This not only reminds your church of the importance of giving financially, but it allows you to connect their giving to the vision and mission of the church. One church I work with sends out a weekly giving update in their weekly updates email with a reminder of why people give. Others give quarterly updates on how much is given concerning what is needed to cover the budget. What could it look like for your church to provide regular updates reminding people of its needs and the biblical reasons for giving?
Here is a sample of what this could look like:
4. Send Yearly Giving Statements & Thank Donors
This next recommendation becomes very simple if you have done numbers 1 and 2. Sometime in early to mid-January, you must send out year-end giving statements. If you are using a giving platform like PCO Giving, you must ensure you have entered all batches for the prior year and have each donor’s info in your system. Most donors will have entered an email address that allows you to email them a secure link to access their prior year's donor statements. With PCO Giving, you can send year-end statements to all donors simultaneously. If there are donors who didn’t receive the email for some reason, you can download a PDF statement. These can then be emailed or printed off and mailed. I would encourage you to set a deadline to send these out before January 31st.
Here are a few helpful guides from our recommended giving platforms:
PCO Giving Donor Statements Guide
Subsplash Donor Statement Guide
Pushpay Donor Statement Guide
Thanking Donors
Just as we should encourage people to use their gifts, we should encourage their giving to the church. This recognizes that what they give matters, that the church depends on it, and that Jesus values it. How you show this is up to you, but here are a few ideas I have stolen from others. First, have your elder team hand-write thank you notes to every donor. Send a T-Shirt or small gift to donors thanking them for their giving. Write a note thanking every first-time giver. Honor small gifts and large ones, don’t just pander to large donors (don’t pander at all). Finally, you might consider doing a yearly flyer highlighting the ministry made possible by your donors' financial support. Most importantly, you want to give thanks for what is given and help people see how their giving is being stewarded for Gospel ministry.
In conclusion, implementing effective donor management practices is crucial for churches to build trust, steward finances with integrity, and effectively communicate the impact of giving on the church's mission and vision. Hopefully, one of these four recommendations will help your church improve donor management. As always, if you need help getting set up with online giving or any of the topics mentioned in this blog, contact the team at ChurchBiz.
