GIVING COMMUNICATION

                             ANTICIPATING BUT BEING SENSITIVE

 

            For the past two weeks, we’ve talked about effective giving communication, which started with revisiting the mission of the church, and thanking people.

            There are a couple of other thoughts that I wanted to share.

·         Anticipate that many people can afford to give. Of course, there are some that are struggling and cannot give, but there are many that can. Don’t assume that everyone is in the same position. If you’ve done any reading around giving and how it happens, you’ll see the statistic that many churches actually have an increase in giving during a crisis. Perhaps you’ve experienced this yourself! The other idea that I want to bring up here is that we often focus on people giving from their current income, which is fine; but many people may have assets from which they can give. This may be what we are ignoring, to our detriment and to the detriment of our people. I will share a thought about planned giving in a couple of weeks.

·         Have you identified who your major givers are? Have you talked to them? What are their reasons for their generosity? What motivates them to give? Are there particular interests that they have or particular needs in your church/context that you could talk to them about?

·         Although my top thought above was about anticipating that people can give, we also have to be sensitive. Noone should fall through the cracks. Many years ago, I talked to someone that I knew slightly from the church. I hadn’t seen them in service for a while and said I had missed seeing them. They indicated that they had had a family setback and had been forced to cut their giving in half. Noone noticed. When no one noticed, they felt that they weren’t important. Of course, someone feeling overlooked doesn’t want to be asked to give. How do we avoid overlooking people? Exclude from your request for financial giving families that you KNOW are suffering from financial difficulties. There may be other ways they can be benevolent.

It continues to be a lot of work, but the benefits will continue to pay off! For the next couple of weeks, I will continue to spend time on how some of this could work and things that we could be doing to change our stewardship focus and our discipleship focus.

 

 

 

            If you wish more information on anything you’ve been reading about, please feel free to contact me at (315) 427-3668 or sranousacctg@twcny.rr.com. I’d be happy to help.