3 Ways to Drive Recurring Giving at Your Church

Recurring givers are truly a blessing to your church. They not only donate 42% more than one-time donors, but during the ups and downs of giving throughout the year, you can depend on your core group of givers to help keep the lights on and ministries running as usual. But most people don’t give on a recurring schedule. If they did, your church would be able to do a lot more for its members and the wider community.

For some churches, a recurring giving increase could help fix the roof, feed more people in the area, or even start a new international ministry. In fact, even a 1% increase in recurring donations can have a considerable impact on a church and its community.

That’s why we recently released three tools that help churches like yours improve recurring giving so you could do more for your community.

Recurring Suggestion

For most one-time givers, gifts are spread out across many months, but donation amounts remain relatively consistent. Your bookkeeper may be able to recognize a pattern in the frequency and amount of these donations. But let’s face it, contacting a giver to encourage them to adopt a more consistent giving schedule can feel awkward and intrusive—even though you can almost predict when their next gift will come in and the average amount. What if your church could organically nudge these givers to adopt a more predictable donation schedule?

Recurring Suggestion prompts givers to adopt a donation schedule based on their current giving patterns. Our machine learning system will identify a trend in a donor’s giving frequency and amount and suggest a recurring giving schedule that is best aligned with how they already give.

It’s a simple feature that churches can turn on in their admin dashboard to encourage recurring giving without having to contact givers individually or announce it during a weekend service. In turn, Recurring Suggestion grows the core of recurring givers so your church has a more stable, predictable budget and can be more flexible with how it invests in various ministry projects.

Default to Recurring

Most people want to display generosity to their church. But not everyone will go out of their way to give. That means if your giving platform makes it difficult to set up a recurring schedule, most donors may not try to figure it out themselves. And several months may go by without a donation if a well-meaning member simply forgets to give. Many churches miss out on generosity simply because they use a giving tool that makes committed generosity feel like a monthly chore. And bad tech shouldn’t be a barrier to generosity.

We designed Default to Recurring to remove that barrier. Setting up a recurring schedule should be easy, and this feature defaults the user to a recurring gift. The user can then select a one-time gift if they choose, but most users don’t turn off recurring giving and let the app donate for them on a consistent basis.

Churches that turn on this feature have seen an average 6% increase in recurring donations. Many churches using Default to Recurring are now able to use the additional gifts to encourage community engagement in various ways. For some, that looks like buying a projector that doesn’t crash during the worship service. Or purchasing taping equipment to stream sermons for people who missed the service. Increased generosity is helping churches across the country reach more people with the gospel message.

Recurring Migration

While your church can do a lot more with an increase in donations, taking the staff time needed to transition to a better giving platform may sound like more work than staff can handle right now. That’s understandable. Staff effort and time are valuable resources. So maybe you just want to use the traditional method: Talking about giving during a weekend service. Plus, what if some recurring givers never successfully transition to a new system? Your church’s financial stability and future will be at stake.

And that’s a huge deal.

That’s why we created Recurring Migration. This feature seamlessly moves givers from your church’s current giving platform to Pushpay without losing donors. Pushpay’s customer success team will give your church automated, templated email reminders to send to your donors, each with a unique link. This link allows the recipient to create a new Pushpay account (or log in to an existing one). Donors can then create a gift through Pushpay with the same frequency, amount, and fund as their gift in your existing platform. And it just takes givers a few seconds to set up.

Your staff can then use a dashboard to the real-time monitor progress and follow up with donors who haven’t moved their recurring gifts yet. Not only will your donors enjoy an easy, 10-second giving experience, but your church is likely to see a resulting increase in recurring gifts.

Do More With Recurring Giving

What’s next on your church’s list of financial priorities that an increase in recurring giving could cover? What changes would you make to your building, ministries, outreach projects? Will you finally give existing staff a well-deserved raise or start a local food pantry to serve the community’s homeless population? See how Pushpay’s features can help you drive generosity and recurring giving at your church. Click here to talk to an expert today.

And be sure to take advantage of our free ebook on how any-size church can grow healthy recurring giving. Download The Ultimate Guide To Growing Recurring Giving today.