Turning Faithful (and Occasional) Givers into Recurring Givers

Digital giving solutions have made it simpler, faster, and more convenient for your church members to give. But if you don’t have a strategy to get your congregation set up to automate their giving, you’re missing out on a big opportunity.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful for your church to have a steady, growing income that you could depend on—even during the summer months? Can you imagine how things would change if even sporadic givers became steady contributors?

Recurring giving can make that happen!

Break the 80/20 rule

Management consultant Joseph M. Juran once suggested that in many situations, it’s common for 80 percent of the effect to come from 20 percent of the effort you put into it. This is called the Pareto principle (or the 80/20 rule).

You may feel like the same could be said of your church’s giving. In a 2013 study, Christianity Today found that only 10–25 percent of families in a church tithe, but they often provide 50–80 percent of a church’s funding.

But recurring giving is helping churches like Sojourn Heights in Houston, TX, turn the Pareto principle on its head.

Since their transition to Pushpay, 90 percent of the church is giving. And of those givers, 97 percent are giving through their app—with a significant percentage of them signed up for recurring giving. (Read more about Sojourn Heights’ story.)

Specialized features to promote recurring giving

While most forms of digital giving have a set-it-and-forget-it option, a mobile app is your best bet for getting people to sign up for recurring giving. Among other reasons, it gives people the option to sign up for recurring giving the moment they have it on their mind.

Pushpay’s giving platform supports recurring generosity every day through features like:

• Default to recurring
• Recurring Suggestion
• Easy-to-use recurring giving interface in the app
• Push notifications to remind people to set up recurring gifts
• And more

With Pushpay custom church app and giving platform, your church can encourage more people to become recurring donors—right in the app.

Relevant, automated reminders

When someone in your church gives twice within 30 days through their Pushpay app experience, we send an email prompting them to sign up for recurring giving. This email will send them directly to their account to get started.

This boosts your strategy’s effectiveness to inspire recurring giving in your congregation in a completely natural and seamless way.

On top of that, we’ll even send them an email at the beginning of the month before their credit/debit card expires so that there’s never a lag in their giving. If they don’t update their card by the end of their expiration month, we’ll send them another reminder email.

Get advanced insights into the giving journey

Pushpay has a lot of automated tools to help you drive recurring giving. But if you want more people to become recurring givers, you need to see where they’re at on their journey toward generosity—so that you can talk to them about giving in more relevant ways. 

That’s why we built the Donor Development Dashboard.

Now you can see all your new givers, second-time givers, occasional givers, regular givers, and recurring givers, neatly separated into these giving stages. Since Pushpay connects to your church management software, you can communicate with each of these groups of people. Plus, the dashboard includes tips and resources to help you lead people from one stage to the next. So you’ll be better equipped to see who might be interested in recurring giving, and how to talk to them about it.

ADOPTION IS THE KEY

The most important thing you can do to encourage recurring giving from your church is to have a single giving platform that’s your primary focus—and then work on an adoption strategy. You may still take offerings or have a giving form on your website, but the less focused you are on your preferred giving method, the more likely people are going to fall through the cracks.

Many churches already have digital giving solutions that facilitate recurring giving, but because of a lack of strategy and focus, they’re not seeing a lot of success. However, Pushpay has a plan to help you get everyone in your church on board. And it works: Our rate for getting congregants using our app sits at about 76 percent!

Want tips for promoting healthy, sustainable giving? Discover the secrets in the free ebook, The Ultimate Guide To Growing Recurring Giving, today.