Critical Statistics For Church Fundraising

One of the first tenets of selling is to define your market. Once you’ve done that, the next step is to research the demographics of that group of people. Then you need to determine how you can best reach them. Where do they hang out? Finally, you have to choose the medium(s) by which to communicate your message.

If you are involved in fundraising for your church, let’s call a spade a spade: you are selling. If you want to be as successful as possible in your endeavor, you really need to walk through each of the above steps.

I subscribe to Contributions, a publication for nonprofit professionals. Recently there was an article by James P. Gellat, PhD (I have put his bio below) about trends in a number of areas. I have extracted a few that have a bearing on churches. They are all great food for thought and, in my view, should be addressed when putting together any fundraising campaign.

• Nine countries account for half of the world’s population. In 2050, the four largest countries will be India, China, US and Pakistan. Globally, there are more people over 60 than under 15.
• In 2007, the number of people in the United States turning 60 increased by 600,000. By 2050, the elderly population will double.
• The Baby Boom Generation (those born between 1945 and 1964) account for 40% of US households and half the consumer spending. Boomers are twice as likely to own a second home. Even by 2010, spending by Americans 40 or older will be one trillion dollars more than the 18 to 34 age bracket.
• In addition, it is predicted that 80% of the US population increase in the next 30 years will be immigrants and their children/grandchildren.  By 2016, one in four Americans will be Hispanic.
• More than one quarter of all US households are singles.
• About 28 million Americans are classified as “contingent workers”, that is, they work part time, do outsourcing work or work by contract. That is 400% greater than in 1980. While Americans traditionally have commuted to work, today 60% do jobs where the physical location is not a factor.
• Thanks to technology, all of the routine transactions that a business or consumer does each day are being replaced by some kind of digital technology. For example, there is now one cell phone for every two humans on earth. It is predicted that eventually there will be more cell phones users than people who can read or write.
• 120,000 blogs are created every day. People are uploading 15 hours of video per minute to YouTube. Facebook has 175 million users, uploads 415,000 videos per day and now is the world’s largest online photo site. Go do your own research on Myspace, LinkedIn and Twitter. The reach these social networks have will blow your mind.
• Donors who are used to direct mail are “aging out” (what a great term!). Wealthy people are increasingly likely to use the Internet to make their donations.

I hope that these statistics cause you to stop and do the preliminary research about the people you are trying to reach, how they access information today and all the options you have to communicate your message that you never have used before.

James P. Gelatt, PhD, is the author of “Managing Nonprofits in the 21st Century” and general editor of Aspen’s Fund Raising Series for the 21st Century. He is the president of Prentice Associates, a management consulting company specializing in national associations and nonprofits, and a past-president of the Greater Washington, D.C. chapter of the National Society of Association Executives.

Three Ways To Add Emotion Into Your Fundraising

If you are involved in fundraising for your church, here are three things you can do to increase the number and size of the gifts.

These suggestions apply to current gifts as well as gifts to your endowment fund. Donors can often see the results of their current gift right away. Gifts that will find their way into the endowment fund may come years later. Nevertheless, it is still possible to apply these three gifting mainstays to future gifts.

In selling, those on the marketing end know that, most of the time, a person buys on emotion and later justifies their purchase with logic. Why do you think the sales person down at the car dealership suggests your taking the car you are considering for a spin around the block? Words are no substitute for the smell of leather and the surge of power you feel by actually driving the car.

Planned giving professionals tell us that donors also give on emotion. In fact, one book I recently read claims that major donors often make their decision to give (and we’re talking million dollar plus gifts) in a split second. That decision occurs a split second after the donor feels the emotion of the application of the funds you are asking for.

Here are three things that can create that emotion for the ministries in your church.

1. Personalize

Communicate clearly how the gift will affect people. Dollar amounts are cold and nebulous. Donors want to see the people with the problems their money will solve. There is no need to bring out the violins. Laying out the problem in front of someone carries enough emotion by itself to tug at anyone’s heartstrings.

2. Quantify

How many shoes will a certain amount of money buy? How many children will the missionary teach? How many people will your gift feed?

It’s a lot easier to relate to a gift’s specific end result, as opposed to $100 or $500. This allows the donor to visualize his or her gift in action. Just running this through the imagination creates emotion.

3. Show

Not only is a picture worth a thousand words, it creates emotion. In today’s high-tech world, “pictures” include the entire gamut of audio-visual tools. Video, video DVDs, audio CDs, podcasts (both audio and video), audio and video on web sites, slide shows – and the list could go on.

Here’s an example that produced good results. Nothing fancy. Just pictures. Our church participates in a larger worldwide program, which sponsors children in third world countries. The program encourages the donor and the child to write back and forth. Often, the child sends pictures they have drawn that end up on the donor’s refrigerator door.

One woman at our church decided to actually visit the little girl she was sponsoring in a Latin American country. Once a year our church devotes part of a Sunday service toward asking people to sponsor a child. Last year, this woman shared many of the photographs of her trip. Pictures of the child she sponsors, her school and village were projected up on the big screen as she moderated her trip and what she saw and learned. It was powerful. The ushers had to pass the tissue boxes out.

The emotion her little presentation and pictures evoked “sold out” all the sponsorships.

If you take the time to translate the dollar amount of your fundraising goal into these three emotion-creating suggestions, I believe your results will be multiplied.