The Psychology Behind Church Stewardship

I’m just starting to read the book, “The 11 Questions Every Donor Asks” by Harvey McKinnon. So far, I think it’s a great book. It is written for fundraisers and people on boards whose partial role is to solicit gifts.  It would certainly make sense to be on the shelf of every pastor’s office as well as every member of the church’s stewardship committee.

By contrast, The Smart Giver, which I publish, is written for the churchgoer. In McKinnon’s book, people in a church congregation are on the other side of the equation as potential donors.

Harvey McKinnon has been involved in fundraising for three decades. He’s pretty much a household word in the profession. The forward to his book was written by Jerold Pannas, who is like the king.

By contrast, I am not a fundraiser. I come from the financial and estate planning world. However, I have spent nearly 40 years (and over 20,000 face-to-face interviews) helping people solve problems, in a lot of cases, they didn’t even know they had before I walked in the door.

Let me give you a quick example. I used to call on business owners with a list of ten questions. Instead of spouting off all my credentials (who cares?) I would simply ask each question one at a time and shut my mouth. Pretty good selling, actually. To make my point, here is one question. This is not true when applying today’s tax rules, but it is a real good example.

Here is the question: “Mr. Business Owner, are you aware that if your wife dies before you do that the IRS is going to want up to 50% of the value of your estate paid to them in cash within nine months?”

To clarify: I live in Arizona, a community property state. When I was using this question, estate taxes were due when either spouse died. Not true today.

To pick up on my story…

As I sat there in silence (extremely hard to do), I often could see the blood drain from my prospect’s face. No one clutched their chest, but I’m sure their heart beat took a leap. The reason was that the businessman’s business generally represented the bulk of his estate. It was all tied up in bricks, mortar and steel. The prospect of having to convert half of it into cash within nine months was scary and in most cases impossible. It would break him and all his hard work would go down the drain.

Of course, I had the solution: simply buy a life insurance policy on his wife.

My point is, though, that most people I called on were fat, dumb and happy. They had no clue they were living with a potential problem that could ruin them financially—much less having to deal with the loss of a loved one.

So even though I am not a fundraiser, I think I am qualified to come up with my own eleven questions. However, the title of my book would be, “The 11 Questions Every Donor Should Ask”.

Why “should” ask? Because, just like my business owner example, most people don’t know enough about all the options they have in making a gift to even know the questions it would make the most sense to ask.

So over the next couple of months, I’m going to give it my best shot to come up my own 11 questions everyone should ask.

Here’s the first one… How can I make a gift to my church without disinheriting my children?

Let’s say you owned a piece of property that now is in the path of progress. You bought it many years ago for a song or inherited it. Your church approaches you and asks you to donate the land because it wants to build a new building.

As much as you may love your church and even be emotionally connected to the cause that the building will promote, here’s the tug of war that may be going on in your mind: you want the property to go to your kids. You always have and they are looking forward to it.

What’s the chance of your making the gift?

On the other hand, what if there were a way for you give the property to the church and still provide your children with an equivalent value as their inheritance? In other words, what if there were a way for you to “give it away and still keep it?”

Let’s flip this around. What if you were the pastor or a member of the stewardship, finance or building committee and you came armed with a plan that would allow the parishioner with the land to make the gift and not cut his children out of his will? What do you think your chances of getting the gift would be then?

Actually, there are a number of ways to “give it away and still keep it.” I can think of four off the top of my head as I write and each is covered within the lessons contained in The Smart Giver.

So, that’s the first question people “should” be asking themselves: “How can I make a gift to my church without disinheriting my children?” Ten more to go. Stay tuned.