Hi, it's Michael. Welcome to this

month's Master Class. Today we're go-

ing to talk about five things that you

can do to increase giving quick.

Now when we talk about how to in-

crease giving in the church, there are

a lot of things that you can do over

time that really can lead your church

to financial help. If you know us here

at Church Fuel, you'll know we're big

on planning and strategies and taking

that long term view. But let's be hon-

est, sometimes there are some things

that you need to do in order to in-

crease giving very quick.

Maybe you're stuck, maybe things are

pretty dire and you need you some-

thing in the next few weeks. You don't

have a year off or time for the long

term healthy planning.We'll get to that but right now we kind

of need an ER visit, right? Or maybe

you've got a neat opportunity ahead

and you need to get some funds or

raise some money or you get some-

thing together because of the unique

God-given opportunity.

So whether it's the danger zone or

the opportunity zone, when you need

to increase giving or raise some

money quickly, that's what I want to

talk about today. I think there are five

things that you can do and you can

do all five of them or you can just pick

the one that makes the most sense, in

order to raise money quick.

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How to Increase Giving Quick

I N S A N E LY P R AC T I C A L | E V E RY M O N T H

I just want to dive in and just walk

through these five things, give you a

couple of examples, give you a couple

action steps, and to help you kind of

turn around or get ahead in the area

of finances very, very quick.

So the first thing is this: send a donor

update with a call to action. So

when we talk about sending a donor

update, the big principle here is, I'm

talking about communicating to the

group of people that are donors in

your church separately than you com-

municate to everybody else.Now, in the business world this is

called Segmented Communication,

right? So we want to segment our

communication, we don't want to

blast everybody with the same mes-

sage. We want to target our message

to the people who are most likely to

hear it and, or respond to it. So when

we talk about segmented communica-

tion in your church, one of those seg-

ments needs to be donors. There are

times when you want to send an email

to the whole church or make an an-

nouncement to the whole church, but

if you need to raise money quickly for

a project or dig out of a hole, what

you want to do is you want to send a

newsletter targeted just to your do-

nors.So you can go into your software and

run a report of everybody who has

given money to your church in the last

six or twelve months and say, "I'm go-

ing to communicate to these people

differently."

Now, this is no different than you do

to small group leaders, right? So, it's

not trying just for small group leaders,

the whole church doesn't get that,

just the small group leaders or choose

ministry volunteers, they will just get

information that pertains to them. So

your donors are a unique group in

your church and you don't want to

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H OW N O R T H P O I N T CO M M U N I T Y C H U R C H G E T S P E O P L E I N TO G R O U P S

talk to them like everybody else. You

want to segment them and separate

them out and give them some commu-

nication just as a donor.So, your donor update, or a donor

newsletter, is a great way to do this

and this is where you can give them

information and information is a form

of appreciation.

So when you talk to your donors and

say, "Hey, I'm just sending this out to

the people who financially support

our church, here's what's going on."

They actually feel appreciated be-

cause information is a form of appre-

ciation.

Your donor newsletter or a donor

email update has three things in it.

Number one, you say thanks. Always

say thanks and call them out saying,

"Hey, you do what most people in our

church don't do. You're a donor,

you're a giver, you're a financial con-

tributor to our church." And say

thanks, okay, say thanks. Always say

thanks in your updates.Number two, is you say, "Here's

what we're doing with your money."

Now, I know and you know theologi-

cally, it's all God's money, right? But

just say, "Hey, you gave to our church

in the last period of time and we just

want you know here's what we're do-

ing with it."

You may choose to tell a story or

share a statistic but both or either

one, you don't have to give a long

thing, your share of stats, or share a

story. So, "Hey, you did this, thank

you.: Number two, "Hey, here's what

we're doing with what you already

gave." And now number three, "Here's

what I'm asking you to do."We have this short term need or we

have this God given opportunity or we

have this thing that is before us. Be-

fore I talk to the rest of the church, I

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want to talk to you because I already

know you care. So the first thing you

can do to raise money quick or in-

crease giving quickly, is talk to your

donors as a group. Talk to them all by

themselves. Just send them a newslet-

ter with a call to action. Make it really,

really, really good and put a picture in

it, tell a story in it, share a number

with it, but be specific in what you're

asking them to do.

Now, if you already do this, make it

better, make it more consistent, but

send a donor update. This could just

be an email but you only send it to the

people that give and that's something

you could do in the next week.Now, number two, second way to in-

crease giving quick is emphasize auto-

mated giving. Emphasize automated

giving, and you can do this in the next

couple of weeks. So you can go to

that same group of donors, the peo-

ple who have given money to your

church, maybe by check or in the of-

fering plate, online, or however they

give. You can go to those people and

say, "Hey, would you be willing to do

something and would you be willing

to do a favor for us? Would you be will-

ing to turn your contribution into an

automatic recurring contribution?"Here's why this is so important --

somebody can go to their bank web-

site and set it up like a bill pay or they

can use your software, your system to

say, "Hey, I want to give on the first of

the month every month or the first

and fifteenth when I get paid." Or how-

ever it works.

Two things with recurring contribu-

tions -- they are more frequent than

in service contribution. So that makes

sense right, because they've set it re-

curring. So anytime somebody gives

on a recurring basis, they're getting

more often. It's just, it's always that

way but secondly recurring contribu-

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H OW N O R T H P O I N T CO M M U N I T Y C H U R C H G E T S P E O P L E I N TO G R O U P S

tions are three to five times larger the

guests that are giving in a service or

in a non-recurring way.So it's great when people give in the

offering, it's great if they go to your

website and give one time. But when

they set up a recurring automatic con-

tribution, itʼs three to five times larger

every time.

There's not a silver bullet, but the clos-

est thing to a silver bullet to increase

giving in your church, is to teach peo-

ple to set up automated recurring giv-

ing, either through their bank or

through your churches platform or

software.

The key here is that you're making it

easy for them to give. You're making

it automatic for them to give. So they

do this right now and then repeat it

every year around the same time.

Right before the summer hits is a

great time to do it, the new year is a

great time to do it, right around the

Thanksgiving or Christmas holidays is

a great time to do it. But pick one time

a year and say, "Hey, this is when

we're going to ask everybody to do it.So ask all your donors to say, "Hey,

will you start giving this way instead

that a that way?" And number two just

ask your whole church to get involved

and set up online giving in your

church.

Thank people who give to your

church, in the service, thank people

who give online in a recurring way and

make this kind of a regular flow of

your church.

Now, you can do this over the next

few weeks. You can create a little mini

campaign in your church to talk about

online, automatic, recurring giving. If

you do that, you're going to dig out of

that hole or you're going to fund the

opportunity at a much deeper level

than if you just pass the plate and

more or pass the plate harder, right?

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With a little more passion or vision be-

hind it.

Now, equip people to give online, auto-

matically, in a recurring way and that

will really move the needle in your

church. We're seeing the churches

that we work with and they come

alongside and allow us to coach them

in this area. We're seeing as much as

50 to 75% of total offering contribu-

tions come in from automatic recur-

ring ways. That means 50 to 75% of

the budget, automatic refunding. It's

a huge way to move your church finan-

cially.

Now, number three is

this -- Fix your website.

What are we talking

about? It's like a website

overall sounds like it

takes a lot of time.I'm talking about one specific part of

your website. In fact, it's the part that

your members, is the most important

to your members. So your church

website, we've talked about this in

Church Fuel, your church website

should be geared toward new people,

almost exclusively. But the one part of

your website that's most important

for your members and your regular at-

tenders is the giving page (the way

that they can give). So my favorite

story about this is from Amazon.

I'm an Amazon Prime user. I get a box

from Amazon -- sometimes two or

three every day -- to my house be-

cause several years ago when Ama-

zon created prime they added this

one click purchase, right?So I can go on my phone, I

can go on the computer, I

can take out my phone and

just say, "Hey, Amazon,

boom, boom, boom." One

quick order and it's at my

house in a day or two days because

I'm an Amazon prime customer.

What Amazon found, is when they

made the ability to buy something

with one click, that somebody doesnʼt

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Fix your website.

need to take out their credit card and

check their shipping address, they

save all this, right? So my profile is

tied to my credit cards and one click, I

can order just about anything in the

world, anything right from A to Z, Ama-

zon, right, A to Z. You see the logo is

from A to Z. I can order anything on-

line, they get it to my house quick be-

cause of that one click purchase.What is that? Why did that increase

Amazon's revenue by billions literally,

billions of dollars? Because the sim-

pler you make something, the more

people do it. So how simple is it for

people to give on your website?

Your website is where these quick do-

nations are going to come from, not

people throwing a 5 dollar bill, 10 dol-

lar bill, 20 dollar bill on the service.

They're going to come online and

more and more of this. It's growing

very rapidly. If it's simple, people are

going to do it. So one of the best

ways you can increase giving in the

next two, three, four weeks, is to

make giving simpler on your website.

So just like Amazon, they simplified

the process. They made it one click

and free shipping. They made it sim-

ple, simple, simple because they

know if it's simple, more people will

do it.

So how simple is it to give on your

website? The best way to know is to

go on your website as soon as this

video is done, go to your church, type

in the name your church, and make a

five dollar donation. Take out your

debit card, your credit card, and make

a five dollar donation and here's what

I want you to pay attention to. How

many clicks did you have to make?I mean, take a little piece of paper and

write a little click mark there. How

many clicks, how many buttons, how

many pages, how many things did

you have to click through? If it's more

than three, it's too complicated.

Really, we can get it down to just a

couple of clicks, okay? Number two,

how long does it take? Start a timer

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and go from start to finish, from the

time you typed in yourchurch.com

and hit submit and you saw a screen

that said, "Confirmed. Thank you."

How long did it take? If it's more than

60 seconds, it's too long. You know,

church leader, as you're looking at

this, say, "Hey, look at it from the eyes

of a new person. Will this be confus-

ing?"Are we asking people to set up compli-

cated accounts before they can just

give or removing the account set up

to after their purchase? That's what it

should be. So make giving simple on

your website. If you're using a solu-

tion like PayPal, it's confusing. You un-

derstand it because you know how it

works. But a lot of people don't give

when they see PayPal, because they

think, "Oh, I don't have PayPal ac-

count or I don't use a PayPal account."

So we need to use solutions, and we

can help you get to the right one. You

need to use solutions that make it sim-

ple and quick for people to give. You

can jump into the resource library and

check out the website evaluation form

and this is one of the things we'll help

you evaluate, is your giving. So just

go to your website, make a donation

and see, is this simple? Because if

you make it simple, more people will

do it.All right, the fourth way to increase

giving quick and getting healthy is to

create a plan, we're going to do the

big picture stuff but very quickly,

here's what we're going to do. Num-

ber four, ask somebody to give. In

fact, this is something that you can do

in the next three days and you don't

need a whole lot of planning to do

this.

It's simply ask somebody to give,

right? You have not because you

asked not, that's about prayer and

faith but in many cases in church lead-

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ership, some of the reasons that a

budget or projects or a church or min-

istries go unfunded, is because we're

not asking people to give.Now, we're hitting that giving is impor-

tant, we're teaching that tithing or

stewardship is important, we're ask-

ing on Sunday, like the crowd to give

but I'm talking about having a one on

one meeting with somebody. Taking

somebody to coffee and asking them

to give.

If you sat down right now and said,

"Who are the five people in our

church that I need to go out to coffee

with or lunch with or call on the phone

even and share and even ask then to

give?”, I bet God would bring several

people to mind. I bet there are some

people in your church who you can-

not generally ask but specifically ask

to give.So two tips on how to do this, these

are powerful. This will work in your

church, I know it will. Number one, is

you want to ask someone specific for

something specific.

Someone specific for something spe-

cific.

So make a list right now of five people

in your church, and you may go and

look at some numbers and see who's

giving, whatever. You can you can do

that based on your own preference

and leadership ability. But make a list

of people that you want to ask to help

fund something short term right,

whether you're in a hole or really want

to get ahead, you got a specific need

and so you want to ask someone spe-

cific for something specific. So make

a list of five people that are your

someone specific.Now, on the something specific, don't

just ask them to just give, ask them to

give a certain amount of money for a

very specific thing in your church and

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H OW N O R T H P O I N T CO M M U N I T Y C H U R C H G E T S P E O P L E I N TO G R O U P S

so make a one-page ministry plan

that you've got access to as a Church

Fuel one member.

Add a section to it down at the bot-

tom called Current Needs. You have

your mission, your vision, your values,

your strategy, your ministries down at

the bottom at a section called Current

Needs and just list a few things that

your church needs right now. Then

when you sit down with somebody to

ask them to give, don't just sit down

and say, "Well, the reason I wanted to

have coffee with you is to ask you to

give." No, say, "Listen, here's our plan

as a church. Here's our one-page

plan."It is not real because it's one sheet of

paper. You're not giving them a busi-

ness presentation, you're not showing

them a PowerPoint thing, you're not

giving them a spiral notebook with

everything in the church or a big copy

of the budget.

You're saying, "Hey, here's what we're

trying to do on one page." And just

very quickly, just walk them through,

"Hey, here's our strategy, here's our

mission, here's our vision, here's what

we're trying to accomplish." And you

see down at the bottom is our current

needs and ask for feedback on the

whole page. Say, "Hey, does this reso-

nate with you? Does our mission reso-

nate, does our vision resonate, does

our strategy resonate with you?"Then as you move through the conver-

sation, say, "Hey, here's some things

that we need and I wonder if God

hasn't equipped you to meet these

needs. Would you think about meet-

ing one of these specific needs that

we have? Could you help us with one

of these things?"

Generic answers get generic results,

but a generic request gets generic re-

sult. A specific request gives specific

results.

A lot of times, even when people can't

meet those specific needs, they say,

"Hey, I want to help. I can't do this but

I want to help." But asking people to

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meet specific needs, I worked with a

ministry leader that did this exercise.

They made a list of needs and it

added up to about $40,000. They sat

down and had a meeting so, here's

our one-page plan, walk through it

and at the end of that meeting, some-

body said, "Hey, I can do that. I can

do that, we can take care of that."

And the result was a $40,000 net im-

pact to this ministry because they

were willing to put it down on one

sheet of paper, have a meeting with

somebody and ask somebody spe-

cific for something specific.Sometimes we have people that say,

"Hey, we can't afford to do this or we

can't afford to do that." But there are

people in your church who would be

passionate about you having or get-

ting access or your church having ac-

cess to that thing and they'll pay for it.

They may not just give to the offering

or they want to give to something spe-

cial in addition to the offering. So

when you ask someone specific for

something specific, amazing things

can happen.The last thing is, number five is do

a special offering. No matter what

season you're in, whether it's winter,

spring, summer, fall, in summer and in

the holidays, your church can plan out

and do a special offering. Now you

can't do this all the time. Once or

twice a year is the most you should

do it. But you can have a special offer-

ing in your church, where you basi-

cally asked the church to do some-

thing, something specific. Where you

say, "Here's exactly what we need,

here's exactly what the goal is. On

this day we're going to receive special

offering for this purpose."So if you're going to do a special offer-

ing, just three quick tips. Number one,

it's a three week, you can do this in

three weeks, okay? Three weeks is

not, you don't have to plan this up for

a year, it'll take three weeks.

Week number one, tell people on Sun-

day. So week number one starts on a

Sunday. On Sunday, tell people what's

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coming. You say, "Hey, next Sunday

we're going to receive a special offer-

ing and here's exactly what it's for.

We need to do this thing, we need to

dig out this hole or we have this op-

portunity." And it's got a number and

its got a date and it's very, very, very

specific.So here is what we are doing and

we're doing a special offering in this

coming, next Sunday then throughout

that week, through email, through a

letter, through a postcard, through so-

cial media, every communication tool

you have as a church, you say, "This

Sunday, this offering, this is the goal,

this is the project." So you spend one

one focused week saying this is what

we're doing.

Then on week two, on Sunday, you re-

ceive the offering and you make it a

big deal, you plan around it, you

preach around, you make it a big deal

and you receive a special offering.

Then for the week following up from

that, same thing, email. This last Sun-

day, if you missed it, here's a link to

give online. If you missed it, here's an

envelope you can send in.This next Sunday is the deadline,

right? So you start the offering on a

Sunday but you extend it through the

week so people that weren't there can

participate, very important. Then you

create deadlines. Deadlines are so im-

portant, they drive decisions in many,

many, many ways. So you do the offer-

ing on Sunday but then for the next

week, every day, every ministry, every

email, send another letter, send an en-

velope. People that missed it, people

that, you know, you follow up with peo-

ple.

Then, Sunday number three you cele-

brate. You say, "Hey, for the last week

we've been talking about special offer-

ing. Here's what we asked, here's

what happened." Celebrate the re-

sults and then send a week spending

the money, right?

Do what you said you were going to

do with the money. So if it was for the

community, go do it, record it, take a

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big cheque, give it away. If it was to

pay down a bill, I mean, mark paid on

a bill and show it to your church,

right? Show your church what hap-

pened. So the special offering, you

can plan it, execute and follow up with

it in three weeks. So these are five

ways that you can very quickly in-

crease giving in your church quickly.Number one, send a donor update

with a call to action. Call all your do-

nors, treat them as a unique group be-

cause they are.

Number two, emphasize automated

giving and you can do that every year.

Do it once, you can do it every year.

Move people to recurring giving be-

cause it's three to five times larger

when they give.

Number three, fix your website. Make

it quick, 60 seconds, three clicks or

less. We can help you with that if you

need to.

Number four, ask somebody to give.

Ask someone specific or something

specific. Have five people to get cof-

fees or lunches or dinners or phone

calls, with five specific people and ask

them to give.

And number five, you can plan a spe-

cial offering. It just takes three weeks

if you focus on it.Any one of those or all those or a cou-

ple of those ideas can help you move

giving forward in a major, major way.

So ask people to give, set these sys-

tems up, work on it, but you can work

on it quick and those are five ways

you that you can increase giving

quick in your church. Thanks for

watching this Master Class and

thanks for being a part of the Church

Fuel family. We're here to serve you

any way we can. God bless.

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