One of the benefits of using ChatGPT is that it allows you to personalize your messages to individual members. By collecting information about their interests and giving history, you can tailor your communications to be more relevant and engaging. For example, if someone has donated to a specific cause in the past, you can send them updates on how their donation has made a difference. This personal touch can go a long way in building relationships and increasing donations. One example of an AI chatbot prompt to use with ChatGPT or Jarvis that helps you personalize your messages is :
2. Use Data-Driven Insights
Another advantage of using ChatGPT is that it can provide data-driven insights on which types of messages are most effective in driving donations. By analyzing past donation patterns and engagement rates, you can identify what works best for your congregation and adjust your messaging accordingly. For example, if you find that members respond well to video messages, you can create more video content to share with them.
Consistency is key when it comes to building trust and encouraging regular giving. With ChatGPT, you can now find the time to create a repetitive workflow so that you can send regular communications to your key donors. One way to do this is to send an overall vision update with progress on annual, quarterly, or monthly ministry goals that utilize funding from tithes and offerings. A great way to use ChatGPT is to build prompts that share bullet points of what’s going on in the ministry and have the AI chatbot return descriptive paragraphs that you can use in the messaging you’re assembling. ChatGPT can help with connecting the dots, making transitions that make sense, and framing it all in a way that conveys gratitude for their financial partnership in ministry. Whether it’s a weekly newsletter or monthly update, having a consistent cadence of communication will keep your church top-of-mind for members when they’re deciding where to donate.
Another “excuse” to communicate with donors is to share micro-devotionals that focus on stewardship. ChatGPT is the perfect writing partner to help you brainstorm, organize, and write these pieces for this purpose. You can ask the AI chatbot to act like a storyteller to write a short parable, or you might provide some stats on culture or key reflections you might have on consumption vs cultivation and ask it to produce an essay that shares the Biblical worldview on generosity, or you might ask it to produce some practical personal finance tips. The opportunities are endless when you have a generative AI tool like ChatGPT to assist you in writing.
Final Thoughts
Generative AI chatbots are just beginning to evolve, and in the next few years, we can expect to see incredible improvements in AI-powered writing assist tools. For instance, Jarvis is already offering over 50 different templates for all kinds of content, from video scripts to blog posts to Facebook ad copy.
In the future, non-profits and churches will also be able to use these templates for things like creating donor appreciation letters and emails. With advances in natural language processing and machine learning, AI writing assist tools are sure to become even more sophisticated, making it easier than ever for anyone to create compelling content for their target audiences.
Today I got an end-of-year giving appeal from YoungLife and I loved what I saw.
Do you know why?
Because it humanized the giving ask in a way that I could visualize the impact with any level of donation.
The lead paragraphs talk about “them” – about how much they need, how much they got, etc. That stuff is too easy to gloss over because it isn’t donor-centric in its messaging.
But the bottom half of the email helps the recipient do the most pivotal thing possible with this donation ask — it paints a very specific picture with each associated level on the giving ladder.
Everything from $300 up to $3,600 is made clear to the giving, what will happen when they give.
The other bonus thing that is going on here is that all of these giving examples have been constructed as a recurring monthly donation.
This does three specific things:
1) Breaks down the gift into a bite size piece as small as a $25 ask to make a difference.
2) Introduces a longer-term relationship than a single transction so that there’s excuse to check in and report results, educate further and inspire for deeper support in the future.
3) Monthly recurring giving will most likely continue on beyond the year ahead to increase the average lifetime value of donor.
But let’s zoom back in to what it the most important part of this example: Framing each donation ask level with tangible outcomes for the prospective donor. This is the key to a productive giving campaign.
Are you receiving any examples of good giving appeals in your inbox? Share it with us and let us know why you resonate with them!
Kenny Jahng from GenerosityLabs has your Generosity Tip of the Day!
It’s regarding the A.R.T. of Engagement — when you want to build a culture of giving across your community, you want to focus on the three main drivers of increasing gauge right that’s just a remind you it’s a for Authority or for Relevance and Trust,
One of the things that you can do very easily to help build trust is with this tip that I am sharing with you today. Now, it’s my birthday this week — happy birthday to me! But one of the things that you’ll notice is that there’s a very small set of relationships out there that do take advantage of that in today’s day and age.
You’ll get a birthday card from your dentist or lawyer or real estate agent or from your car dealer — and sure enough I open my inbox today and I get a happy birthday message from a car dealer.
It a very simple message — they know it doesn’t need to be spammy; there’s no call to action; it is a complete relationship play. And they know that they are a car dealer and they’re not my friend or relative etcetera right so it’s a simple message that’s clean and just takes advantage of the fact that they have my information in the database.
It says, “we noticed that today is your special day so in commemoration of this occasion we want to send along our best wishes and thank you for your past business May the next year bring great joy to you and your loved ones happy birthday.”
See, very simple, right? It’s something that gives you an excuse to reach out and build that relationship over time.
All you need to do is sit down and write 6, 10, a dozen different variations of happy birthday messages. Some can be humorous, some to be straightforward, it is something that you can insert some fun links into, maybe a YouTube video, etc.
Basically anytime someone in the database has a birthday, that triggers the email to get sent out and sometimes you can send it one day early or on the day. But you have personalization done for the next 6 years, 10 years, etc. You can have a decade’s worth of happy birthday messages that don’t repeat, are varied and you can do that all in one shot. Just sit down and write half a dozen to a dozen different versions and then schedule them in your email system.
Each and every organization should be taking advantage of this. But there’s very few I’ve met — only maybe two churches there taking advantage of birthdays. And birthdays are easy to collect from your people! It’s one of those fields of information in a database that most people are comfortable sharing– their birthday.
And the best practice is if you collect a piece of information yous hould use it. If you collect a piece of information and don’t use it you’re wasting your time and energy; it is not respectful of the audience that you collecting from; and in you introduce friction to the relationship that you have with them. So collect only the information you’re going to use and birthday should be one of them at some point in the beginning of the relationship.
And then you build the automation that simply sends out an email message to them on their birthday. It could be the day before saying, Hi I want to be the first to wish you happy birthday this week!
Let me know what you think about this automation idea and if you have any other ideas on how to use marketing automation to the benefit of increasing the relevance and trust in your relationship with your people in your community. I always want to discover, learn, and brainstorm about other ways to use technology to scale personal relationships,
That’s it for today’s tip.Thank you for listening and watching here at GenerosityLabs.Org.
If you ask any pastor, if they would like to see growth in giving by their congregation in 2019, I doubt many would disagree or shy away from that outcome.
If you ask most pastors what is the status of their giving with respect to their budget and actual needs, again, most would answer that their dreams for ministry are greater than the offerings and times collected via the offering plate.
A good portion of churches “need” more funding, not just “want” more funding.
This next year, somewhere between 6,000 and 10,000 churches will have to close their doors.
Lack of strategy or intent regarding finances is one of the major reasons churches are struggling.
Here are 3 THINGS TO FOCUS ON IN 2019 TO CULTIVATE A CULTURE OF GIVING
1. Your church needs to adopt a cause.
One of the big things many churches have lost his their outward focus. Many churches do have outreach activities and support missionaries, but don’t have clarity around it and positioning it all as a core part of its identity. Every church needs to hang this shingle so it’s people can identify with this behavior or outward generosity.
2. You need to plan on sharing of stories of impact regularly.
Where did the money go? How did it help? You need to ensure there is a FLOW of stories being shared with your congregation so they connect their giving behavior with the outcomes.
3. The pastor needs to see all giving activity.
The leadership needs be fully involved with the church’s financial activity. This is because financial stewardship is a discipleship issue and without knowing and supporting financial health, a church isn’t doing its job of helping its people to fully worship through daily living.
Also, no church can maximize its impact without understanding when it can invest in ministry opportunities and when there is less or no margin available.
Those of the first three things every church needs to reconsider at the beginning of the year. Without these three fundamental approaches, it will be difficult to install a culture of generosity in the community.
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