For today’s episode of the Generosity Labs Podcast, Kenny Jahng shares how people can be forgetful when summertime comes. He will discuss key points to be considered by churches and nonprofit organizations for check up during summer.
TRANSCRIPTION:
Hey everybody, it’s Kenny Jahng. It is summertime. Feels like it. It’s definitely heading up to almost 90 degrees here in Jersey this week. This is Kenny Jahng with Generosity Labs, and we are checking in with the podcast. Haven’t been with you lately but we are back on track. And here’s the reason that we’re checking in today is that it is summertime. We are now at a point where the back to school or end of school rush is gone. Mother’s day is gone. Father’s day is gone. We are looking at July 4th, and then it’s just the summer slump for most of the churches and nonprofits that we are talking about.
Now, you might have a vibrant schedule for the summer. But here’s one thing that I’d love to talk about today. And that’s a summer checkup. of times you hear that before you go on vacation, you should check your vehicle to make sure the tire pressure’s there, the oil, radiator. All that stuff is in good condition before you go on a big trip. And this is the same time to do this summer checkup for your donor development activities. And it’s just a couple things that I think you should put on your radar. This is a great thing to put on for either the end of June or for the rest of July. To just check-in and see how you’re doing.
And so there are a couple of things. The first thing is just where you are in terms of progress for your overall plan for the year. Are you on a budget? Are you ahead of the game? Are you behind the game? And it’s time to rejigger your plan. Right? Basically, we’ve got July, August, September, and then October, November, December. Right? Six months, two quarters to go. It’s time to get back onto the white board, and to find those smart goals, right? The specific, measurable, attainable, what’s the R? Relevant and timely. Right? Specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely goals regarding your fundraising plan. How are you doing that? What are you going to do to achieve that for the rest… To meet your original goals. Maybe you’ll need to revise those goals.
And then also on the spending side, how are you doing in terms of realistic assumptions about your budget spending? Because so many times at the end of the year, you’ve seen it in so many organizations, both on the marketplace and ministry side, that their line items on the budget where you have overflow. You just haven’t used them, used the dollars, and people are just racing to the end of the year, in December, to just spend out all of their budget in certain line items.
On the other side, people run out of money early, and they’re looking for funds in the fall at some point. So this is the time to revise those budget lines, because you have clarity. You actually have 50% clarity on what’s going to happen in 2019. So revising those goals and objectives in your budget is the number one thing that you should be doing in June and July.
A second one is looking at some other things that you typically don’t have time for. But you actually have the time now to pay attention to that. And so that is looking at your donor base. Both your high capacity donors, and your first time donors. And seeing what the rates are there in terms of first time donors turning into second donors, renewals, et cetera. Basically your donor retention rate, as we might call it. Trying to figure out how to get those first time donors to donate again in the second half of the year. Do you have any type of plan or campaign or excuse, honestly, to give them for them to consider contributing to the vision and the mission of your organization once again in the second half of the year?
The other part is that those high capacity donors. This is a great time to make sure that you are engaging them. You might have engaged them really heavily during the end of your giving season. You might have engaged them during the spring or even the Easter season, right? We’ve got these big days that hit the calendar. But summertime is the time that most people get forgotten. This is a great time for you to break through the clutter, and reconnect with some of your high capacity donors, and share them. How you doing? Are you on track or ahead of the game in terms of both your funding as well as your outcomes, right? All the actual objectives in terms of the activities and the ROI and the impact that you’re going to put out there.
Give them an update. Let them know how you’re doing. And give them some realistic assessments of, this is where we’re doing stuff in a strong way, and this is where we, because all these variables, we’re at a position where we might have a deficit, or we need to strengthen and shore that up. And that might be a place where donors can jump in again and participate. So cultivating those relationships, even outside of asks. Just checking in with them and seeing how they’re doing, and getting advice from their perspective is definitely something that I think you would want to start to do in the summer, because many other organizations are not. And again, it’s easy to cut through the clutter.
And the last one is looking at the rest of the year to refine it. Right? If you have story brands work that you’ve done with your organization, this is a great place for you to go back to your SB7 place mat, as we call it. And look at the core messaging. Are you still being caveman simple, as Don Miller says? Is your messaging clear? Is it something that allows people to understand that they’re the hero and that they are the ones that are able to make a difference? Are you showing them what happens if they don’t actually contribute or become a supporter or donate to the cause. What is the opportunity cost? Are you having between now, even starting in July. You’ve got six months. Do you have at least six pieces, 12 pieces? That will be biweekly. 24 pieces weekly communication that you can actually plan out right now during the summer, and start to drip, drip, drip. Send out that out to your constituents, your high capacity donors, and your general community.
Whether it be framed in terms of a financial and budgetary type of conversation, or just the ministry impact type of conversation. Is this something that you’ve started to think about now? This is a great time to work on that communications plan, set it, and forget it. At least between now and sometime in Q4, where you really should be amping up the communications regarding end of year giving, as well as Giving Tuesday, and the last week of the year. So looking at that, kind of like the smart goals. Are you doing anything on a overarching plan to relook at what you’re planned out for the last six months of the year in terms of your communications to your community. And this is the time to make those adjustments, alignments, and then put it back on track.
So those are some of the things that I would say is the summer tune up. Part of that summer tune up for a donor development or fundraising perspective that every single organization should take some time out between June and July of this year and see how you’re doing. I’d love to hear your perspective, and show me the wins or show me the deficits of where we might be able to add to the conversation, help give you some support here at Generosity Labs.
This is the type of thing that we’d love to dive down deeper if this is something you’d like to hear about. So let me know what part of this interests you? Is it the smart goals? Is it how do we communicate more effectively with high capacity donors in our community? Is it the communications plan? I just had recently, someone just flagged that they wanted to hear a little bit more about the serving. We talked about building a testimonial engine for your audience and your community to help build authority that you have in relation to your own community.
And there was a great question that came up that says, you know, I can see how the net promoter score surveys are done for the marketplace, for secular businesses, for profit businesses. But how do you phrase it for nonprofit, for ministries, and churches? That was a great question that came up recently, and we shared some concrete examples in response.
All of this, all these resources that we’re trying to pull together for Generosity Labs, are for you.
So selfishly I’m asking you, reach out to me. Drop us a note on the website. Visit our website, our blog. Share the podcast with others. But more importantly, let us know what are the types of resources and information topics that you would love to hear more about? Are there specific leaders in the industry? Are there organizations that you are seeing do these things well, and you’d love to hear more behind the scenes stories about their approaches, about their philosophies, and even the tactics and resources that they’re using specifically. Let me know. I’d love to hear that so we can make this resource an even better one for you.
So that said, hope you’re doing well with your summer checkup. We’ll check in with you again soon here on the Generosity Labs podcast as we’re revving back up again here at generositylabs.org. I’m Kenny Jahng, I’ll check you out next time. And remember, generosity begins with you.
HIGHLIGHTS:
03:13 The first thing is just where you are in terms of progress for your overall plan for the year. Are you on a budget? Are you ahead of the game? Are you behind the game? And it’s time to rejigger your plan. Right? Basically, we’ve got July, August, September, and then October, November, December. Right? Six months, two quarters to go. It’s time to get back onto the whiteboard, and to find those smart goals, right? The specific, measurable, attainable, what’s the R? Relevant and timely. Right? Specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely goals regarding your fundraising plan. How are you doing that? What are you going to do to achieve that for the rest… To meet your original goals. Maybe you’ll need to revise those goals.
04:06 A second one is looking at some other things that you typically don’t have time for. But you actually have the time now to pay attention to that. And so that is looking at your donor base. Both your high capacity donors and your first-time donors. And see what the rates are there in terms of first-time donors turning into second donors, renewals, et cetera. Basically, your donor retention rate, as we might call it. Trying to figure out how to get those first-time donors to donate again in the second half of the year. Do you have any type of plan or campaign or excuse, honestly, to give them for them to consider contributing to the vision and the mission of your organization once again in the second half of the year?
06:25 And the last one is looking at the rest of the year to refine it. Right? If you have story brands work that you’ve done with your organization, this is a great place for you to go back to your SB7 placemat, as we call it. And look at the core messaging. Are you still being caveman simple, as Don Miller says? Is your messaging clear? Is it something that allows people to understand that they’re the hero and that they are the ones that are able to make a difference? Are you showing them what happens if they don’t actually contribute or become a supporter or donate to the cause? What does the opportunity cost? Are you having between now, even starting in July. You’ve got six months. Do you have at least six pieces, 12 pieces? That will be biweekly. 24 pieces weekly communication that you can actually plan out right now during the summer, and start to drip, drip, drip. Send out that out to your constituents, your high capacity donors, and your general community.
Tune in to this the most recent episode of our Generosity Labs with Kenny Jahng. In this episode, Kenny will share 8 points from an article at Barna entitled, What Motivates Christians to Give.
It’s generosity time. It’s time for the Generosity Labs podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in. Wanting to share this study that I found out over at Barna. It was actually titles what motivates Christians to give, and it was released around Giving Tuesday of this past year, which is the Tuesday after Cyber Monday, Monday after, what’s it, what is it after Thanksgiving and Black Friday. And so the question, what motivates Christians to give us a great one? And as we go into 2019, there’s a bunch of questions that I’d love to challenge you as you go to church this Sunday. Are you demonstrating the answers to these questions of what motivates Christians to give? So they had one, they have this great article you should read the whole thing of the name of the article again is What Motivates Christians to Give. It’s in their culture and media section over at Barna and there’s one question in particular. I first got involved with a cause because, and then they do all these splits between practicing Christians and all US adults. And practicing Christian Christian is just to let you know they define it in this article as somebody that’s self identified as Christian who says their faith is very important in their lives and have attended a worship service in the past month.
Nonpracticing Christians are self identified Christians who do not qualify as practicing. So, we’re looking at Christians and adult behavior. The question is I got, I first got involved with the cause because I first got involved with a cause because fill in the blank. And so, I want to go down this list. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight factors. Eight, fill in the blanks. And here’s the question I’ll challenge you with is, on Sunday when you go to church, can somebody who sits there in the pew for the first time or for the 10th time or the hundredth time? Can they say yes to any or even half of these questions? So, the first question, the first answer is I felt I could make a difference. So in your church services, in your church communications, in your storytelling, are you demonstrating that any individual that gets involved with tithing, with their offerings, with donations, with volunteering, that are you making a space for them to actually make a difference?
Or are you just asking them to fund your mission and you’ll go off and do a turnkey? A second one is I heard or saw a story that moved me. Storytelling examples, case studies, testimonials, are you publishing these things on a regular basis? Are you asking people to share their experience as they volunteer, as they give, as they fund your ministry? Number three, I felt an overwhelming sense of purpose. And an overwhelming sense of purpose, so this really comes down to clarity of vision casting, sharing what your mission is for the ministry. Has that been done in a credible way and authentic way so that sound feels that there’s this overwhelming sense of purpose in this place when they visit you for that hour on Sunday. Next one is, someone I know personally wasn’t very involved in this cause. And so that’s where you need to take advantage of those volunteers that you have already, those committed even staffers and are they sharing about their involvement?
Are they sharing their excitement? Are they sharing what their passion i?s and the reason why they are onboard with the mission, with those people around them. Those people that are active are your referral engine. They are the people that you need to rely on and equip, not just instruct. You need to equip them in better sharing. Exactly what they’re doing, why they’re doing, and how other people could get involved. Giving is obviously one of those things. And people don’t give unless they have this sense of cause and that they see others doing it at the same time. And so here’s the next one. I love this one. I first got involved with the cause because I accepted a personal challenge to get involved. Are you afraid of the money topic? Are you not going to the actual call to action, but just stopping, just shy of it because you feel guilty or you just don’t feel it’s right not to personally challenge people to get involved with funding your mission, whether it be a small campaign, whether it be the big picture, whether it be as a part of their own spiritual discipline because how you behave with your money is a reflection of your heart in their understanding of God’s love and generosity.
Are you actually doing that on a personal level? Are you challenging people explicitly to get involved financially? Even, any church can do this on a week by week basis without making it an obligation fest. This next one is very important. My church cast a vision for me. I think this is the one thing that many churches completely forget about. The leadership team or the senior pastor might have something in their mind, but they’re not sharing it. They’re not articulating it. In fact, what we say is that there’s usually something called vision leak in most organizations and that you need to repeat it and make sure everyone is indoctrinated with the vision that you have for the community, once at least every six to eight weeks. Because of a variety of factors, one, people are not coming to church every week anymore.
They’re catching it every other week, every three weeks, you know, once a month. That’s the new norm. And second there is visually, there’s just so much messaging they’re bombarded with. They’re busy with their lives more than ever for them to understand and hold onto what you are trying to instill in their lives and practice as a ministry gets lost. And so just that practical effect of visionlink is something that you need to figure out how to do it in a intentional, almost scheduled where every six, eight weeks within your ministry somehow. It can be from the pulpit that can be from outside of the pulpit, but can someone can so and say, “yes, my church actually cast a vision for me”. The next one is, I was given or assigned a specific task to do. Micro commitments are one of the best ways of getting people involved.
It doesn’t need to be financial commitment at the beginning either. Usually it’s a commitment of time, of volunteering of some other type of talents before you actually asked them to give a treasure. So, giving or specific tasks or assignments, some projects involving people in the ministry. And the activation of putting their faith into action is usually a great way to start that process of opening up the stewardship conversations and letting them dedicate all their lives holy, not just their schedule, their time, their mind and their heart, but also part of their wallet too, to financially support the mission. And the last one here is, I took a foreign trip and saw the need firsthand, mission trips. There’s pros and cons of mission trips. There’s a big debate whether or not short term mission trips are actually doing any good or even harm, but you don’t need to take a foreign trip.
You might do an open house. You might actually take one or two at a time and let them invite them to visit your ministry outreach, where the acts of transformation are happening in your ministry to witness that firsthand. The whole point here is they saw the need firsthand not reported, not in a slideshow, not in a slick video. It needs to be something that they see physically, tactically in person, embodied, so that they actually see the need firsthand and go back and start to consider it and integrated into their faith life. And so these are really interesting things. Obviously the ones at the beginning of the list are the most impactful. The first, I first got involved with the cause because of these first three I would say I felt that can make a difference. I heard or saw something that moved me or I felt an overwhelming sense of purpose are three things that you can start to do with your messaging, with your communication, with intentionality in your worship and the stories that you tell in your sermons, in your offering time.
You know, the little offering scripts that you might be using in your announcements and also reporting of all the great things that your ministries are doing inside your building and outside your building. I challenge you to take a look at this article. There’s a lot more to it than just this one survey question, but as we break this down, this is my question too, are the majority of the people that walk into your building on Sunday this coming Sunday, are they going to walk away and they say, “I felt I could make a difference and part of this community”? Or, “I saw or heard something that moved me today in terms of wanting to get involved” or, “I felt an overwhelming sense of purpose in this place or this community for everything that they’re doing in terms of mercy and justice and outreach and life change”.
Can you say yes? Is that something that the majority of people will on an exit survey, you know, on a volunteer basis they will volunteer to say yes to those questions without being prompted by you without being coached, without being reminded. That is one should be one of your top messaging and communications goals going forward to see what type of artifacts, what type of storytelling, what type of conversation pieces, what type of messaging that we can integrate into their whole experience when they come into our building on Sunday so that they leave and they say yes to every single one of those statements.
So, I would love to know your thoughts. Leave your comments below and share this with friends and see what they think. It’s great. I think conversations started to say, “hey, is this is a different way of doing a checkpoint in ministry and I’d love to hear your feedback and what you think about using this as a litmus test as to see if you’re on track”. I’d love to hear that in the comments below, or reach out to me directly or join our Facebook page for Generosity Labs and comment there as well. I’m Kenny Jahng for Generosity Labs. Go to our website, generositylabs.org. Check out the blog, check out the rest of the podcast issues, and I’d love to reach out and connect with you further in any of those places. Thanks for listening and we’ll catch you here next time at the generosity labs podcast.
HIGHLIGHTS:
03:16 So, the first question, the first answer is I felt I could make a difference. So in your church services, in your church communications, in your storytelling, are you demonstrating that any individual that gets involved with tithing, with their offerings, with donations, with volunteering, that are you making a space for them to actually make a difference?
Or are you just asking them to fund your mission and you’ll go off and do a turnkey?
03:50 Storytelling examples, case studies, testimonials, are you publishing these things on a regular basis? Are you asking people to share their experience as they volunteer, as they give, as they fund your ministry?
04:06 Number three, I felt an overwhelming sense of purpose. And an overwhelming sense of purpose, so this really comes down to clarity of vision casting, sharing what your mission is for the ministry.
04:31 Next one is, someone I know personally wasn’t very involved in this cause. And so that’s where you need to take advantage of those volunteers that you have already, those committed even staffers and are they sharing about their involvement?
05:28 And so here’s the next one. I love this one. I first got involved with the cause because I accepted a personal challenge to get involved.
06:31 This next one is very important. My church cast a vision for me. I think this is the one thing that many churches completely forget about. The leadership team or the senior pastor might have something in their mind, but they’re not sharing it.
07:17 And second there is visually, there’s just so much messaging they’re bombarded with. They’re busy with their lives more than ever for them to understand and hold onto what you are trying to instill in their lives and practice as a ministry gets lost.
07:59 The next one is, I was given or assigned a specific task to do. Micro commitments are one of the best ways of getting people involved.
It doesn’t need to be financial commitment at the beginning either.
08:54 And the last one here is, I took a foreign trip and saw the need firsthand, mission trips. There’s pros and cons of mission trips. There’s a big debate whether or not short term mission trips are actually doing any good or even harm, but you don’t need to take a foreign trip.
As a generosity advocate, Niki Flaming aims to build a platform that provides unique data insights to help anyone better connect with givers. We caught up with her to find out more about this discipleship-driven, stewardship management platform, Mortarstone.
How do you define generosity? Generosity is the virtue of not being tied down by concerns about one’s possessions. Generosity leads to charity and forgiveness.
The landscape of generosity is changing. What is one thing you’ve adjusted in your leadership or teaching when it comes to talking about generosity with your tribe? Generosity is the stewarding of a person’s heart. We teach stewardship through the lens of generosity, in that all we have is God’s and we should steward our resources for His purpose.
What is one thing that’s working right now that you have seen about implementing digital giving tools and methods in a church community? Push notifications, text-to-give, and online recurring payments.
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