5 Key Metric’s for Tracking COVID19 Giving

Here are 5 key metric’s for tracking COVID19 giving that your church needs to begin following!

As the Stewardship Coach, I am always asking, “How is giving going at your church?” Down through the years, I have learned that when I ask that question most are going to say giving is fine. After all, you know if you say it isn’t I will try and sell you something, right? Also, who wants to admit they are struggling? Most, even before COVID19 would give some answer yet clearly the majority had no clue. Why is that?

1. We have never had to worry much about it before COVID19.
2. Most church leaders hate to talk or even think about money.
3. Few actually bother to know how their giving is doing.
4. The vast majority have no clue what they should be looking at to actually know how to answer the question!

That was then but this is now and we need rethink how we analyze giving trends.

One of the key things I do for clients is help them have an accurate assessment of their giving trends. We call this our Generosity Assessment. In that we look at year to year giving by total amounts and by donor amount. We have multiple metrics that we look at that allows us to correctly assess where a church is and what steps need to be taken to strengthen their financial stability. The problem now is how do you compare 2020 with any other year?

What should you be looking at to evaluate your COVID19 giving metrics? Here is my quick list of things I am focusing on with my clients to help them have an accurate grasp of how giving is truly going. I am now tracking these 5 key metrics for tracking COVID19 giving,

1. Digital giving as compared to traditional means.  While online giving has increased significantly, I am finding many of my clients, even larger churches, are still seeing checks being mailed in or dropped off at the church.  We need to expect analog giving to continue for some time thus you need to continue to offer that option.
2. Break down of how digital giving is coming in.  I would want to know what percentage of my digital giving is recurring giving?  How much of your giving comes via text as opposed to an email?  Knowing how people are giving allows you to better structure your message to fit the means by which people give.
3. New recurring sign-up numbers and the number dropping out of recurring giving.  I tripped over a few weeks ago in a conversation with one of the founders of Gyve.  We were looking through their dashboard of how churches could pull analytical data on giving.  As we began to look at churches recurring giving, we started to notice several churches were seeing a significant number of giving units that had dropped out of recurring giving.  Are you seeing the same thing?
4. Increases versus decreases.  At the same time, we also saw many that had decreased the amount of their recurring gift significantly.  My educated guess is that both here and in the point above the economy is the culprit.  You have to deal with information like this carefully, but my read is that this is an opportunity to reach out to families that might be hurting.
5. Lapsed donors.  While similar to the above, a lapsed donor is someone that has stopped all giving.  Again, this is a delicate issue but you need to know how many of your donors have not given lately and if a pastoral reach out might be helpful.

Knowing the trends in giving at your church can better help you put together a plan of action. We can help you with all of the above. Reach out to me to find out more!

Mark Brooks – The Stewardship Coach

@StewardshipMan