If you read part one of our article on recurring donations, you should have a good understanding of their importance. Recurring donations lead to more stabilized giving, which leads to fewer weekly peaks and valleys and makes planning and budgeting easier. But increasing recurring donations isn’t going to happen overnight. Like anything else, it needs to be promoted internally to your members, which tends to take a bit of time. Here are a couple basic points for you to follow, which will help put you on the track towards a more stable giving system.

Promote Online Giving

While it may seem obvious, as the old saying goes “you need to walk before you can run”. In order to turn your online givers into recurring online givers they need to sign up first. If some of your members instantly set a recurring schedule that’s great, but this “step-by-step” approach seems to work best for most. Stressing recurring giving right off the bat might be moving too quickly for some, especially since this is a change to how they’ve been giving for years. Get them started with online giving, wait until they get comfortable with it, and then highlight the benefits of a recurring schedule.

Highlight the Benefits of Recurring Giving for Your Church

In many churches, giving can be an awkward subject. Many pastors and administrators are reluctant to bring it up due to concerns that it will go over negatively with the congregation, or that it’s simply an uncomfortable topic. While that is a subject for a different article altogether, stressing recurring giving does not apply. By promoting recurring giving you’re not asking for increased donations. You’re simply asking them to make an adjustment to their current giving routine. Plus, while calls for increased giving don’t always go over well, your members DO want to help your church; otherwise, they wouldn’t give at all. Being open about how switching their donation routine will help the church is something that will resonate with your members and increase the likelihood of them starting.

…AND for Them

Most of this two-part article has focused on how recurring giving can help your church, but it’s also beneficial to your members. Creating a donation schedule helps simplify life for your members and employs the same “set it and forget it” concept that is popular with most bill-pay and subscription-based services. Plus making changes is extremely easy and members will receive notification of every donation made. Conveying the idea that this is a win-win situation for your church AND members will go a long way in persuading them to set up a schedule.