Why People Quit Giving
Why People Quit Giving
Let’s face it. We can learn a lot from the secular world that can make the church better and more effective. Take this Bloomerang chart that I recently came across through Katya’s Non-Profit Marketing Blog. Bloomerang, with the help of Adrian Sargeant and the Rockefeller Foundation, studied why donors quit giving to nonprofits. If you add it up, the #1 reason people quit giving (and this is something you have control over): lack of communication. You cannot help that people die (RIP), you have no control over those who can no longer afford to give (we wish them speedy employment), but look at these numbers and start thinking about how you can change them in your favor:
5% thought the charity did not need them
8% had no information on how monies were used
9% had no memory of supporting
13% never got thanked for donating
18% had poor service or communication
I would add that the 36% who found others more deserving could also fall into the category of being poorly informed about the work of the nonprofit.
Believe it or not, people do NOT want to give merely out of a sense of obligation. Your church needs to be doing as good a job, if not better, than your average nonprofit in communicating with people in your congregation about why their gift/tithe/pledge matters. This means getting your story out through what the marketing pros call “multi-channels.”
Here are a few of the channels you can use to tell your story:
• Worship (have either you or someone in your congregation give a testimony)
• Website (post pictures of real people actively doing ministry)
• Letters (highlight a ministry)
• Facebook and Twitter (at least once a week, post or tweet about the impact one of your programs is having)
• One-on-one interaction (always, always, always have a great story of ministry in your back pocket)
You should be ready to share the good news of how Christ, because of your congregation’s generosity, is entering in and changing your community and world. It’ll make the people hearing the stories much more loyal and more likely to continue to bolster the work that is (hallelujah!) “transforming the world.”
