COVID restrictions are lifting and more people are getting back to church! Is your church experiencing growth in visitors and new givers? If so, what are you doing to encourage engagement and retention of these new people?
Starting with New Givers, there is one metric you can identify and monitor to determine if you’re successfully reaching and assimilating these people into your church family.
New Giver Acquisition
What is New Giver Acquisition? By definition, these are the people who have given for the first time to your church. Using your ChMS or MortarStone platform, identify by month, New Givers. Looking back at 2020, track how many New Givers you had each month. Below is the chart in MortarStone that shows how many New Givers our sample church acquired each month.
Consider the following:
1. Did you acquire more New Givers in certain months of 2020? If so, can you pinpoint the reason you saw more New Givers? For example, did you launch a new ministry, start a new online service, begin a giving initiative, start an outreach program, etc. What was working to acquire New Givers, and can your replicate with similar programs/ministries?
2. Have your New Givers progressively decreased? If so, determine if you’ve stopped something? Did you stop connecting with people, did you slow outreach opportunities, was there a season of significant change in your church? Once you’ve narrowed down the reasoning for the decrease, build strategies to move forward?
3. Look past COVID. We have all lived through and continue to live through the effects of COVID. Moving forward, we can’t use this as an excuse for a lapse in attracting New Givers. Take time to innovate further. Use this time to build your outreach team – get volunteers to connect with New Givers through daily calls, zoom chats, virtual coffee dates, etc. Assimilate New Givers with monthly online meet and greets and provide online opportunities for ministries to meet weekly.
4. Most importantly, follow up and follow through. Relationships are hard work, so make sure you empower your connection teams to engage and reach New Givers and pursue lasting relationships.
Be encouraged that the effort you put into building relationships with New Givers will be fruitful for the Kingdom. And, know that we’re here for you – take a minute to schedule time to talk with one of our Generosity Advisors.