Practical help for churches seeking to better enable giving within the congregation as well as looking to other streams of income for ministry.
Caring for givers: working on the giving experience
Fundraising experts will tell you that donor retention is key. We might not often think of church members giving to the church’s ministry as ‘donors’ but many of the same principles apply and without careful attention to their ‘donor experience’ we are likely to take church givers for granted and to lose them.
Particularly in a financial crisis, which direct debits are you likely to reduce or cancel? Probably the ones that gave you a poor donor experience with no idea whether your gift actually landed and made a difference.
- Is it extremely easy for givers to give? Is it obvious on the church website and a smooth, simple and intuitive process? Is it possible to give over the phone?
- Have you got a mechanism for quickly and warmly appreciating every new gift, increase in giving and each year reporting on the impact of their giving? (this might involve employing someone part time to do this work but it could be a game changer)
- Which charity have you most enjoyed giving to? What did they do really well to build the relationship?
- Best practice in thanking donors (blog article)
- Customer service minimum standards (The point is there are things that will not get you bonus marks but are simply expected. How long does it take to answer the church office phone and how is it answered?)
Bequests: a vision for gospel legacy
Church leaders are often understandably cautious about mentioning legacies as a form of giving but they can be a hugely important form of giving:
- Can we envision believers to see their wills as a wonderful tool for investment in the next generation and as a testimony from the grave to family and friends of what is most important?
- Can church networks speak on this so that communication is decentred from the local church pastor?
- Can we raise the proportion of Christian legacy giving from the average 5% of estate (often split several ways) to a 10% ‘tithe’?
Read and share:
- Ray Evans on Gospel Driven Wills and Legacies
- The Stewardship paper on making wills (which points out the positive tax implications of giving)

Partnership development and/or going bivocational
Sometimes, particularly in pioneering or resource-poor environments, it may be necessary (or even missionally advantageous) for pastor/planter(s) to look for outside funding, either through partnership support or through paid work/business.
Audio:
- Raising the Financial Resources for Planting (slide deck)
- Support-Raising 101 course
- Strategyzer Business Model framework
- Madhavan Ramanujam, How to price products (podcast)
- Brad Brisco, Covocational church planting ebook
Audio:
- Henri Nouwen, The Spirituality of Fund-Raising
- Fully Funding Your Ministry (condensed version of The God Ask by Steve Shadrach)
- The West London Life (West family blog)
Additional fundraising tools
The following are largely targeted towards personal support raising but many can be adapted towards church fundraising:
- Missionary Support Raising Roadmap (FFA)
- Clarifying Your Mission (handout pdf)
- Develop your communication plan (handout pdf)
- Develop your personal fundraising plan (handout pdf)
- Project Management Triangle – article explainer, video explainer, application to Church Planting Movement
- The Donor Pyramid and how best to steward mid-level donors
- Pareto principle 80/20 – applied to communications & major donor fundraising
- The 4 pillars of a compelling case (handout pdf)
- Local census data to build case for need in your area