Many churches rely solely on donations to provide their services and it can be really hard for churches when parishioners don't show up, as they're losing their donations that keep them running. Having to rely on people attending church services and donating money is not always the best solution. Sending digital donation reminders to people could be a way to bring in more revenue to churches.
Let’s look at an example.
ABC Church is the biggest one in the city. Worshipers come from all over the city to pray and to attend the church’s events. For the church to keep running and organizing events, they need donations. ABC Church wants to digitize their donation collection instead of having these donations given manually and having to manually request them.
ABC Church has a few questions about how to digitize the donation request process and how it can help solve some of the current challenges they’re facing. For example, they’re wondering how they can use an automated solution to send personalized donation requests; how they would be able to follow up with donors automatically; and what types of digital tools do they need to streamline the entire process?
One of the challenges they are currently facing concerning the adoption of an automated church donation request solution is determine whether they would need to build this solution from scratch. They realize that it’s easy to make an automation plan but hard to bring the idea to life using digital solutions, especially when you don’t know where to start or how to do it.
ABC Church is also concerned with how they would potentially have to streamline multiple tools​ and make sure they are integrated together. Different tools are required for multiple tasks in their current manual process and determining how to streamlining these is challenging work.​ The church also doesn’t have a large budget to work with to adopt a digital solution so they aren’t sure if they can afford a bunch of different tools.
A lack of technical know-how​ is yet another challenge being faced by the church. They know what they want their process to look like, but do not know how to digitize it.
So, how can they make it work?
Automated Church Donation Request Solution
Churches typically ask for donations in a manual way that involves processes like word of mouth or in-church services. These processes don’t always work as they may not engage or reach as many potential donors as needed. ​​SimplyCast presents the idea of an automated donation request process at churches for visitors. This automated solution made with their challenges and goals in mind, requires only four steps to implement!
Step One: Visitor Signup
In the first step of the automated church donation request solution, visitors sign up to receive weekly service reminders via text message. There are two ways for them to sign up to receive these messages: sending a keyword to an SMS shortcode, or scanning a QR code and filling out a quick digital form. This signup process can be shared with the visitors by having a poster with the signup instructions at the entrance to the church, or through a group text message service. Once visitors sign up, their details will be stored in a secured system.
Step Two: Create Message Templates
The church needs to create a series of different message templates that with be regularly sent to the visitors that signed up. ​An ideal message template includes information such as a greeting, a ​reminder message for the weekly service, a donation request​, as well as the process for sending money (e.g. an e-transfer or a link to a donation page).​ This automated and templated process makes it easier to ask for donations, so the church does not have to manually ask every church service.
Step Three: Send Personalized Messages
This step is where the church will actually launch their campaign. All the contacts who opted in to receive the donation reminder messages will be sent a personalized copy of the message template. Personalized messages influence people more than regular messages, as they contain information specific to each subscriber. Every message they are sent will also include the option to opt out of receiving the reminders.
Step Four: Monitor Reports
In the last step, the church can check to see how well their donation request campaign is performing. They will be able to see how many people are sent the reminder messages and they can also keep track of when the messages are sent. Another helpful feature of the report is being able to see how many people respond to the message or click on the link for donations. This is beneficial to help determine if the current approach is helping the church receive more donations.
Benefits of an Automated Solution
There are many benefits of ABC Church switching over to automated message reminders, least of which is that automation helps to streamline the entire donation request process. There is also a reduced risk of communication hazards and losing information, and worshipers are provided with the ability to opt out of the notifications if they no longer want to receive reminders in compliance with Anti-SPAM and CANSPAM regulations.​
Sound Interesting?
Automated message reminders can take a lot of stress off churches and makes asking for and receiving donations a lot easier! SimplyCast can help you complete all of the steps above with its automated Church Donation Reminders solution.
But that’s not all! The SimplyCast solution can also be used to:
- Collect relevant donor information using the SimplyCast CRM
- Send regular reminders to donors for other upcoming events and programs at the church
- Communicate with donors based on their preferred method of communication. ​
Click the button below to request a one-on-one demo of SimplyCast’s automated donation reminder solution today!
