The Digital Giving Strategy

The Importance of Giving Analytics

This is the third in a series of posts; all directed to help you create a Digital Giving Strategy.

Have you noticed that everyone has suddenly discovered the importance of giving analytics? If you are like me, your inbox regularly receives messages from companies wanting to help you understand your giving analytics.

Have you ever wondered if knowing analytics were important or not? Suppose you knew precisely the best time and day to send out an email appeal for supporting some mission or ministry in your church. Analytics tells you those kinds of things. Our clients at Gyve can know the precise best time to send giving appeals. All because of the giving analytics we provide for them.

This is the third in our series of posts focusing upon The Digital Giving Strategy. As you work to build out your digital giving strategy, you need to know how effective your strategy is. Analytics can helps accomplish that if you know what to look for and how to interpret the data.

Gyve clients have all the key giving analytics they need at the click of a button. When you partner with us, you will not need to pay additional money to find out your giving analytics. I will share more on that later in this post. No pun intended, but at Gyve, we give you all the data you need to help build out your digital giving strategy.

I have been blessed to have been involved in the creation and development of giving analytics. The stewardship firm I started with created the concept and developed the tool to analyze church giving. I remember the early days of spreadsheets passed around the table. We once spread those out around Victoria Osteen’s dining room table!

In over 22 years in this work, I have looked at church giving from churches like Joel Osteen’s to others. I have looked at giving of churches with $30 million budgets and those with $30K budgets. I know few in America who have looked at as much individual church data as I have.

So, I know a thing or two because I’ve seen a thing or two. I will share with you the key metrics I recommend for our clients. Let me start with a few observations.

Data is worthless unless you know what to do with it! Knowing your analytics is important. Knowing what that data means and what you need to do is the key.  The last thing you need is a data dump that is confusing and overwhelming.

Too much data is worthless as you can’t see the forest for the trees. I have seen the insides of all the major giving analytic platforms. While they all have exciting bells and whistles, in my opinion, they give you more data than you need. It’s a sales thing.  It’s also costly.

Gyve clients receive access to the most pertinent giving analytics without paying anything for that data.

Your question is, what should I be tracking? I start clients tracking the following key metrics.

First Time Donors – How you respond to first-time donors will largely determine if that donor gives a second time. Our next post will deal with the importance of a first-time giver plan for your Digital Giving Strategy. For now, you want to be alerted to every first-time donor so that you can thank them for their gift. Gyve clients have this data readily available for them.

Weekly Status – I want my clients to know:

• Giving compared to budget. Are we ahead or behind?
• How does current giving compare to last week, last month, last quarter or the same time the previous year? This information shows if you are growing in giving.
• Track the various means through which giving came in. What percentage came through traditional as opposed to online?
• Track how that compares to previous periods.

Gyve clients have all of the above at their fingertips!

Increase/Decrease – You need to know who is increasing their giving and who is decreasing their giving. This information must be handled with great care, but knowing how is lagging behind can help you reach out to them. Gyve clients have this data available readily available.

Generosity Health – I want to know if I am increasing giving and givers. What is the overall generosity health of your church? This information forms the basis for implementing and expanding your Digital Giving Strategy. Yes, again, Gyve clients can know this information.

They get it for free! Why pay for what you can get for free?

In over twenty years of being in the stewardship field, the churches that have paid attention to trends by tracking their data are always better off financially than those that do not. The churches that paid attention are the ones that have a better chance of surviving into the future. What about your church?

Remember, our next post will be focusing upon establishing a first-time giver program for your Digital Giving Strategy.