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Year-End Giving: Promote Across All Channels

Increase year-end giving at your parish.

Faith Direct has introduced our step-by-step year-end giving guide for parishes and has discussed the important role that planning your parish’s communication strategy can have on growing your eGiving program, and have made some suggestions for best practices you might want to consider implementing before launching a year-end giving program. Now that you have a solid plan for communication and best practices, it’s time to start promoting your eGiving program.

Your parish’s year-end fundraising campaign should allow donors to find information about your parish, how your parish works to spread the Gospel and help your community. Information should be easily accessible and donation forms should be able to seamlessly collect funds whether the form is accessed from a computer, on a smartphone or from a tablet.

Provide Giving Button on Websites

Make it easy for your parishioners and donors to find your giving website by placing a “Give” or “Make Donation” button prominently placed at the top of all pages. And be sure that your donations page is optimized to reinforce the impact of year-end giving by providing suggested donation amounts, recurring gift options and “in memory/honor of” options. You can also create a donate link on your parish’s Facebook page.

Provide One-Click Donations from Email

From your year-end emails, include a “Give” or “Make Donation” button prominently that takes the email recipients automatically to the donation form. Make sure that you are tracking every donation that comes from one of your email campaigns. And if you have a mobile phone number for email recipient, it can’t hurt to also send them a text message asking them to make a donation.

Post Reminders on Social Media Pages

One of the great things about a multi-channel brand presence is the ability to turn many of your social media followers into donors. You can do that by providing short social media posts with links to videos and by embedding photos that show the good work your parish does. A link to a story about someone that was positively impacted by parishioners’ generous donations or a testimonial from someone who was helped by the parish or found God after joining the parish goes a long way in displaying the impact of donations. Encourage people to donate, no matter how small the gift.

Send Multiple Messages Before Asking for a Donation

Even though you may provide a prominent link to a button where donations can be made, your parish should not start an email campaign by actually asking for a monetary gift until after you have sent a couple of messages, ideally at least 2 or 3.

The best way to start a year-end giving campaign is by providing compelling content centered around stories of what event took place that year that have helped the community, spotlighting the groups that have benefited from the good work the parish does throughout the year, and the various religious education events including VBS that have educated youth about God and his unending love for each one of us. While your parish’s goal is to raise money, it first must sway hearts before pocketbooks will open.

When launching a year-end giving campaign, your parish needs a complete eGiving solution that is made for parishes like yours. To learn more about Faith Direct, contact our sales team at 866-507-8757 or sales@faithdirect.net.