3 Ways to Increase Church Tithing - Ep.185

On this episode, I go over 3 ways to increase tithing for your Catholic parish. I hope you enjoy and subscribe.

Want help implementing these systems for your parish? Book a free strategy call HERE and I'll see if I can help. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:14

The secret to increasing church tithing is two things more engagement and low friction to donate. In this video, I'll explain what that means and how to do it so your parish can stop focusing on the finances and focus 100% on the ministry. If you don't know who I am, my name is Joe Gerrell. I built a fitness company for Catholic men and scaled it to seven figures in 30 months using just social media. I'm also a Catholic influencer who's been fortunate enough to connect with Father Mike, Michael Knowles. I've been on Lila Rose's podcast and I speak at Catholic events around the country like Chesterton Gallas or Newman Centers. All right, let's get into three ways to increase church type. Number one, card readers on collection baskets. So about a year ago, my own parish was thinking about how to increase donations. I wanted to help, so I started thinking about it. And I couldn't really find a solution, but I knew I wanted to help the parish because if they didn't figure it out, they'd have to slash project. Then one day I went to visit my friend at St. Patrick's Seminary and I ran into one of the fellow seminarians in the library. My friend introduced me to him and I found out he was also helping my parish with marketing. I said, no kidding, that's crazy, me too. What are you thinking to help them? He told me he ran a successful makeup company before entering seminary. And the thing that they were missing was an easy way for people to donate electronically when they were at Mass. And I thought that's a great idea. Like you have all these people in mass who don't carry cash. It'd be so nice if they could just swipe their card and donate. And sure enough, a month later, my parish started using Tip Tap, which is basically a service that lets you connect a card reader to a collection basket and get donations. This ended up being great. Not only did the parish get more money, the parishioners, myself included, were happier because then we didn't have to remember now to like stop at the bank and grab cash. It was super convenient for us to donate. So overall, the plan is to connect a card reader to the collection basket and have a set amount that when people tap, it goes through. To do this efficiently, it's three easy steps. Step one, find a card reader company that you like. We personally use tip tap. Step two, mount it to a collection basket. They will send you in the mail the card readers and they just clip directly to the collection basket. And then step three, really easy, just perform the offertory as usual. Now you might think this is kind of a trendy thing to do, but it's really not. At least three other dioceses have already implemented something like this, including the Archdiocese of Toronto, the Diocese of Calgary, and the Diocese of Denver. So you should too. Okay, tip number two, post on social media. When I was in RCIA first becoming Catholic, my RCIA director told me to start by watching the Catholicism series on wordonfire.com. And it was my first experience with Word on Fire Ministries. Then, not long after that, I started seeing Bishop Barron all over my social media feed. It was on YouTube, it was on Instagram, and his content was really helpful. It helped with theology and apologetics and just learning more about the Catholic faith. And then one day I saw an ad for the Word on Fire Bible, leather bound for the low price of$80. And I thought, you know what? These guys have helped me so much, the least I can do is buy this book. And so I bought it. And that's when I had this big epiphany. I don't mind donating to organizations when they've helped me so much previously with no strings attached. In fact, I almost felt obliged to buy the book. And that is what social media allows you to do. It allows you to give tons of helpful tips for your parishioners for free. And then if you ever ask them for something, whether it's attending mass, singing in the choir, or yes, giving, they're way more likely to comply. I've implemented this in my own businesses, like this video, yes, to increase revenue, but also just because people are generally just happier if you've helped them so much in the past for free. Now, if you're wondering what to post on social media, you don't need to stress. I've helped a bunch of parishes with this. I've actually created a four-step plan specifically for Catholic churches to post on social media. I call it the Halo Framework. H stands for homily clip, A stands for activity, L stands for local follower ads, and O stands for outreach. Let's break them down quick. So why clip homilies and post them on your social media? Well, when I first started, I was trying to figure out what Catholic parishes should post on Instagram because I was helping them. And so I started doing research and I found a bunch of successful parishes on social media. So I started researching what they're doing. And I realized every single one of them was doing something the same, which was clipping homilies and posting them on their feed. I actually DM'd one of the pastors and I asked him why they do this, and he gave me a really simple answer. He said it's a way to give spiritual guidance to anyone that's watching. In other words, they're giving free value. So we applied this strategy for a parish with a brand new Instagram account and gained a hundred local followers in less than a week. And mind you, this is without the pastor having to sit down and create any extra content. Now, if you're wondering how to like clip the homily and post it, here's a really quick three-step framework. Film the homily with audio. Hire an editing clipper, someone whose job it is to clip up long videos and post them. And three, post one every day of the week. For one homily, you easily can get seven 30 to 60 second videos. Okay, part two of the Halo framework is a activity. Facebook and Instagram don't reward posts with long text and JPEG images of the bulletin. What they reward is human interaction. So we want to see pictures of people smiling, videos from events like a bake sale or something, the young men in the parish who are going to seminary. All of those things show activity at the parish, and that is what people engage with. Number three is local follower ads. This is kind of unique, so I want to tell a quick story about it. When I helped my first Catholic parish with social media in 2026, I did it completely for free. I said, if it works, great. If it doesn't, you lose nothing. They agreed, but the parish had no Instagram page and a dead Facebook page. I started posting videos, but growth was pretty slow. It seemed like something was missing. And then it hit me. I ran follower ads for my business. Why not try it for the parish? So one night I put a post together, I launched the ad and I went to sleep. By the morning, the page had gained over 200 local followers in less than 10 hours. Overnight, the parish had an online presence. And so I realized parishes don't need to just pump out content constantly. They just need the right following. So when you run your first local follower ad for the parish, remember these three golden rules. Run it in a 20-mile radius of the parish, include a picture of the parish, and put text on it that has a clear CTA that says follow the parish page. All right, step four of the Halo framework is outreach. When I was first trying to get clients through social media, I did what everyone does. I DM'd all my followers. Now this didn't work, and I knew I had to figure something out quick or I'd have to go back to school, which I didn't want to do. So I started studying people who actually knew what they were doing. And that's when I came across a man named Cole DeSilva. He had over half a million followers on Instagram and he kept saying the same thing. Stop living in your DMs and ask people to join your program on your story. Now I didn't have any money, so I thought, what can I lose? For my fitness business, I posted a simple story that said, Hey, Catholic men, does anyone want to join our program? By the end of the day, 327 Catholic men voted yes. And that's when it clicked for me. People don't want to be pressured in the DMs being asked to do something. They just want an easy decision. Open a story, tap yes or no. And once I started asking on my stories, everything changed. I made money, yes, but what I found was a predictable way to move my audience to action. So when you ask your audience on your stories, always make sure you have these three things a call out, the event info, and a call to action. That's the Halo framework. Just follow that process and you'll have tremendous engagement on social media, just like all the other parishes I researched. All right, the third and final tip is to use modern donation link. Nobody is going to the website and clicking an e-bulletin link. So I'm gonna show you how to do it in 2026. The way I figured this out was one day I was scrolling on social media and I came across a post from Live Action with Lila Rose. They had made a carousel post about donating for the pro life movement. And the call to action was to comment life on the post if you wanted to donate. I did, so I commented. And as soon as I commented, I got a DM from them with a donation link. I clicked on it and it immediately brought me to a page to select the preferred donation amount. I could just click 20, 40, 60, whatever. And then I clicked submit. Took 30 seconds. Now here's the crazy part. I kept giving to live action for 18 months, mainly because I forgot about it. So for a$50 donation, over a thousand dollars in total. Literally from a 20-second donation experience. That's when I realized if you want more donations, you wanna have low friction. Not some e-donate link buried on a website from 10 years ago. So here's the three-step framework to always make sure your donation links have low friction. Number one, mobile is king. It's gotta be easy and smooth on the mobile phone. 3.5 hours a day people are spending on this thing. So make it smooth. Number two is to put the link where they are at. Don't put the link on the website if nobody goes to the website. If everyone's on Instagram, which they are, put the link on Instagram. And number three, use donor box or a similar software. These donation softwares are already made to be low friction. It has things like Apple Pay or autofilling information, so it's quicker for the user. So to recap, tip number one, put the card reader on the collection basket. Number two, post on social media. And number three, use modern donation link. Look, the culture is changing, the way people spend money is changing. And here's the truth: if your parish doesn't really keep up with the times, you're not really being traditional with your financial systems. You're kind of being negligent. I mean, you have a responsibility to receive giving for the parish. That means making it easy to give and showing where the money goes. In my opinion, if you implement these three tips, you won't just see your budget increase. You're gonna see your community engagement skyrocket, and people are actually going to be happier to give. Because let's face it, it's way easier for them to give and they appreciate that. Now, I help Catholic parishes implement social media systems. And so if this all sounds great, but you don't want to do it yourself, you can go to chapelaunch.com, book a free consultation with me, and I'll see if I can help your parish. Either way, I hope this is valuable and I hope this brings you much more in giving for your parish so you can do more for the ministry. Thank you so much. God bless.