3 Ways to Increase Offertory Collections - Ep. 186

On this episode, I discuss 3 ways to increase offertory collections. I hope you enjoy and subscribe.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

What is going on, everyone? Hope everyone's been having a wonderful uh week. I hope everyone had a great Easter. What I want to talk about tonight is how to increase your offitory collections. Typically, after Easter, offatory collections are up. And so it's been a point of discussion lately with me and my clientele. So I thought it would be a prudent conversation to have. But I think I think you should do all three personally. Each parish is different. But um, those are my thoughts. So the first one is contactless giving. A lot of parishes have no way to do a digital giving system. You might have an e-donate link on the website, but by and large, if you want to donate, you have to fill out an envelope or drop cash in the collection basket. And the fact of the matter is, most people don't carry cash anymore. So I think a study in 2025 by Capital One found that almost around 50% of Americans carry no cash or make no cash purchases in a given week. So they're not the marks of the class. So you're losing, just based on that, probably half of people who aren't. And if they don't carry cash, and that's the only way that you can donate, well, you know, usually people aren't writing a check. Now the questions come up. There's a lot of there's a lot of questions that come up with this. First and foremost is the safety of it. You know, it's a little different. It's getting like a car reader and tapping. Um there's also the operations of it. Well, you need to have car readers in the connected to the collection baskets that need to be charged, and they need to be connected to the internet somehow because they have to process the payment and send it to a payment processor, right? Card taps, and then that data has to go somewhere. It can't sit in the card reader. Um, and then the question is like, do you even do you even make more money with it? So there's a few companies that do it. One of them, the most popular one, is TipTap, and it's a faith-based giving, contactless, contactless giving software. Basically sends you the card readers and it connects it for you and stuff. But they nickel and dime you a little bit. So they will you get charged for this. Is important if any parish or pastor is listening to or is listening and is like considering contactless giving, it's important to know how they price you. So there's a fee for per charge. So if you tap, they take three percent, just baseline. And then there's a fee for each card reader, and then I'm pretty sure there's like an overall monthly service fee. So you're you're actually paying a lot. Now, if you have one card reader and a bunch of parishioners, and the majority of them are using the contactless giving, then yeah, it totally makes sense. We just have to make sure that it's the right fit for you. Our parish uses it, and we have a lot of young people, so it kind of makes sense. We also have just a lot of people in general, 16,000 families, I think. So, contactless giving. You might be tempted to think, like, well, we don't really want to go through the rigmarole of that. We'll just do a car uh a QR code in the pews. But I actually don't recommend this because it's a lot of work for the parishioner, not in the grand scheme of things, but it is work. They have to open, take out their phone, scan, and then they have to click on the website, and then they have to put in their information. And it's kind of a lot. Like a golden rule of marketing or just any type of like compliance is you get more compliance when there's less friction. And so the goal of almost all marketing is to get as little friction as possible when you're getting someone to do something. Contact was given, is that it is as easy as possible, so it's definitely worth looking into. Should you go with TipTap? I don't know. Based on what I know about TipTap, they kind of nickel and dime you. I don't know if other companies do it. You could build like an ad hoc system by buying um stripe readers, which are like just car readers from your from a payment processor called Stripe, and you could kind of connect that to a phone and build your own system way cheaper, but then you're kind of slapping parts together. So you have to um you have to kind of weigh everything, try to figure it out. I I laughed because it's like a very Catholic answer to be like, well, you know, it depends, and like what is your intention? But yeah, those those are the those are at least the aspects to think about. And the the other aspect is even is even if the diocese is open to it. You might have a lot of older people at the diocese level. And when you look into something like this, they shoot it down. And so compliance with the diocese is also a factor. For example, one parish I'm helping, they're on board. The office manager is on board, like everyone's on board except the diocese. And so, yeah, that's that's another factor. So, anyway, that's number one contactless giving. Um, before I move on, though, just a really good concept with anything you're trying to do with the parish. If you want more registrations, more baptisms, if you want more young adults attending events, always start with how can I decrease the effort and the sacrifice? Get the person to do what I want. Huge. If there's no effort and it doesn't sacrifice a lot of time for them, they'll they'll do it. And that's the goal. Um, so just something to think about. Number two, you have to tell people what the money's for. So like people don't mind donating, like they don't mind giving to the church, but you have to give them like a reason to do it. If you like if you if you don't like they they know at like a subconscious level what the money's for, it's for like shepherding the flock and like maintenance and like all these things, but you have to understand emotionally, psychologically, the reason people give at that moment is because an emotional drive to fulfill the dream. When you give you a secret, when you sell something, any of you aren't salesmen, when you sell something, what you do before you ask for the money is you paint the vision. Someone's overweight, you say something like, How do it feel to be in shape? Walk me through that. How would it feel to wake up Christmas morning, and the only thing you have to worry about is cleaning up the wrapping paper. You feel you got a flat stomach, like all that. Because when people make decisions, they make decisions based on emotion. And by and large, a huge driver of that is trying to fulfill the dream outcome. So when you want someone to give, for example, prior to mask, the picture. What are you trying to do? Why are you asking for money? Like, hey, we already did XYZ this year coming up. This is what I want to do. Imagine how great it would be if we had ABC and C D E. And get the dream, the vision in their minds so that they actually know what they're giving for. That's number two. And then number three is to just put all of this in the bulletin. I think parishes don't do the best job of being really clear in the bulletin, like what's going on. So, like in the bulletin, front and center, there should be like, this is our mission. This is what we're asking for donations for. Just be really clear. And then the second thing is like, hey, you know, we understand a lot of people don't carry cash anymore, but the parish still relies on the weekly donations to fund the mission. And so to make it easier for you guys, we enabled contactless giving. So feel free to just tap your card as the collection basket comes around. So those two things like put them in the bulletin so people read them. And then like I recommend painting the vision before the uh mass starts, kind of give an announcement. And you don't have to be so in the face about it when it comes to the money, but like just paint the vision, people will donate for that. And then, yeah, those are those are the three main things. Oh, I'm a little tired tonight. Uh I think it was good information, but I'm a Michaela is nauseous from the pregnancy. And then I kind of a weird thing. Hopefully, I'm okay. But I woke up last night itchy all over, and I Googled, like, help, I need to sleep. And they said take a take Benadryl. I took two Benadryl, and so now I'm just my sleep schedule is whack because when you take Benadryl, you you pass out. So I woke up at like, you know, 8 a.m., which is way later than I usually wake up. And it's just it's just a weird night. So I'm a little out of it, but I think this info was very valuable. And when you're a client, you get my offertory boost toolkit, which goes over all this in detail and shows you step by step how to implement this stuff. I think it's helpful. So that is everything. Let's help our parishes grow. More money, more mission. What do you think of that? Just thought of that. More money, more mission. All right. That's it. I'm doing a bad. Have a great night, everyone. God bless.