Name: Inspire Cheerful Generosity: A Year-End Giving Workshop
Uploaded: 2025-10-15T19:30:06.929Z
Duration: 1 h 52 s
Description: Inspire Cheerful Generosity: A Year-End Giving Workshop

Transcript for "Inspire Cheerful Generosity: A Year-End Giving Workshop": Well, hello, everybody. We're gonna get a yeah. Hi. Welcome. We're so glad you're here. We're gonna get started at the top of the hour. So we got a couple minutes for people to continue to enter, and we're so glad you're here. While we're waiting, go ahead and tell us where you're tuning in from, if you don't mind. And let's do a fun icebreaker question. Nicole, what do you think we should ask them? I don't know. I'd love to know what churches they're from, honestly. I know that's not really an icebreaker, but I'd love to see all the different church names. Yeah. Let's tell us your church and, maybe where you're located. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely wanna see, like, where everybody's streaming from. Oklahoma. I'm in Texas. So Oh, fellowship. Hey. I see you, Tulsa friend, Dean. Love that. Alaska. Alaska. Oh, Irma Jones, Arizona. My my in laws live there. That is a tiny little town, but love it there. Oklahoma City. I love the Oklahoma representation. Come on, y'all. No worries, Mary. If you need to skip out, skip out. Get those kiddos from school. Yeah. It's gonna be recorded. Just keep that in mind so y'all will get the recording. But, before we dive into our content and as people are rolling in, let me go through a couple housekeeping things. We've got some little bubbles on the screen, so please take a minute to read those. One says to say hello in the chat, which you're already doing a great job of. And the other is I want you to notice that next to the chat tab, there is a q and a tab. Please, please, please put your questions in there. We've got our friend Philip who's working behind the scenes. He's wonderful. If he is your account rep, you can give him a shout out. He's amazing. But Philip is here on the back end answering your questions. So in order for him to answer those questions efficiently, you really need to put them in the q and a tab. You can ask a question in the chat. We're just gonna bump you over to q and a, but that would really help us out if if you would do that. That allows us to to see those questions. He can kind of filter and move up the most recent questions, and so that's really the most efficient way for him to help you. So help us help you. And then, additionally, I already mentioned this, but we've got people continuing to roll in. We are recording this webinar that is our number one asked question every time is will this webinar be recorded? It is recorded, and you will get it in your inbox tomorrow, so you can look forward to that. Please share it with your team. We would love for, your entire team to be, inspired and blessed by this content. Hopefully, you will be. We are really excited to talk about this stuff. This is I know Nicole is super active at her church and passionate about generosity, and I am as well as, you know, if you've attended a single webinar from now until six years ago. This is definitely my heartbeat. So, we are gonna get started. I mean, the numbers keep climbing, but, yes. This is Jessica from Okay. I don't know who shared that question. That's amazing. But your your team that you shouted out too. I love I also have to say I love seeing the New Jersey representation because that's where I'm originally from. So there's from South Orange and, New Egypt, which is this beautiful, quaint little town. Oh, love miss those horses and the horse farms. Oh, I haven't been to New Jersey since high school. I I don't know. Lots of changes. I'm sure. Church. To the branch church in Texas where I'm living now. So, but yeah. So excited to have so many different churches here today from everywhere. This is this is oh, I'm in I'm in Tulsa. I'm in Tulsa, Dean. Actually, you know Tulsa. I'm in Broken Arrow, technically. So, but yes. Dean, happy to happy to meet with you. If your church needs help, I'd love to come visit y'all too. Yeah. Okay. Let's go ahead and get started. Okay. So we're gonna do intros first. I'm Jess. If you've been to a webinar before, you've heard me before. I've been doing these for a long time. I absolutely love. This is my time to get to connect with clients, and I'm just so grateful for it. We are talking about generosity today, which I've already said is the thing that I'm most passionate about. I've been at Ministry Brands for six years, and I live in Broken Arrow. I feel like that I've already given my bio just by chatting. But here we are. I've got two kiddos. They're teens, and they're wonderful, and I'm happily married for sixteen years, and so that's me in a nutshell. And then joining me today is my friend Nicole, and she is one of my work besties. So I'm so excited to have her with me, and I'm gonna let her introduce herself. Yes. I totally agree. We are work besties, aren't we? And we have so much fun together, and I'm very excited for this because I think we're gonna make this really fun. But, yeah, I'm Nicole White for anybody that's wondering how to say my last name. There's no r in it. I'm not related to the Wright brothers, which I was. Probably the cooler story to share there. But I have been active in multiple churches over the course of my life. I started out Russian Orthodox in New Jersey and then moved to Texas, and now I go to Protestant church in Carrollton, Texas, the branch. I have been in product marketing for over a decade, and I'm the senior director of product marketing, specifically over giving here at Ministry Brands. I've been here, about half a year. Can't believe how fast that's flown by. Yeah. But I have lots of experience in product marketing, coming from places like Meta. So just really excited to be here and share some really cool tips and tricks, about how you can really do all the great things that you wanna do at your church, with these creative giving tips. So excited to kick this off, Jess. Yeah. Let's dive in. Okay. So real quickly, we are going to cover let me actually well, okay. We are going through I'll I'll talk about this in a couple of slides, but we are working through our ebook that we just recently released. It's phenomenal. Shout out to Janet. You killed it, girl. And so these these what we're covering today is essentially going to align with the chapters in that ebook. And, again, I'll go into more detail on that in just a second. So, in general, we're gonna walk through what it looks like to identify your campaign, work through messaging, your channels, and then kind of an eight week communication plan and how to thank your donors efficiently. So I won't read off those bullet points, but that's the overall kind of what we are covering today. And then let's do a poll. Let's do a poll. So I don't know, man. Let's, let's get this going. So let did you launch the poll, Jess? Just making sure. Did want yes. Yes. Okay. So the thing that we wanna hear from you, is what when do you typically start preparing your end your end giving campaigns? Because I know some people, they like to start super early. Some people, maybe they don't start at all, and maybe that's why you're here. And maybe you're starting today because this is what you've been waiting for. We're giving you permission. You can start today. So, definitely answer in the poll, and we'll be reading off those results, later on. Yeah. And if you guys are not finding the poll, just a reminder, there is where you are chatting with us. There's also that q and a tab, and there's a new tab that says poll. It's got a little red dot. You should be able to engage with the poll there. And it looks like a lot of you found it. We've got 16 votes for September, October. So, I mean, hopefully, this this, this toolkit and this workshop will help you work through your content and maybe finalize anything that you're already working on. So next year, we'll know to do this webinar maybe a little bit earlier. I'm super impressed with you, early birds. Yeah. But if you are still working on it, that's fine. And and like Nicole said, if you're like, what's a year end campaign? You're about to get your mind blown. So what we don't want from today is we don't want you to feel overwhelmed. So we are really we're gonna share the maximum amount of information and impact. You do what's right for your ministry and your team and your bandwidth. That's our biggest encouragement. We just want to help you out. Okay. We are going to close out that poll. Thank you so much for your participation and jump back over to our slides. So, Nicole, will you tell us a little bit about year end giving and why it's so important? Oh, so I have to say come from a debt free church, and they're always like, we're good. I'm here to tell you. Like, your end giving is so important, and it matters a lot. And why? Right here on the slide, it tells you more than 30% of the annual giving happens in the fourth quarter or December. And, I mean, that's a huge amount. That's a huge amount. That's more than a third of annual giving here at the very end of the year. So, we want you to know that that just makes it meaningful, and it helps people give with purpose. This is a purposeful time of year. You know, we've got Advent, Christmas, thanks I mean, people are just in that generous mood this time of year. Mhmm. Like, like, walking around with their head in the clouds and very excited, and they're looking for ways that they can give. So this is just really important. It aligns generosity to their faith, their financial planning. It it's it's just a good time to position yourself to to encourage givers knowing that it's already top of mind for them. Yeah. Well and and you mentioned financial planning. We can't shy away from the obvious too that it's, you know, tax season's coming, and they definitely want somewhere to donate to. Right? So if you're not crystal clear in your campaign, in the opportunity that there is to partner with your ministry, they will partner somewhere else. And so it's it's it's this this 30% giving is not only to the church. This is in general. This is what generosity looks like during this time of year. And so this is why it's super important to really hone in on your campaign and how you can present it and, and and build some momentum, you know, within your doors. And and if you have other ministries that you partner with, speak to that as well. Like, hey. Our our money is not staying within our doors. Here's what we're doing, you know, within our our broader community, to link arms and and share the love of Jesus. So, really quick, we're let's take a closer look at this guide. So, again, this guide is what we're using to work to workshop today. And so you can scan this QR code. I'm probably not gonna leave it too too long, but you'll also get the link to download this in your post webinar email that's gonna come to you tomorrow. So if you can wait until tomorrow, you can do that. If you can't wait until tomorrow, it's also on our website. Yeah. You can scan scan away or you can go to our web our website, at Ministry Brands.com. There is a banner right now at the top that allows you to click and download that as well. So lots of ways to find this. We are not hiding it. We are happy to share it with you. And then throughout the presentation, you'll notice there's that little icon, a little toolbox icon. I use that as we were working through these slides just to identify what in these slides is part of the tool kit. And so but, again, you'll get the recording to this webinar. So you get everything. But those things in the toolkit will be identified throughout the demonstration so that you know, where to find them. Oops. I didn't mean to oh, I'm stopped sharing. Okay. Sorry. You're good. You're good. So chapter one in our ebook is establish your foundation. Learn how to cast compelling vision, set smart goals, and build the foundation of your campaign with clarity and purpose. So we're gonna take a closer look at this. This is maybe the most important part to your entire campaign is identifying what is our mission, and how to make that vision crystal clear and compelling in your communications, and in your direction. So, you know, we we didn't mention this in our slides, but it is it is obvious. You should be extremely prayerful about this, as as you're working through this and as you're gathering your team. Every part of this is an act of worship, and it needs to be treated with that level of of respect. And so, diving into kind of practically speaking, Nicole, will you tell us a little bit about how to create and cast that compelling vision? Yeah. So just to echo Jess' point, like, we can't build a solid house if the foundation is a swamp. So it is definitely what I would say that is the most important part as well. You have to start somewhere. So for you know, there's there was about 16 that were like, hey. We're starting now. And about 21 people who are like, we don't really do year end giving. This is really for you. This is the the biggest part I think you would wanna focus on if you're wondering where to get started. So the first spot we have is your impact. What are you looking to accomplish in your ministry, in your churches going into 2026? Where where you need, like, do you have mission trips that you're trying to fund? Are you trying to launch a youth ministry? Are you trying to hire a care and, counseling pastor? Like, whatever the case may be, these are all challenges that you, wanna document and opportunities that might help you craft a compelling campaign at the end of the year to get giving. And then what are the benefits once you have that impact kind of identified? What are the benefits that can kind of come from it? So how does this giving help others? I know at our church, we make a really big deal about where the money goes. We have yearly financial meetings that are open to everyone in the church where they talk about, you know, this is where the most of our fund went, and this is how your impact and your donations and your tithing has made a difference. Just as much as we want you to be prayerful about these things, know that your parishioners, your congregants, the people coming in and out of your church, they're also praying about, where they wanna invest their giving as part of the church. So know that this is all part of something way bigger than us. This is all bigger than than anything. It's bigger than the it's as big as the kingdom. Right? So this is just just trying to work together to accomplish God's purpose here on Earth, and this is how we make real differences. It is always a struggle to ask, but know that there you know, we say this all the time, in in marketing and at corporations, but, you know, if you don't ask, you don't know. And most of the time, most people have already budgeted and earmarked some money, and it they just need that reminder from you to be like, oh, that's right. I I I have to give. I have to actually, like, take the action now. So think of it more as you're reminding somebody who probably already knows they're about to give, and they've been praying about it just as much as you. Yeah. I love that so much. And just to to help you along the way, if you're like, this is overwhelming, I have no idea how to create a compelling vision. What does that even mean? This toolkit item is is in the toolkit. It's a compelling compelling vision for and where's my little icon? And we have, actually shared this in past years. So if it looks familiar, listen. If it's not broken, we're not gonna fix it. This is still such a great resource. So, if you already have the toolkit, you should hopefully have downloaded it by now. If not, grab the toolkit and grab this resource. It is super, super helpful as you're working through this with even a team, definitely with a team. Okay. So let's talk about goals real quick. This is the other important part. Right? We need to know where we're going. This is a really good way to get people on board. If you've got a if you've got a clear vision and direction and then an amount to go with that, it helps people understand where their gift falls into, the bigger picture. Right? If your goal is $10,000,000, I'm gonna think before I give you 200. I'll I'll I'll happily give you 200, and if that's all I have to offer, then that's great. But it is gonna make me think a little bit and say, you know, hey. Can we can we afford to give a little bit more? Right? So setting those goals is is a tangible way, for people to understand what the broader vision is. And so, again, calling out well, real quick. So so three points on this slide. I can't look over those. You're gonna wanna identify key leaders and and pause to think about this. If if this meeting is going to be about money, just keep in mind that you're gonna want the right people that can be trusted with financial information. So, I would I would hope that you've got, you know, your executive leadership, church leadership, executive pastor there. But maybe who else is a resource at your church? If you've got, you know, a member who is a, you know, financial advisor or something like that and they can help you with their gifts in this setting, then, you know, potentially invite them to this meeting. Lean into to what you have and people and their gifts, and then make sure that they are trustworthy with the information you'll be discussing. And then there's a couple of questions here that Nicole kind of already alluded to. What are we trying to accomplish, and how will your end giving specifically support that mission? So these are the questions that you're asking in this meeting, and then you're gonna want to use a worksheet, something to crunch some numbers. Again, this is in the toolkit, but this has been already built out. So, this worksheet, it's hard to tell from this screenshot. I know that it's teeny tiny, but this already has built in formulas. So you can literally plug numbers in, and then crunch them this way to have, like, a true idea of what you're looking at, what what you're looking at for a goal, and then maybe where you're at compared to last year, where you can fill that gap. So super helpful resource there. Yeah. And, honestly, like, that's the best place to start. Like, we've already got this organized for you. So if you have nothing, this is what you need to use, and it's it's replicative. You can replicate it every year or for anything that you need even outside of your anything given. Yep. Yep. I love that. Alright. Nicole, you wanna tell us how they can use some things in the software? So let's talk about our giving tools because we have some really cool ones. And this one is probably one of my favorites. It's called our impact report feature. So this kind of visually shows how you're moving, you know, forward with your giving. So you can give a donation, and it'll have, like, a little bar, that will, you know, kind of help you see where the the how the donations are kind of growing. And you can set this up for absolutely any any fund to be able to see the results of it. So if you have something that's just for missions or just for, like, you know, a recovery summit or just for, you know, your youth ministry, You can pull an impact report just for this. So we highly, highly recommend you do this for any year end giving campaigns. And Philip just popped an awesome link in here, that can guide you through the impact report. So definitely check that out. You may need to copy and paste that and put it in your browser for later. But anybody can do this. This is a really great way to just see that end of your impact and take that into next year to then be able to bring together the folks that Jess was talking about in the slide previous. Say, like, this is where we landed. We did this kind of a push. We asked this many times between November, and now we're in January, and this report is gonna show us, how it all panned out. So, it's a great way to see your compelling vision right within the giving experience that we have for you. Yes. Perfect. Love it. Yeah. You can see in this example, you can kinda do two things with this. Nicole talked about the progress bar, but you also have these little, pie charts. And really, truthfully, these are more for understanding and transparency. So as you're giving to this campaign, 20% will go here, 60% will go here, 20% will go here. And you can change those. You can play around even with the colors. But this impact report feature truly is a great way to, like Nicole said, just pull in your pull in your compelling vision right into the giving experience as they're giving in the moment. So alright. Moving on to chapter two, craft impactful messaging. And so, you know, once you have your compelling vision, right, what do you do with it? We gotta tell the people. Right? And so, we'll talk through to how how to frame your messaging, in the next couple of slides. So, Nicole? This is my favorite thing. So if anybody has ever been familiar with product marketing, this is the the big thing that we love to do is talk about stuff and talk about it well and talk about it articulately. So you're in good company right now with Jess and I who both write a lot of stuff to try and make a big splash and an impact and get people to read it and understand it. Really great ways to start this process. The first one, and, of course, is the most important, is is scripture. We want you to pray about it. We want you to go to your your the word. We want you to just pull in encouraging verses, and know that this isn't this isn't just, like, about having an obligation to give. This is people want to invest in their home, and their home is church. I know for me personally, you know, growing up, even now, I'm at my church multiple times a week. I love spending time there. It is my safe space. All my friends are there, and we all just love talking about the Lord and and just being together. And so because I'm there so much, I I really do want to give as much as I can with with volunteer hours or definitely with tithing. And so prayerfully think about, how you're going to kind of wordsmith as I would say, or articulate your message and, you know, the scripture that is it's there's so much in the word that you can bring in to encourage, folks to give. And there's so many people that they will do things if they know it's biblical, and it is biblical, you know, to to spiritually give. And so if you frame it that way, then that generosity is just gonna be overflowing. And and you never know. It really may spark a discipleship journey in someone that you haven't been able I mean, I'm on my worship team, and I see sometimes those those folks out there, and they're just standing and staring at me, and that's okay. Maybe I'm not reaching them with my type of worship, but maybe giving is what will resonate with them. So don't be afraid to frame the scripture that way, because that's so, so important. It is a joyful, joyful response to god's goodness to give. I love that so much. So once you've got your spiritual inspiration and people are ready to give and take action, we wanna make sure that we have a practical, efficient way for them to do that. Right? And so, thinking through possibly offering lots of ways for them to give. Right? Meet them where they're at, and then really to combine kind of the spiritual aspect of this with some more practical application. You know, you can use this steward, icon or, image that we put together. And, really, this this helps you build a culture of generosity even outside your year end giving campaign. I know this is kinda small. I'm actually gonna it's even smaller on my screen. I'm gonna pull this open on my other screen because I wanted to read through this with you, except I lost it, so I'm not going to. Hopefully, y'all can see this. But I I think it's stories, timely, effect effortless, wide ranging, acknowledge, responsible, dedicated. And, really, we're speaking to presenting stories. My little old eyes here. We're presenting stories and testimonies of of the impact of generosity. Right? We want it to be timely. We want it to be, in this case, especially year end, this is the most timely time. We want it to be effortless for your donors and wide ranging with plenty of ways for them to engage with your campaign. And then you're gonna wanna acknowledge their gifts. And then you are responsible, and you need to be dedicated to make sure that those gifts are well you know, used well, that you as a Ministry Brands are stewarding those gifts really well. So, you can pull in the spiritual framing with the practical framing with the practical framing really well using this acrostic of stewards. So, again, that's in the toolkit. If it's helpful to you, please leverage that not just for year end giving, but just as you continue to grow this culture of generosity at your church. Amazing. Alright. And, Alan asked a great question. Do we have a resource or a compiled list? And, yes, we do. It is in the ebook. So very much make sure that you download that, or check your email tomorrow. Love it. Alright. So I'm up. Right? This is my first time. Hi, miss Louise. Alright. So we wanna talk about all the different diverse payment methods. Right? There's so many I mean, I honest I have to be honest, Jess. I just have to be as a good Christian woman. There's so many, and I did not know exactly how many different ways people can give it a church. And so, like, you brands, and it is wild to me. There's obvious ways still with, you know, passing the basket or we have, like, a donation box at the back of our church. But there's so many. There's, like, over 50% of millennials like to give digitally, and that means they'll give on their device, whether that's Apple Pay or Venmo, absolutely anything. So super important to make sure that you provide diverse, excuse me, ways to give if you offer them. Make sure it's on your website. It's it's it's being shipped out to your your congregants or your parishioners. So we wanna make sure that they know every available option because that is money that's being left on the table, and we wanna make sure and into the ministries. So make sure that you're noticing that. Really important to use real images. Excuse me. Testimonies, scripture, frame that messaging. Everything it. If you're and and it may feel weird to us. Right? We're using the same image. We're using the same trust me. That's the way that your people are identifying you. I think all of us know, we can we can spot a bible probably a mile away because we know the shape, we know how whether it's a study bible, it might be bigger, it's got tabs. Mhmm. Same thing with your marketing for your church. And so make sure that your people that are looking for you can spot you a mile away, and they can do that if everything's consistent. If it's the same pictures or, you know, testimonies, scripture scripture that you're used to seeing a lot in your church. And coming soon, you know, as you're building out, you know, these these beautiful graphics, you're gonna have the ability to allow your tithers and your givers to give while you're streaming. We're releasing that release soon, coming from Ministry Brands. That's something most of our competitors don't even have. And we're really excited to get it out there, and that's another way for you to have solid branding, another option, and that's something that if you do wind up using the giving in your streaming, you wanna make sure that you're calling that out Yeah. On your tube links and and your YouTube descriptions and definitely on your website because that's where you're gonna be driving more traffic. And, like, we're gonna talk about that later. I don't wanna get too far ahead. But this is where your tools are gonna come to life. So, make sure that you're using those real photos. Show the faces. We wanna see what the the pastors look like and everybody that goes, to your church and just get really excited about it. And we're super excited for you to see what's coming, in the next couple weeks. Yeah. We are pumped. I've been looking for this feature for, like, a year. I'm so excited that we are gonna have this Right. In a little hard time. Yes. Okay. Let's talk about our outreach methods. Right? So we've identified our vision. We've talked about framing it and getting our messaging ready. So let's talk about how we implement that messaging into our outreach methods. So looking at all of our channels starting with our website. Nicole, you wanna talk about this? I didn't wanna get too far ahead because it was right here. But the website is so important. It really, really is. If you're like, I don't know where I should be sending folks to give. It should I I don't know where to send folks for information or I don't know where to send folks for it. It should all the answer is always gonna be your website. Mhmm. You don't wanna send app. You don't wanna send them to your Facebook page. You wanna make sure that you have a website and that everything is going there. That will that will always be think of it as home base. That is the digital entryway, and think of your website as your greeters at the door. And if it doesn't look warm and welcoming and like your church culture operates in person, it's it's gonna be hard for people to to wanna give. So make sure that you're you're talking about where giving happens, that there is clarity in your message, that there's not it's not too busy, and there's a lot of resources that we have to to help you make your website better. And we wanted you to highlight that you're asking for ties, that you that you need the donation. And it's always great to to show where that is going to. So you can always add a verb or, you know, talk about what's coming in the next year that you're planning for so that they always know where the money is gonna be going. But it's it's never just about meeting a goal. You know, what we do in our churches, and, Jess, I'm sure you you do this in your own church too. We're trying to change lives. We're trying to bring people closer to the Lord. Mhmm. The way to do that is is just being connecting with them. And your website is always on. It's just like when we say a prayer. We can always talk to the Lord. People can always go to your website. It could be 03:00 in the morning, and maybe they are are called by the holy spirit to give at that time, and you wanna make sure that they have that opportunity and that it's available to them there. So be very direct. This is also for accessibility purposes. There's lots of people that might have screen readers that can't read. So you wanna be really quick with buttons or or actions and have them something very simple. Give now or make that donation or donate for Christmas or this is for Advent. But it's really important to be clear in your message so that people know exactly what you need from them. Yeah. Yeah. Did I cover that? Yeah. Well, that's everything you just covered is, like, for year round. I would take it a step further and say, during this time of the year, if you have a dedicated campaign, I I highly recommend you have a dedicated page, where you can speak to just this campaign, just this mission, give details about it, like Nicole said, even updates, like, impact updates throughout the life of the campaign. That should be the hub where people can get all the information they need. So as you're communicating with QR codes or whatever, we're gonna talk through other channels here in a second, but everything should lead. If if it's specific to your campaign, everything should have one specific link that they're going to. So when they land on your website, they're not having to search. Right? So you should have a dedicated page for your year end campaign. In addition to what Nicole said, like, that's the standard. That's the lowest you should do. Right? It's have all those Fair minimum. Taking it a step further, having a dedicated page for your campaign, I think, would is really helpful way to make sure that all of the all of the energy that's being put into distribute distributing information and building excitement, has one place to go. Right? So let's let's talk about printed pieces for a minute. This feels kinda old goal for me, but the reality is that right now, email inboxes are kind of overflowing. Right? And with AI, there's a it's a lot harder to get a message to someone if you are not, like, one on one emailing a person. Right? And so, printed printed pieces are back y'all. So if you haven't played around with this idea recently at your church, I think you should, especially when it comes to a campaign. Again, this is a great way to kinda test out, like, how do people respond to this? Oh, I already go to my church. What is this all about? You know? They they wouldn't be sending me a flyer to learn about our church. No. They're not. They're they're sending you a flyer so that you understand what the campaign is, how you can get on board. And so mailers and then bulletin inserts, definitely always, posters and signage, in your lobby. Great idea. You wanna put a QR code on That's correct. Yeah. On the signage, what I love is when there's a sign that's outside and there's a QR code so that if I'm stuck at red light, I can scan it really fast. Yeah. And it'll open up my and and I can do it instantly. I mean, that's just the cool thing. And on the note the note about the the mailings, I know I got them from my church, but I'll tell you, there's sometimes I'm just a fan girl for when my pastor's personally signed a card that says thanks for giving. You know? Or we're we're encouraging you to give. We hope you're prayerfully considering giving towards this, end of the year campaign. So really, really great. I'm gonna throw out there. Sorry, Jess. That's a good thought. We'll talk about we'll talk about thank yous for sure at the end of this, and a handwritten note is very impactful. But even a handwritten note to invite people in is a great idea. I hadn't even thought about that. But if you've got, you know, just in your lobby, if you have additional, like, donation stations, make sure that you've got signage there. If people need help, sometimes digital giving can be hard, hopefully not with Ministry Brands. But sometimes it's more complicated. And so if you need help, have people there ready to help, and then, of course, your offering plate. This is another thing we haven't talked about in a long time, but we used to have these little cards for people who gave digitally but still felt uncomfortable if the plate was being passed around and didn't have anything to put in there. And so we used to give these little cards to put in there as well. So if that's something you wanna consider for your church, I think that it's okay if people don't know how you gave. But if that's something that your congregation feels they need, that could be another printed material that could be a great resource, for them as well. So make sure you're using your branding consistently throughout those same images, the same compelling vision, the same framing scripture across everything. Make sure everything is kinda staying streamlined so there's no question that I am giving to the right campaign. Alright. Social media, Nicole. I love this one too. You can see the little tool kit because this is in there. The graphics are in there. I forgot to say that before on the website one. But, yes, the these graphics are beautiful. They were created by our our media team, for, Amplify Media or Church Motion Graphics if you are, on either of those platforms, these graphics were created by that team. And so excellence is everything in our graphic team, and they did not drop the ball on this. These graphics are incredible. So sorry, Nicole. Go back back to Totally. Totally. Well, because we wanna talk about it. Because the visuals, again, you wanna bring all this together and you want it to look cohesively, like, the same. So if you are already using these graphics on your website, please consider carrying it over across every channel of social media. And I'm gonna Jess will have to keep me on time here because I could get a little down the rabbit hole with social media speak. But, really, I can tell you from my personal professional experience, social media is there to tell stories. It has a different purpose than your website does entirely. And then the scary part is you wanna have something slightly different on each of your channels. So what you might put on Facebook, on your page, you're gonna need to really shorten that if you're gonna be posting on x or Twitter. And, you know, if you're if you're one of those really cool youth pastors out there that's on TikTok, that's gonna be entirely different. You know, you'll have this, like, you know, freely you receive, freely give, like, in a green screen behind you like I do. So don't get overwhelmed by that. Just know you're trying to tell a story to a group of people to encourage them to give. So how do you do that? You share the impact like we talked about in chapter one that's gonna allow you to reach people. And even though for us, you know, I know from posting from my church, I run one of our ministry Facebook pages. I have to explain to a lot of our our leaders. We can post every single day, and it feels like a lot to us. But what you have to there is that, like, Facebook by itself in the news feed, you're only seeing about the the first 1,500 or so most engaged content that's appearing. Yeah. So the more you post, the more you're gonna be considered in that news feed. So share things like your impact stories. Share things like we're counting down. If that feels overwhelmed to thirty days, take it down to fifteen. Take it down to five. Give that sense of urgency that we're trying to meet a target goal, for end of the year campaigns, and it ties back in with clear calls to action. So give now with a link to your website from all your social media so that they're all going to the same place. And then something special that you can consider doing is a donor spotlight. Like, may you know, some people, they don't want anybody to know they give, but maybe there's somebody that's like, listen. I gave $5. You know what? It's biblical that we have woman that gave all her her perfumes to the Lord. Like, I mean, that goes $5 can feed a child. That's a big deal for people. So if you wanna spotlight any level of giver, make sure that you do that. Social media is a great place for it. You might even consider, like, a short video from your pastor. We have a I think most of you all are very engaging pastors. We have a really fun group of pastors at my church, and I love seeing their video content because they just speak so well, and it's it's funny. And they can really outperform because not only that, it empowers your church to share that content. When I see my pastor in a reel on Instagram, I almost don't even care what he's saying. I'm gonna share it because I want the word to go to everyone. So, sure that you're leveraging these tools to tell those really impactful stories and reach more people. And on top of asking to get ask people to share the content too because they're gonna be there. Good reminder. That that's outside of their your immediate followers and so they can share more. And then Nicole had you had a note here on your on your own notes and you didn't say it, but I think it's really important. Authenticity is the key here. Right? So this does not have to be hyper polished. You know, people love a good, like, behind the scenes. Hey. We're looking at our our campaign numbers today, and we are so stoked to tell you guys we're this close to reaching our goal. However, this this needs to feel comfortable. It should be a reflection of your of the culture of your church. And so, hopefully, your church is not perfectly polished because that's an uncomfy place to go to church. Hopefully, your church is warm and welcoming and authentic, and so, that should translate through your social media. If nowhere else, that should be the place that there is just genuine, you know, authenticity and and just realness there. So great job, Nicole. Yeah. Alright. You. Let's talk about consistency, in two other ways that maybe you don't already leverage. So we've got text and voice messaging. So maybe your CHMS platform has this. If your CHMS platform is with Ministry Brands, then you do have this, this mass messaging tool. Nicole will will dive into, leveraging that. Actually, we'll we'll dive into that here in the next chapter. But for right now, these are a great way to connect with people, in in, again, a kind of an authentic way, but in a more personal way. Right? So, you can send out text, and those are great. Those are a good reminder. They are the most, I mean, that's what people are gonna see. Right? They're I if I get a text message, I literally will lose my mind if I don't look at it so that the notification goes away. So I'm definitely gonna read a text. But the voice messages, this is a cool thing. Oh, and we've got some weird little l sub things on the slide. I don't know why those showed up y'all, so I'm sorry. That's distracting to me, but just ignore those. So voice memos, voice messages, these can be sent through a platform if you if you have a platform like ours. Otherwise, you will be calling everyone individually, which is also really sweet depending on the size size of your church. But this is a good way for one to hear a voice and just a reminder, hey. We love you. We love that you're part of our church. We wanna invite you to participate in this opportunity to be obedient and be a good steward. Right? And so it's a it's a unique way that you can speak from your heart. Again, it doesn't have to be hyper polished, but it can show just genuine warm invitation to take part, and to help them understand what the impact of their gift will do. And things sound better when they're coming from a voice versus just something that you're reading. And it really could be the little nudge that somebody needs. They're already like Nicole said, they're already being called to give. Right? That is a a basic calling of being a believer, and so they're looking at where to give and how their gift will matter. And so, yeah, this this is just, a really easy win. And kinda you leveraging software to do this, like Nicole will tell us here in a bit, is is such an easy button. It makes that intentionality, you know, really, really easy. Okay. So Jorge's got a question. Our church has done pledging days at the end of the year. Do you suggest combining this into a year end giving or keeping them separate at all costs? This is a great question. Jorge, this is honestly, I hate to give you this answer, but this is really gonna depend on your church. If if your pledge is also your year end giving campaign, then I think that you can leverage this season to really give it that last extra push, remind people of your goals, remind people of what you're trying to accomplish with this pledge. Some of this is denominational as well, and I I recognize that. Some of y'all have pledges that you start for the following year, and so, a lot of these same, principles can apply. Right? So with your communication, your compelling vision, but it's up to you as as a ministry if you wanna have a specific year end giving campaign or if that pledge campaign is what you're using to maybe strengthen the impact of your giving or the the, intensity. I don't really love that word. But as you're ramping up more giving at the end of the year, just because, again, it's the time when people are are wanting to give the most. Just remind them all of this, and leverage all of these tools to to communicate that really, really well and and finish with really strong momentum. Yeah. And I I I think I also shared with Jorge in the chat that, you know, if your if your church is used to pledge days, consider a year end pledge day, year end campaign pledge day. Like, if that's common terminology, you know, consider that that may resonate really well. But Jess is absolutely right. It really depends on the church, the church culture, and but you can tie in a lot to the to the end of the year giving campaign for sure. Alright. So a website, Nicole. Yes. Back to the website where you tie everything together. So if you're using Ministry Brands tools, great. If you're not, you can still take this for what it's worth. You can easily add a dedicated urine giving campaign page at like to what Jess alluded to earlier. We have the visuals for you to use. They'll come in the email, and this is just a really important place for people to be, for you to have the the consistency and the branding, tie everything together so that it all, you know, goes in somebody's head. Like, okay. This is this is giving. This is giving at my church. This is what it looks like. And with our tools, though, you can easily add content, different pages. You can you can do we have everything really set up very easily for you. You don't have to be a web designer or, like, some major person with all those technical capability and insight to be able to use a tool like this to just add a few quick elements, add in some of the graphics that we're providing, and creating something beautiful and meaningful out of that. But the most important part is just reinforcing your message, remind your church that they are part of something bigger, that this is kingdom work that we are doing. And make sure you're you're driving them back to this beautiful place that you have invested all this time and effort in building, and make sure that it is it is working for, everybody that attends, including making it accessible. So yeah. Yeah. This is yeah. I I love how easy our website builder is, by the way. It just allows you to pull you can put it up for the year end campaign and just as easily take it down. It's wonderful. Okay. We're about halfway through. So we're gonna do another quick poll, and, hopefully, you know, we've talked through a lot of these things, and, hopefully, your challenge that you thought you had isn't the challenge that you have anymore. But I'm gonna go ahead and launch that poll. For the sake of time, we are gonna keep moving on, but please please engage with that. We'd love to to to hear from you. Okay. I just launched that. You'll see it there next to the chat tab. But we so so the question is, what is the biggest challenge with your your biggest challenge with your end giving campaigns? And I actually really like the responses to this, standing out in a crowded inbox, donor fatigue from asking too much, limited staff time or and resources and or resources, and then measuring the impact of your campaign. So go ahead and choose one of those, and we'll keep an eye on those responses for a couple minutes. But we are gonna keep moving just because we have quite a bit of content, and we're almost out of time. Okay. So we do have a quick question. What advice do you have for a new ministry that doesn't have any resources or capacity? It seems that the adage of you need money to make money feels sadly true. Our end of year efforts really matter to establishing, and sustainability into the New Year. This is this is a loaded question. Truly, you know, this toolkit can be pared down. Yeah. I feel like we are making a big, you know, splash about this, but, truly, everything within this toolkit can be pared down, to be a little bit more manageable. And so, really, like I said at the very beginning, we don't want you to feel overwhelmed. And so, really, just use what works for you, and the goal with these resources is to help you have less work, not more work. And so really leverage these tools, see where they can be helpful, and then, otherwise, pray. Pray. Pray. Pray. I fully believe that God provides everything that we need in every season, and so I think that's a great this is such an exercise in trusting the Lord. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That's kind of the best advice that I can give on that one. Leverage the free ebook that we've got, leverage free assets and graphics. So, yeah, definitely what we need to do. Top answer on that poll is limited staff, time, and resources. We hear that, folks. We know we completely understand. So that's the goal with the ebook is to really lighten that load on you and maybe help you cut some corners, in the best way that we can. So, alright. We're gonna move on. I'm gonna go ahead and close out this poll, and let's move on. So we're gonna pull this together. So chapter four, we're gonna execute on an eight week plan. So this, lucky for you, starts in November. And so yeah. So the toolkit includes, this is so thought through and amazing, but the toolkit includes all these different options for you to engage and to communicate. Again, you don't have to do all of these things, but you can. And they and there's even specific ideas, scripts, wording provided for you, right there in that resource. Okay. Yeah. There's there's even this calendar already created for you with dates on there. You can plug in your own dates on whatever works for you as far as, like, time of the day and what day of the week. And if you wanted to add a column, we didn't include this. I don't think it was on there, but assign it to someone, to a specific person. So this is a really easy way to be very strategic with your communications. Pick one, maybe two, maybe three channels depending on your bandwidth. But this allows you to just be real streamline, hit the ground running, and be effective with your messaging. Absolutely. Alright. Praying. Praying for you guys, you know, as you're kind of working through this and and trying to get those resources. And and just, you know, as Jess was saying, we gotta we gotta try and and trust in the Lord and to bring volunteers. You know, not everybody has to be paid either. So, talking and moving into, like, how we stay consistent, how we make it easy, how we streamline things, how we, you know, lean into we have little capacity to do things. Schedule, schedule, schedule. You have to do mass emails. You have to do text messages, voice calls, anything that you can do, throughout the season to get, you know, people get in touch with people and and get them giving. So use the people platform and the mass contact tool. We make it super easy and streamlined for you to send these messages. So make sure that you're leveraging these. You can even have the your password record in batches. So if he's only got, like, thirty minutes, utilize that time and have him record for the next four weeks and send out those messages. And you can set it and forget it and be focused on your website or wherever else you need to be for the rest of the giving season. Perfect. Sheila just asked where we can get the communication schedule. Everything, that we are talking about today is included in the toolkit, so we will send you that link, in your webinar post webinar email. You'll get that tomorrow. Alright. So chapter five, this is the last chapter we're gonna cover today. There is a sixth in the ebook, but you'll have to go download it to find out what it is. Chapter five, celebrate and thank your donors. Y'all, this is really, really, really important, and I'm not gonna spend a ton of time on this slide, but I wanna say this is not you just thanking people for a gift. This is called donor engagement, and it is critical for the life of your church and, honestly, the generosity that funds your church. This is really, really important. Do not overlook this step. So in the toolkit, we have these I think there's eight ideas, on ways that you can thank people effectively and thoughtfully. So, again, that's in the toolkit. And you can leverage these ideas and then how you actually get these out. Well, I wanna be really, thoughtful with my public recognition, but I don't know how to do that. Well, you can do it on stage or social media or email or all of these different channels that we talked about. All of these way ways that you can say thank you, can be done through all of your different channels of communication that we talked about. And then Nicole's gonna tell us how to do that right there within your software as well. Right. So right in your giving platform, there are multiple very simple ways to make every moment of your year end giving meaningful. You can create special giving forms. You can customize thank you emails that are scheduled to go out automatically. These are just really easy things to do. And struggling with being creative, say a quick prayer. I promise you the Lord will answer answer with a verse or he'll bring something visual into your mind that you can put in there. It could even just be a short note from your pastor that you're just putting in everything. But that's really what will transform things for you, and and it takes something that can feel very transactional and tie it to something really meaningful and special. So, you know, we challenge you to take this a step further, but you can customize these with pretty much anything that you want. Whatever you can pray about and about, you can accomplish right here. Yeah. I love it. These resources, these graphics specifically come with a toolkit as well. There's different versions. Right? So we've got the give generously, there's a live generously, there's this thank you for your generosity. And so you can use these same graphics throughout your all of your channels, all of your campaign. So this is a huge gift. You don't have to go looking. We'll save you some time there for sure. Okay. So then measuring impact, this is also really, really important. Right? So people wanna understand what their gifts are doing, and you cannot give them that information if you are not tracking that information yourself. This is also helps you evaluate, like, hey. We put all this time and effort into this campaign. Did we meet our goal? Right? And so just a couple of metrics that you should probably be tracking. Total giving, number of new givers. This is important during this time of year where you've got your folks that only come during Christmas and Easter. How many new brand new donations did we get, and then how many new recurring givers? We really haven't talked much about recurring giving in this, webinar, but definitely encourage your donors to, set up recurring giving. Again, that goes back to the culture piece. We are a church of generous people, consistently faithful stewards, so we set up recurring gifts. So, yeah, those are there are some metrics that you should be tracking. I'm moving a little bit more quickly. Just I wanna be mindful of everyone's time. So, Nicole, you wanna talk about reporting in our software. Sure. Just a quick highlight so we can start wrapping things up, but your people platform makes this really, really easy. You can track your digital giving. You, you know, you may have to enter your offline giving, what's actually happening manually inside the church. But it once you input that, it's all gonna be on your dashboard, and it will really help you see where the trends are, where the peak giving, occurred during your year end giving season and your campaigns. And it'll show things like total giving, new donors, and recurring gifts that Jess mentioned. So everything that that you need to understand about what worked will be here, and this will help you land up next year's year end giving. Absolutely. And in both platforms, you can track or I'm sorry. You can pull specific reports. So if there's something that you're looking for, you can literally pull a report that says new recurring givings from this time to this time. So you're able to really, get a good pulse on, you know, the level of generosity at your church specifically during the life of your campaign. So to kind of put a bow on this, again, I I mentioned this at the beginning of the webinar. The goal is not to get people to give one time during this campaign. Right? You're trying to build that culture of generosity. And so, the more momentum you can put behind the vision, right, the why, and then the more you can appreciate those donors and engage with those donors, during the campaign, after the campaign, that builds momentum into year round a culture of generosity at your ministry. So this is really important. It's it's it's maybe more important than than you think. And if you don't have bandwidth to do everything else, I think focus your energy on your why, and then your use. I think those probably have the biggest impact, and then how you get the word out on your why is up to you and your band within your team. But those things are are really important and and really change kind of the culture of your church realistically. Alright. I'm gonna launch a quick survey. This is pertaining to the webinar as a whole. We do these every time. Please take a minute to fill that out. That helps us know, what you would like to hear about, what you thought about today's webinar, if it was helpful. So, hopefully, you give Nicole and I a couple stars. But, no, seriously, we're so thankful for your time. So if you would complete that survey, that would be super helpful to us. And I will while you guys are doing that, I'm also going to talk about what it will be included in your post webinar email. As we've mentioned a couple of times, this webinar has been recorded is being recorded, and so you will receive that. This email will come tomorrow in your inbox. It's it will come at the same time that the webinar started today, so you'll get it tomorrow afternoon. So you'll get the webinar recording, these graphics that we've talked about. You know, we use the the really pretty tree ones. That's my favorite of the two. But there is another one that's the black with the the colorful writing on it. It's beautiful. Again, our media team has done such an incredible job with that. And then finally, you'll get the ebook, and then within the ebook is all the resources and more that we ta or that we, had in our presentation today. So, huge thank you to Nicole for joining me today. Thanks, Jess. Thank you, Jess. Thank you so much for letting me be here. And Yeah. And Yeah. I'm praying for everybody who attended today, when I go to church this weekend and even tonight. So thank you so much for your engagement and your participation, and we are prayerfully hoping that you all have successful year end giving campaigns in your churches. Thank you all so much for being here. Have a wonderful rest of your week.