Church Giving Summer Slump Lessons From a Harsh Winter

I know, it seems like we just got through another harsh winter, but the dreaded Summer Slump is almost upon us. It’s not too early to start planning for the lean church giving summer months when your members are traveling for family vacation or snowbirding.

Church Giving Doesn’t Have To Take a Vacation

Oddly enough, there’s a lot to be learned from winter in preparing for summer. In certain parts of the country churches had to cancel services on numerous occasions due to inclement winter weather — especially during Winter Storm Jonas. With some preparation, many of these churches were able to turn zero weekends into actual increases in church giving.

How did they do it? They utilized the Givelify mobile giving app and promoted it via their email newsletters and bulletins, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other digital and social media outlets. More importantly, they didn’t wait until Saturday to start. During services, in emails, and on social media they let their members know they could give even when church was closed.

Check out this video from the Changes Can Happen summit this past February. Listen to what these pastors had to say about both cancelled services during the winter and vacationing parishioners during the summer. This isn’t coming from us, it’s coming from your peers.

What we would consider vacation time in the months of June, July, and August in Mesa, most people basically take their gifts of stewardship with them. Because of Givelify we now have members that are making sure they are sharing their gifts with the church even while they’re on family vacations.

— Pastor David Wade, Mt. Calvary Baptist Church, Mesa, AZ

A couple weeks ago we had absolutely no way to get church, and many of our members utilized Givelify so it was not for us a zero weekend. One year ago had we had services cancelled we would not have had the kind of increase that we had.

— Pastor Henry P. Davis, III, First Baptist Church of Highland Park, Landover, MD

Share Givelify With Your Colleagues

We saw a great many new church signups in storm-affected regions, and the vast majority reported that they enrolled on the advice of an official from another church. Over coffee, at a meeting, or via email, they got the message that Givelify could help them sustain their giving when services were cancelled.

Be sure to tell your fellow church officials who haven’t yet signed up for Givelify. Let them know about the anytime, anywhere giving and how it can benefit their places of worship–especially when attendance at services is down and giving suffers.

You can even send them this link to our explainer video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VCbR3ZOBs0

Sign Up for Online Giving

This would also be an ideal time to enable online giving on your website. For those church members without smartphones, they can make their offerings from their computers and laptops while away from home.