Across the board, December is indisputably the largest giving season of the year for donors. In fact, many non-profits and churches receive 30-40% of their annual contributions in December, with 10% of that amount arriving on the last two days of the year. Even more specifically, statistics show a significant spike in giving from 12pm to 7pm on December 31, as donors rush to beat the deadline to qualify for charitable giving tax deductions.
Just as you winterize your home before the cold weather arrives, preparing for the upswing in giving requires attention to a few details. If you’ve already taken care of #1 and #2, we’ve got a surprise for you on #3!
1. Update Velocity Settings
Velocity settings are a set of transaction thresholds defined uniquely for your church that help ensure the safety of your ACH activity. They’re similar to the thresholds your bank puts on ATM transactions to detect and prevent fraud. For example, some banks may not allow account holders to withdraw more than $200 in a single transaction and $400 in a single day. Velocity settings apply to ACH and RDC transactions only and do not impact contributions made via credit card. Make sure yours are updated.
Fellowship One users can visit our Help Center to manage velocity settings.
2. Offer Online Giving and Online Giving Without Account
If someone chose your church as their preferred recipient at the so-called “eleventh hour,” what would their experience be?
- Do you have online giving available for donations in the wee hours?
- If so, would potential donors go elsewhere when they see that they must create an account?
Fellowship One user’s now have access to our new Online Giving Without Account, which abolishes barriers to online giving. To get this exciting new feature in place for the year-end giving upswing, the time to act is now! Visit our Help Center to learn how.
3. Craft Generational Messaging With the abundance of holiday donation requests bombarding your members right now, it’s important to keep the church as a possibility at the top of their minds. To help your messages inspire gifts to the church, make sure they’re at the right time,in the right place, and for the right folks.
We’ve researched those generational preferences and are ready to share them with you.
VOTE: Cast your vote for the generation you’d like to hear about first in our next blog post! To vote, leave a comment below, visit our Facebook page, or comment on Twitter using #GenGapGiving.
Silent Generation (or Lucky Generation- now 70+)
Baby Boomers (50-70 years old)
Generation X (35-49 years old)
Generation Y (or Millennials – 14-34 years old)
