Beating the Summer Slump How to Keep Giving Strong All Season

Hello. Hello. Welcome in, everybody. We're so excited to be joining

you guys today to talk about beating that summer slump and

how to keep your giving strong all season. So I already see some people

in the chat saying hello. You guys know the drill. But if you're joining us, go ahead and say

hello in the chat. Maybe share where

you're tuning in from. We like to see where

everyone's joining us from. Hi, Charles. Charles is, like,

in every one of our webinar. I think he needs

he deserves, like, an an award for being

here all the time. I love it. We've got people in

California, Minnesota, Tennessee. Awesome. I'm feeling like right

now, when I read the chat, it's it's funny during

this time of the year, we've got people who are, like,

still getting rain and snow. Then about where

I'm in in Tucson, Arizona where we're

we're starting to cook. We're starting to to

get really hot here. I know Daniel said today as

well that you're the weather's quite warm where

you're at today. Yeah. We're we're sitting at ninety

five for whatever reason in May, which is not supposed to

happen in spring, but whatever. I'm inside. I'm

taking it like that. Yeah. The AC's cranked. Yeah. Well, awesome. I see, still a couple of

people are joining us. So just to reiterate,

as you guys know, we're, talking today about how

to beat that summer slump. Kind of just having

a conversation about, some suggestions,

some suggestions, some tips from us about

ways that we think, will make your life easier

during the seasons where usually people are

traveling and they're out. And so we just wanna give

you some helpful tools today. So I'll go ahead

and jump right in. First thing, of course, we wanna highlight that Tithely's

mission is to simply serve you guys. And so, whether you're brand new

to Tithely or you've been with us for a while, we just

wanna reiterate that our goal is always to make

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like, no extra steps. We give you all the resources that

you need to lead your church well. And then, of course, just the cost aspect of Tithely

and keeping things affordable so that you can, you know, spend money and and focus your

finances and resources on the things that matter most. With that, if you, don't

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considering all of the products that you're actually getting. So just wanna make

a call out to that. As you guys know, if you're

talking in the chat, we highly, you know, encourage that. Make sure that you're

chatting with us. We enjoy it. But if you have

specific questions, relating to what we're

talking about today, go ahead and use the

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located on the bottom, bar of your page on

the right hand side. So that q and a portion with

the little question mark in it, if you have questions relating

to what we're talking about today, go ahead and

put them in there, and we'll have a designated

time at the end to address those questions with you guys. But with all that said, I'll go ahead and give us an

opportunity to introduce ourselves. As you guys know, if you've

joined any of our webinars before, you're

familiar with my face. My name is Moriah. I'm a part of our education

team here at Tithely. I have been with Tithely for

a little over three years now. I started in our support

team and then kind of touched a lot of other

teams in between. So worked in, our onboarding

team and now in education where we create all of the, like,

training content, the webinars, all of our help center content. That's kind of what

our team handles. But just a little bit

about me personally, to give context to the

conversation we'll be having today, is that I am pastor's

kid, grew up in the church, and have kind of done as

if you know a pastor's kid, you know that they've done

pretty much everything that there is to do in the

scenes, of running a church. And so just to give a

little bit of context to the conversation that both Daniel

and I are coming in with, some pretty extensive experience

in the ministry world. And so, just know that our heart

behind this conversation and what we'll be talking about today, comes from a place of relating

to where you guys are at today. So that's a little bit about me. But, Daniel, if you wanna share

some more about yourself as well. Yeah. I mean, first of

all, if you're a PK, you should get a stipend just

being a PK if you're because you're there anyways. But that's the thing here.

At least a food stipend. Right? Yes. Yeah.

My name is Daniel. Like many of you

tuning in today, kind of know firsthand what

it's like to look at the budget though in July and go,

Oh boy, what's going on? And kind of have that

pit in your stomach. I was in staff for twelve years

from church plants to small churches to what I call

bigger, smaller churches. But most of my ministry,

I spent time in Groton, New London, Connecticut,

which if you know that area, there's pretty much two things. There's a Navy base and then

there's a naval shipyard that builds submarines so

called electric boat. And by every worldly

economic metric, our church should have kind

of struggled financially. What was kind of cool is we never

really struggled down there. I don't know what it was. I

mean, I do know what it was. I have some ideas, but we always did our weekly

giving well and even we had a ten times weekly giving,

we'd hit our goal. There's a lot of great stuff that

I learned while being on staff. And honestly, today's a lot of

fun because I work for Tithely. So I have to talk as

if I work for Tithely. But today I am talking as

if my ministry experience, what I've got from the

background that I've done and what I do now. Ironically, for my church, I'm currently worshiping

in the Boston area. They ask me to speak for

contribution way often than I would prefer to,

whatever reasons, because I'm good at

it, I don't know. But it seems to be a

specialization I've developed in terms of helping people's hearts

to want to get to the place of giving. And so it's great to be here,

and I'm looking forward to, having this webinar together. Yeah. Awesome. Well, great. We'll go ahead and jump

right into things then. Just before we get into, like, the conversation

piece of this webinar, we wanna highlight just some

data that we've collected. Just so I think it's

helpful to see and, kind of just take a look

at, the actual numbers, when it comes to giving. So in twenty twenty four, there was a total of

nearly five hundred ninety three thousand

thousand billion dollars, given in twenty twenty four. So with this number, well, it'll kinda break down

on the left hand side. Also, let me remove I'm gonna

spotlight this so you guys can see it better because I know

that sometimes it's hard to see those those words. But, it has a three point three

percent real growth with that increase over twenty twenty

three when you adjust, of course, for inflation. So you'll see on a lot of these

slides that these numbers are, of course, like, adjusted a

little bit for the inflation. So we're getting a more honest perspective on these numbers. But with the historical trend, there's charitable giving has

increased or stayed flat in current dollars most years

since nineteen eighty four, which I think is crazy. That over all this time, it's it's either stayed flat

or it's like had a very minimal increase over all these years. But there has been a

recent slowdown in growth that has slowed significantly following

the post twenty twenty one peak. And with that, with

that total number that we're looking at, individuals actually drive

the vast majority of giving. So this is personal,

like individual people versus, you know, maybe organizations

or corporations that are, con contributing to

that total number. But in, twenty twenty four, three hundred and ninety two billion

dollars was given by individuals, and that's an eight point two

increase over the previous year, representing sixty six

percent of all charitable giving. So, again, that's sixty six percent

of all the giving in that total year was individual people, which is pretty I think

that's a pretty cool number. But with that entire, number

that we're looking at, all of the, excuse me, the the pie chart that we're

looking at now on the right hand side, shows that twenty

three percent of total giving was actually given to

religious organizations. And so you can kind

of see a breakdown of, where the other

percentages are going, but the vast majority does

go to churches, or, you know, religious organizations. And then overall

giving is growing, but giving to faith

is stagnating. Giving to religious

organizations did increase one point nine percent in current

dollars in twenty twenty four with, of course,

adjusted for inflation, but giving to religion actually

declined by one percent. And that, again, you can see

that on that right hand side. I should be oh, yeah. I just realized I was

talking and then wasn't even clicking the slides, but Daniel was

doing it for me, I think. So thank you. And then we'll go ahead and show click to the next slide

where it gives us, an example of the

shift and who's giving. So in, twenty twenty four, the median household giving did

decrease by thirty four percent, and that's just thirty four

percent between twenty twenty one to twenty twenty four. So that's decreased just in

a an actual number from nine hundred and ten dollars

to six hundred dollars. And then that kind of

highlights to us that there's the dependency on

that top one percent. The dependency on the top one percent

has increased by forty seven percent, meaning that churches are

depending on that one percent to give twenty one point two

percent of all annual giving. And so that's obviously going

to impact on everyday donors. The next slide will highlight

a little specific more specifically the generational

differences to the donors that are actually giving. There's three point four

percent excuse me, not percent. Three point four people. I don't know how there's

three point four people, but three point four millennial

givers to replace one boomer. And then it'll take ten gen

z givers to replace one boomer. So that kind of

highlights to us, the reality that it

takes a lot more, individuals to actually replace the

giving of one boomer, for example. So that's just kind of

something to keep in mind as you're you're centering

yourself around conversations that you need to be having

with your organization. And then we'll go ahead and

click to the next slide about what you can do about it. So this is kind of gonna

get into the portion that Daniel and I will be talking about. And these are just suggestions

from us to you about things that you can do to

increase that giving, and how to have conversations. But, of course, the first one

is always going to be faithful, to teach God's word

and be bold in it. Number two is to know

your highest giving days. I think we may touch on

this in a moment, but, just to kind of explain that

in a little bit more depth, that means knowing that, Sundays are gonna be the highest

giving days just across the board. But right underneath that

giving highest giving days are gonna be on, typically

Fridays, like paydays, and, like, the first and fifteenth. So maybe kind of, scheduling

time to talk about giving around those days

so that you increase the likelihood that people are gonna

get invested in that giving mission. And then knowing your

recurring numbers, recurring is always having

giving having givers that set up recurring giving is always

going to increase the amount of giving that you do receive. So just kind of getting

familiar with how many people are actually setting up

recurring giving in your church is something, to

definitely think about. And then simplicity,

not features. This just means, like, make

it easy for people to give. And then, of course, be prepared for changes in how

donors give based on the data that we just took a look at. So with all that said, I'm going to bring

both of us back here, and then we'll go ahead and get

into some questions, for Daniel. And I'll ask these. I'll I'll ask this in two parts

to give you an answer or a second to answer both. But as a pastor, how do you boldly ask for

offering in the summer without feeling like just

another fundraiser? Can you talk to us a

little bit about that? Yeah. It's a it's a good question

because you can feel when you're a pastor, minister in any capacity

leading the church that you're just chasing down numbers, whether it's visitors

to your church, whether it's people on

online, people checking in, and then financially

the same thing. What you have to shift your

view from first before anyone else is from fundraising

to vision casting. Fundraisers ask for money

to fix something, right? But a pastor or a minister, you're inviting people

to fuel a mission, a kingdom vision mission. Right? And you should never I think

the other thing is you should never apologize for asking. Right? I think like, oh,

sorry, have to ask for money. No, that's not the

idea. God deemed it. This is what we're going to do.

You're just representing that. But by apologizing and kind of making it fundraiser ing and

kind of feeling scared of it all, I think you can create this

fear in the church about giving and you don't want that. You want people

to feel like, no, this is part of God's vision. Move the conversation from

a donor mindset Tithely thinks that way, but like that's

him to a disciple mindset. Donors want to balance a ledger

or reach some kind of goal, but a disciple of Jesus

wants to extend the gospel, wants people to know God, wants their money to to have

an impact beyond just meeting some number in the church. And if you could kind of get

that mindset rolling with your givers, that helps a lot. And so the Tithely side of

things is the tools to do that to make it easier. But in this capacity, the heart

is you're co laboring with God. And change a preposition

is another idea too, from, from, to, for. You aren't asking something

from your congregation, you're inviting

something for them. You're giving them an opportunity

to worship through their giving. And so it's your start. Your heart has to be in the

right place when you're talking about this, whoever

talks about this, for the rest of the

congregation to believe it. I can get up there in

front of everyone like, We need to give because

God tells us to, but in the back of my mind,

I'm just fear, fear, fear. It's going to show up in my own

giving but also in the way of everybody else around me. For summer, reminding your people that

while schedules change during the summer, the brokenness of

the world of mission doesn't. And so, yes, we might be

in vacation mentality. Our kids are out of school.

You got VBSs going on. You got people traveling. There's there's lots

of chaos going on. There's summer camps,

outreaches, whatever it might be. But it doesn't mean that

the mission has changed. It's just that our lives are having a

different season while we're going on. And so it's a good opportunity

just to kind of help people see. The summer is, yes. It's harder, but it doesn't mean our hearts

should change in terms of how we give. And I will plug the that's what

makes the recurring giving so important is if you

get members going, this is what I'm gonna give

and this is what I wanna give. This is what I feel called to

give. And they set that up. In the summertime, it's a lot less painful because

people are giving without needing to go in there and click

give or pass cash into the plate. So there we go. Yeah. That's my thought. That's good. And I do wanna just circle

back because I think it's an important thing to highlight. Can you give us, like, specific examples of changing

your language around giving? Because I think that that's a

really important thing that you were mentioning, like, it's more of an inviting

than asking from them. Yeah. So if I don't know if you

wanna speak more to maybe just shifting language where

typically you're it it's difficult to to ask that,

of your congregation. So maybe just speak to

how to shift the language, like specific verbiage, I

think, would be helpful. Yeah. I mean, for sure, the

take the apology out. Right? Never apologize for having to

ask for your church to give to God. I mean, that that's

that's step one. I'm not saying you never

have any apologetic sobering mindset, but I'm just saying you

shouldn't apologize for that. Right? And use the words worship and

it's part of our spiritual discipline or it's part

of our spiritual growth. It's a way that we

connect with God. Those phrases help

the giver, the donor, the people in your church

go, oh, like you're right. This isn't just a I'm just writing

it's not like taxes, right? I think you've got to get as

far away from the tax mentality that I have to do this every

year or I have to do this every month or I have to do this

every week to I get to do this because I'm

worshiping God, right? When you frame the

offering in a way that God's not withholding something from

you until you give or it's not just about your

suffocating grip on materialism, right? You got to get rid of all that

kind of stuff and just get into this, We're worshiping

God through all this. It's an opportunity to grow

in faith and experience God's provision, God's blessings. And and again, I'm not saying that you

immediately get everything back you give, but I'm willing to bet those

who have been generous givers through most of their lives

have felt so blessed in so many ways outside of the

financial realm Yeah. For sure by doing that. And so just change it from

a, oh, I have to do this too. We get to. This is part of

how God has blessed our lives. Yeah. That's one thing I

think really does help. Yeah. That's great. And kind of in that same vein

of of how you would talk to your church about

this conversation, the second part of this

question is why is it so critical right now for churches

to tie their giving directly to stories of measurable measurable

impact and life change. Yeah. I mean, just think

about it for a sec. Like, if I give ten dollars

this week, you know, my budget shows a

minus ten dollars. So that's just gone

to a black hole. Right? And if that's the only thing

I know about it, it's just gone. And and I've just

lost ten dollars. Now, I mean, I think I would

have felt if that's how I feel, I'm better off giving that

to someone on the side of the street that needs

a dinner, right? Or giving that to one of my

kids or giving it to a neighbor. I would feel that connection. So we got to change this whole

giving to this black hole mentality to actually,

like you said, sharing stories of how

impact in life change is occurring from these giving. And you don't have to make it

a dollar for dollar comparison. Like every ten dollars you

give, is a soul saying like, no, that gets a little

bit kind of crazy. Maybe you could do that if

want. I'm not saying it's evil. I'm just saying

it's kind of crazy. But in a low trust culture, transparency and impact are the new

currencies of how you build that trust. A giver feels like their hard

earned money disappears into mysterious general fund

just to maintain a building, they're going to redirect the

resources to something else where instead you can

intentionally show, not just tell where

the money goes. Generosity will thrive when financial

sacrifice is tied to a human face. And so new people have come

to your church because of an outreach program. Get them upfront sharing. Again, they don't have

to talk about money. You just got to let people see,

oh man, things are happening. They're exciting. If you have a food pantry and people

have been giving to that food pantry, talk about the numbers of how many

people are served in that food pantry. Or if you give to some kind of

international donation thing that's serving some church

over in Europe or some place in India or somewhere

else international, share people, have people get

up there and talk about it. Show photos of kids

engaging, whatever it may be. I make my kids

give contribution. My kids, every week, they earn

money through their chores. And then I give them their

dollars as they walk in and they put money in the plate

just because I want them to have this idea that they worked

hard, they gave the money. And then we talk about how they

feel about what they give later on. And so even just getting

families in the culture around your church talking about like, I gave and we could

see this blessing. Finally, kind of flip the script

on how your church reports its financial needs by translating

operational costs into spiritual outcomes. So you just got to be creative. You have all this

in front of you. People have given

this much money. You've seen this happen

throughout the year. You just gotta share. We've given this much.

Great. Don't just stop there. And here's how we've

seen blessings come from this. So, you know, stop saying thank you

for your ties because the electric bill is high this month. Right? In the summer, ninety

five degrees. My AC is running. We need to say because you gave, the lights are on this

Tuesday when a broken marriage potentially was restored

in our counseling room. Like the the pastor was able

to not have another job. He could meet with this couple

that potentially could have gotten divorced but instead, their their marriage

has been recovered. And and and I know it's tough to

share specific individual information, but you can just kinda share that your

money doesn't go to a fund of budget. It goes to fund a rescue,

a a a a salvation, a connection to god. Yeah. That's really good.

I'm getting fired up. I love this conversation

because it's just so important and I feel like a lot of churches

just don't know how to approach it. So I'm hoping that you guys are

taking a lot from this like I am. But we'll go ahead and jump

into the next question. Obviously, based on the

data that we showed, overall, giving is just

it is kind of decreasing. But we know specifically, if you've been in the church

for any amount of time, that it certainly happens during

the summer when everyone's Yeah. Going out and

doing their things. And so if a church is

giving completely falls off a cliff the second people

go on vacation, what does that tell us about

how we've been discipling them the rest of the year? Yeah. I think first of all, we have to kinda normalize

that giving is part of our our church culture and

worship of God. So Yeah. If if you have to jump in when

something spikes down and you got, like, this panic month where you're

twenty percent below budget and have somebody have to get up

there and do this hardline talk where we need to make it

up over the next couple weeks, Like, you've already

kind of lost. And not that you shouldn't

do that if you need to. Like, I'm not saying

never do that. But if you get to that point, you've already missed some of

the steps leading up to it. Right? First of all, it's

not attendance based, it's lordship based. That's giving. Right? And so if giving stops the

moment geography changes or the summer changes or

landscape changes, it reveals that how

we've trained people is based on attendance

and not based on a transformational

stewardship of almighty that God has given us or our

resources that God has given us. When it's tied to

physical presence, people treat the church more

like a movie theater or a restaurant and they're tipping

for the service of the church when they're there. But when they're not there,

they don't need to give. That heart is where you

got to try to cultivate. A lordship based generosity

recognizes the obligation I hate that word,

but it's so true. This obligation, but also the

ability and opportunity to worship by funding God's house in

this plan that's going on there. And so that's first foremost. The discipleship

flaw kind of, right? The seasonal drop off proves

that we haven't taught giving in a way that is part of our first

fruits no matter what, where we are, this is what we're going to

give because it's a covenant between us and God. And have these conversations

in the spring, in the winter, before. Have these conversations

year round. And I think another

important thing is, yes, it's great to do this in a

corporate setting when you're in front of the church,

you share something. But a lot of these conversations

got to happen in the houses. If you have small groups, that's when these

conversations happen. And it's not a go in there and

find out who's giving what. You can do that type of stuff. Neither here nor there. It's up to your church how

people feel comfortable. But just having conversations

about like, Hey, how are our hearts

with our giving? Are we feeling like

it's a sacrifice? Are we feeling

like it's blessing? Are we feeling like it's not

just going to a black hole, but what are we seeing? And let people share. And those who are most excited, you let them share a

lot in those groups. And then finally, I think

a summer slump is rarely a calendar problem. It's more of a report card

on our holistic financial discipline during the fall

spring, as I mentioned before. This idea that the painful

reality check for church leaders is that it's the

problem before the summer that we have to deal with,

not just this summer. And if the only time the

congregation hears about money also another thing, right? If the only time a congregation

hears about money is when it's bad, they're only going to

correlate money with bad, right? Kind of like a dog. If they pee on your

floor and you put their nose to it and say, no, every

time they say pee, it's negative. And that's good for a dog,

but it's not good for us. We don't wanna hear money bad,

money bad, not doing good. We wanna hear year round. So if you even have a specific

week where people have given more in May around Mother's

Day or something like that, there's a huge showing of

people and there's great donations given up or

great collections given up, then you go, great

job the next week. You know? Like, let people know

when they've done well. Yeah. It can't be the

negative. You know? Yeah. Good. I mean, you kind of you kind

of touched on it already, but I don't know if you

have any more you'd like to share about how to just build like, practically how to build

that weatherproof culture of generosity year round. Yeah. I mean, I think this thought, when you asked this

question before to me, I think it's the heart that wants

to give is what you're building. Right? Not the have to give,

not the need to give, not that there's a guilt,

but it's a we want to give. And then as what

Tithely aims for, and this is kind of why

this webinar is so great, is make a system of giving

that's frictionless. So technology has really come

to help us, not just pandemic, oh no, no one's

showing up to church, but now this is part of

everyone's lives in churches. Does make things easier. The count team doesn't have to

count as much money outside of it. The transactions are easier. Everything is done in a way

that makes it so like, oh, giving isn't even hard. I forgot my wallet. Forgot my check today. Well, everyone has

a smartphone, right? It's kind of there. And so really allowing people

to see like technology is a tool to help our hearts to give. And we mentioned this already, normalize recurring giving

as a spiritual discipline. And again, some people

may push back and say, don't want to do recurring giving

because I need to feel it every week. Awesome. If there's a true

conviction there, I wouldn't ever push

that away from it. But that's not everybody. Most people would love

just to be like, alright, I'm gonna give this money and they

should see it out of their account. They should have a budget. Hopefully there's other

elements of their financial stewardship coming

into play, right? They don't have a budget

and they're just giving. That's a little bit scary

too with recurring donations because that's recurring. Everything else might

not be recurring. So you get elements

there, but it's important. Use scripture. I know every church has

said this passage probably a thousand times with two

Corinthians nine, right? We should give what we've

decided in our heart to give. This does need to

be the message. But once that is set, once that person has

that conviction at heart, allowing that giver to feel

the opportunity to give more or adjust based on where they are,

their heart has to be in it. Right? It allows families to honor

God with their first fruits whenever they're giving. And I think even

parents or out there, people who do recurring giving,

I have to tell my daughter, I show my daughter the

recurring giving so she could see that I'm giving because

she's putting a dollar on the plate and I'm not. She's like, Daddy,

why aren't you giving? I'm like, Well,

we give this way. So it's got to be

normalized in the family. And then preach financial

health year round, like I said, not when you just

don't need money. It's got to be

January and February, a great time to talk about it

because people are starting off the new year, right? Around the time of

tax seasons, right? Like, yes, everyone

hates tax season, but let's talk about it. Hey, maybe if you did get

some extra money back, have you thought about that? Or if people end of the

year quarterly stuff, whenever your guys' years end

for different big companies, just talk about this

year round and healthy financial choices. And also, I would say a

second thing to add to this, combo a financial smartness. You can Dave Ramsey stuff. We partner with Dave

Ramsey, but you whatever. Just partner with financial

smarts in the church. People who are doing poor with

just financial stewardship overall, help them do better

with their money overall, not just give more. Right? Like really build a culture

that giving is based around our holistic view of how we handle

our money as a blessing from God. So I'll stop there. No. That's that's great. The next question I think is

super important as well because we've kind of been

talking a lot about, the donor perspective. But, obviously, like, making sure the health of your

team is good is is also really important during these seasons. So this question is about the

summer slump just not being a spreadsheet problem, but it's an emotional weight

on the leadership team. So from your own

experience in ministry, how do you keep your staff and

your volunteer teams encouraged and focused on the mission when

the sanctuary is half empty and resources feel tight? Oh, man. I I had a in our leadership

team that I was a part of, there was there was one, one

guy there that, was, like, so good at budgets and

numbers and just logistics, And he would come

in and so prepared. We'd have every detail. It would just be ridiculous

how much information we'd have. And I remember me and one

of the other ministers, we'd always try to we

take that information and immediately try to transition it to heart. Like, great. Yes. We're

hitting all these things. Awesome. Let's let's be careful though because

we don't want it to be a head count. Right? Money can't just be

the next like, you know, okay. We had two hundred people in

service today with thirty five visitors and twenty two

kids in Kids Kingdom. And we had this many ushers, this many people

looked on the website. You can get all of these

numbers and they're helpful tools to help build our faith, but it's got to be

the heart count. It's got to be about

what's going on here, especially for leadership team. Because if the leadership team

isn't on board with the heart of it, then no one else

is gonna be behind it. Right? Your leaders

set the standard of it. Gonna talk about it

from like, oh yeah, our contribution is down. And they may say that

in passing to somebody else because it's just

on their heart. And so we gotta shift our

team's focus away from empty seats or lack of money

towards people who are giving, people who are showing up

and how to cultivate their hearts and everyone else is there. A half empty room is not

a wasted Sunday, right, from the kind of

mentality of that. It's an intimate

ministry opportunity. And that's just like

a twist on things. You can take anything that's

the negative number aspect and twist it not twist it. Help yourself see it in a

vision way that's helpful. Meaning like, no. I got to talk to most of the

people that were at church today, that was a blessing. Obviously, we want

everyone to show up. We want everyone to give, but we don't need the

numbers to be the priority. A leadership team, the ushering

team, the account team, whatever you want to call them, they will have that focus

because they have that skill set. So just continuing to

build with them that way. And also hold up the leadership

team in front of everybody. Often they're the ones

dealing with all this. There's a lot of stress,

especially the financial ones. There's a lot of stress on them. And sometimes they could just

be another member in the church and people don't realize no, they're giving of themselves in

such a significant way to lead. It's stressful. It's tiring. There's nothing easy

about leading in a church. You wish it was, but it's not. And so in the

modern digital age, people hear your sermons

all over the place. They're listening wherever they

may be. Hold up those leaders. Let people know who's

running not running the show, because God's running the show, but who's behind the scenes

helping to handle and deal with all these different financial issues

and other issues that we have. And so, yeah, I think

that's one thing. Another thought,

pivot from production to preparation and right? Instead of always trying to

build this huge momentum with giving and resources because

that feels like it's a drain, lean on just kind of the rhythm

of where people are in life. Use the lighter summer schedule

to to protect the staff from burnout even or to protect,

like, over meetings. Right? Sometimes people

just in the summer, they feel like they're

missing so much. They're moving so

much like that. Kinda shorten stuff

up a little bit. See see if that

changes the giving. People may be like, they feel

lighter coming to church. It's a summer. It's a better feel. It kinda feels all freer because

there's so much going on. I mean, vacation bible school is

the biggest burnout in the summer. Whoever's in vacation

bible school, give them a break somehow. I don't know. Whatever it be, but there's lots of

tactics to kinda make the summer and your leaders less burned out and

less focused on the spreadsheet and financials if that's

what they're doing, whatever they're working on to

make the summer kind of feel freer and lighter. If your team is staring at a

tight budget and a half empty room, the emotional fuel tank

is gonna drain so fast, right? As a leader, protect them. Remind them that it's

God that we're serving. It's God that we're worshiping, that every dollar given

is in worship of God. Every activity we're doing,

every budget meeting, every training

meeting is about God. And that's what we're

getting measured by. And what's going to

transform lives. Because I don't know

if that helps or not, just kind of inspire

your leadership team. Yeah. And I'm hearing it sounds like

there's a theme for sure about I think visibility might be

a good word when it comes to talking about giving

when you're saying like, talk about your leaders, lift them up

in front of people, like talk about, where you're giving is going

in front of people because it removes the illusion

of, like you said, just giving and then it's

like it's gone from your bank account and you don't

know anything about it. Visibility is super important is is probably what I'm

hearing for sure. But Yeah. With that, the next question, we're talking about,

you know, like, people are booking flights. They're leaving. They're they're vacationing

because that's usually what happens in the summer when

kids are out of school. If a church hasn't updated its

digital giving experience to match the level of

ease that it you know, that we just live in today

in the digital world What is the church inadvertently

communicating to its congregation about its

priorities and then also just kind of an addendum, like, some fixes to that. Yeah. No. It's it's

it's really impressive. Like, we have an app all for

everything you possibly can imagine. I have an app that controls

all of my light bulbs. I could turn off my light bulbs

downstairs from where I am right now. Right? I could change

my air conditioning. I could call my wife.

I could text this. I could reach anybody

anywhere in the world. It's frictionless communication

and control over all of our lives. And then if giving or our ease

of giving or even communication and all those kind of church

tools we use are full of friction, that itself is

just creating a barrier. Right? If a member can book an entire family

vacation with a few tabs on the app, but they can't give or it's

so hard to give or they gotta click like thirty

different times. Yeah. Or they gotta hunt it down

or they gotta ask somebody. Like, that that's a loss. Right? Especially knowing that when

you show those numbers like three point two millennials

have to replace a baby boomers, those are great stats. Like, if you that means you need

more millennials to be given. Like, so you need

more in the buildings. You need you need

what attracts them to. So the second thing I'd say is

a loss of cultural relevance and generational alienation. I like Millennials, Gen

Zs and Gen Alphas, I mean, I love technology. Maybe

it's not for everybody. I'm a millennial.

I love technology. My house can be the robot hub

when AI takes over probably because I love having

everything in my head. It might be, who knows? But that's a cultural

connection to me. If my church doesn't

have online giving, I think I have the right heart, but I think I would struggle

to give consistently even though I want to because

it's harder, right? And so millennials and Gen Zs, Alphas, a

lot of them don't carry cash. I kind of do. But checkbook for sure. Who

has a checkbook on them? That just doesn't happen. And so to give, you need the

frictionless opportunity. So, an outdated giving platform, even outdated online

giving platform, right? If you just have one generic

link that exists hidden somewhere in your website in

the very bottom and no one can find it, like, no

one's gonna use it. I'm not saying you're we're

gonna show this a second. You don't make like a giant

button that blasts over give, give, give, and it's just annoying with

a bunch of arrows on it, but it's gotta be something that you

don't have to go too deep into it. A great a great

stat where, like, as you move down the

generations, like gen alpha, gen z for sure, they don't wanna

click anything on a website. They show up to websites. It's all gonna be right there

in front of them what they want. Millennials, you get like two

or three clicks out of us. And then as it goes up there, different generations will go

a little bit deeper into it. But if you if your website and

your app become too hard to find the giving, they're

just not gonna give. Even QR codes, they

may not even bother. I mean, codes are cute

and and taps awesome. Like, I love our new tap

function. That's even easier. But, like, the the more brainless

you can make it for them to get to it so that they can choose what

their heart wants to give, the better it's gonna be. Brainless is a bad

word choice there. The simpler it is to get there

so they can get to the point where they give and then

hopefully their heart kicks in, the training kicks in, everything else that you've

talked about with them in small groups in the church about how

we're worshiping God through our giving, that's when

that all comes out. But if it's too hard

to get there, you know, you might create an unintentional

roadblock to an obedience. Right? And again, it's still not

your fault if they don't give. If there's a will, there's a

way they can figure it out, but it needs to be easy. Mean, even so much so like if

a church member Tuesday morning goes, Oh, wait, I forgot

to give this Sunday. Pop up on the phone, boom,

right there they give. It's an easy thing

for them to do. And so the frictionless is

so important, But online giving, like, really is

significantly important. It it it just changes

things. So Yeah. Yeah. Well and with that, it's a it's a good segue

into what we wanna highlight. A couple things with our custom church

app and then our church website. Again, just to highlight,

if you're new to Tithely, if you're watching this and

you're not aware that Tithely, is not just a giving platform,

we also have a custom, church app, custom website,

and a CHMS product. And so if you're like, woah. I didn't know Tithely

had all this stuff. We do, and we're

gonna show it now. But if you have interest

in these products, I highly recommend checking

out Tithely University. It's just I think it's just

university dot Tithely, the URL. But highly recommend checking

it out if you weren't aware that we had these products. But with that said,

I'll pull myself back, and give Daniel an

opportunity to show. Daniel, do you wanna

stay on the screen, or would you like me to pull

you all together so that everyone can get a good view? I I could pop off

screen. Take Okay. Okay. Perfect. My voice will be enough. Alright. So I added to stage.

Did it do that? There we go. So as Mariah mentioned already,

we have the apps and sites. Depending on which version

of Tithely you have, the layout may a

little bit different, but the functionality

is all the same. And so inside the apps, we

build giving right into it. And so literally, if you take your giving from

your giving form page in the giving area, you come

over here to giving, you can pop your

link right here. It should be there already. You can choose to have a

floating button and you can have that mapped to a specific

fund as well if you want. And you can give it a name. You can add your text to give

if you're using that and you could change that. So there's a lot of great stuff

here that you can upload into it. But what's really wonderful is you

can see how it's going to look. In the Layout Editor, so if you're in our apps page

and you've got Giving setup and you go to Layout Editor, what you could do is you

can actually see what this looks like on people's phones, which

makes things kind of nice. So this is our demo app

that we play around with. So don't expect this

to be super nice. We mess with it all the time,

the onboarding team especially. But one thing to notice

here, so down the bottom, there's a Give tab. There's five tabs on the bottom. If you have a church

app at any capacity, if you use Tithely

Church app for sure, you should always have Give

down there because if you click any different tab, there's always Give easily

accessible one press away. They don't have to

go hunt it down. You also notice we have Give

right here as well on the page. You can do this too and

you don't have to make it huge. You can make it small right

inside here as you want or bigger, can make it narrower. But again, you want it

there on the front page. It's a normal part

of worshiping God. So it should be a normal

part of the technology that people use when they join your church

or are a part of your church. And a lot of things we

tell people at the app too, the app is functionally

directed towards members, people that are part of

your church consistently. And so you want your

members to give, make the thing that's directed towards

them technology wise to show giving. And then the float button, I think the float button

is take it or leave it. If you like it, great. If you don't like it, I don't know how much people

click that maybe by accident. So maybe you're looking

for incidental clicks, but that's not the goal. We want the heart, right?

But it does exist there. But people can click onto these

and get to your giving page right away on the app

when they're there. So make sure this is something

that you set up really nice and clear and easy for them. That's one of the

functions there for sure. And then when you go to

sites, I do really like sites. Where's sites over here? Man, my brain. So the sites, your website, so as much as the app is going

to be directed toward you can see welcome home,

Sunny, this is generic. As much as the app is

directed towards your members, the site is going to be

directed towards your visitors. There are still tons of

stats out there showing that people will go to your website

before ever visiting your church and that website needs to show a couple things

that are very important. Who your church is,

where they're going, what it's going to feel like,

what they're going to see, what they're experiencing. But you should have

give on there too. Not be like, oh

no, someone's like, I have to give when

I go to this church. Yeah, you should be giving when

you go to a church because that's part of your worship with God, but you have an opportunity

to highlight this. And so what I love here,

we have a giving page up here. You can click up this. This is kind of standardized on

any title they said it shows up. But here's what I suggest you

do on this to really improve it. Have the give when

they click in. Don't just have a give button

here. I don't have it on here. Have a video from

your minister, lead pastor, from your lead financial guy

just talking about why giving is important right here

on the giving page. That's so helpful for people

to see the heart of why. Yeah, sure, some people

might not watch it. You can have it

autoplay by the way, so then they're kind of forced

to watch it a little bit, but have something there that

really kind of directs them to why you're giving. And then the great part is

once they click into this, it opens up the giving

page right off it. Boom, there it is. They

can come in, set up. And if they're signed up, they can see all

their giving numbers. If they're not signed up, they

can sign up, log in or give, which is one

of the frictionless parts. You can give on the Tithely

platform without needing to sign up, which is so important because some

people just don't want to sign up. People don't trust it sometimes. I don't want give my email. Okay, well, you have to

give your email to give, but I don't want to give

a password or login. So there's some people who

don't want to do certain things, but in general,

frictionless is important. Another thing you can

do on your homepage, which you can also add

in just a section too, so you have the

give button up here. Have it up here, yes. And you can have it on

the very, very bottom as well, but don't let that

be the only place. That's like, if we're called to

give a portion of our blessings back to God and it's the smallest

possible area on your website, that just seems silly. But again, compound this with stories

about where the money's going. Absorb the black hole, get rid

of the black hole and be like, Hey, when you give, this is

what we're doing with it. This is what's been happening.

These are the events. This is what you

want to correlate, not just give up here and

here's everything we're doing. Have them connect. You

can add in a block. And what's cool here, if you hit the add

block plus button here, there's actually a built in

give block that's pre built for you so you don't have

to do it yourself. When you click that in,

it's creating a block. Boom, giving is there. What I would do right here, put a slideshow of

Vacation Bible School. Put a slideshow of

the food donations. Put a slideshow of

the service days. Put a slideshow of your

staff, your leadership team. Have that cycle through so

people are seeing what it is. And right here, say, This is

what your giving is doing. It's changing lives, and

have an arrow point over. And so they can see that or have

a video and they could donate now. But make your giving on your

technology as easy to find and as simple as possible, but connect it to the

hearts of the people, not just the structure. You can do this if you want. I suggest never have a bar

chart of what giving has been doing right here. Now you should have that

somewhere on your website where people could find that. You should share what people

are giving, how much is giving. I think that transparency is

super important for the heart, but don't make that the

first thing people see. Make it what their money

is doing and how it's changing people, things they could see. But, yeah, the apps in the site is

super important on how we can give and the value it brings to your

members when they show up to visitors, to your website,

and to the app your members. And obviously, either one

can use both. So there we go. Yeah. That's awesome.

That's super helpful. Before bringing us back,

like, visually on screen, I wanna make a highlight

to our Tithely tap feature. Yes. So, this is something that

is relatively new, and we're, like, so excited about it. It makes giving so easy. If you haven't gotten me the

gist throughout this entire conversation,

like, make it easy. And Tithely Tap is probably one

of the easiest ways to do it. I can't imagine it being

much easier than this. So we wanna make a quick shout

out to Tithely Tap and then show you guys a a cool video to

get you kind of excited about the future if you weren't

aware that we had it. So I'll go ahead and show

us this video really quick. Just tap play? Yeah. Let me know

when you answer it. We use it to connect

with them in a real way. I'm a new believer

in the Tithely tab. Awesome. Well, we hope that

got you excited about that product. So, just wanted to to shout

out that, that Tithely Tap, you can is the best

way to reach out I guess I didn't. I probably should

have added, like, a link on how to

get to Tithely Tap. I might include that in

the follow-up email we send out about how you can actually

sign up and, like, order the Tithely Tap discs. So look out for that email

that we follow-up with. But now at this point, we'll go ahead and shift

into the q and a portion of this webinar. I do see we already

have a couple questions. So let's take a look here. I think I'll make these public, and then I don't

think I need to add it to stage because I it might cut off

these questions if they're too long. But this person is asking if

they don't have an account in Give and we have Breeze, will it automatically import

into a giving record even as a first time giver? I think unless you wanna

address this, Daniel, I if I'm understanding

the question correctly, it sounds like like, even if they're a first time

giver and they don't have an account in Breeze, they're always their giving is

always going to be associated with their email

or phone number. And so at the end of the year, they will have a giving

record or a tax statement. So it's always that information

is always gonna be recorded even if they don't

have an account. So I think that addresses that

that question unless you have something else to add to it. And I'd add, make sure people are

giving email addresses that they actually have access to and

check and don't share email addresses with other people. Right? So, you know, you wanna make sure that

the it's their email address because that's how it's gonna be

connected in their phone number. And then if they keep

coming and give again, it'll keep

associating with that. And so you'll have a full

record of it, not just one. And so but, yeah, just make sure they give

their information correctly. Yeah. That's good.

And then also oops. I backed myself out. We also have a question about

the app and the website being independent of each other,

which is a great question, and and you can speak to this

just because you you demoed it. But, yeah, I'll give you the floor and let

you let you address that question. Yeah. There there the app and

sites talk together a lot. There's many things they they

do correlate very, very well. Giving and events can

be linked together. You can actually link right

into your app using a hyperlink into it and so people can map

over to the website from there. So there's a bunch

of connection points. So do you have to update both

areas if there's some crossover? There are a couple of things you

have to update on both sides, but obviously because the

mission of the site versus the app has direct focuses that

we kind of aim towards. So there'll be things you

wanna direct in there, but a lot of it does cross

go crossover each other. Specifically, one thing that's cool is

a lot likes our live streaming element. You can have it both be

on the site and the app, and all the chat in

there is from both. So if you're on the

live stream on your app, you can see the

chat from the site. This is kind of a

cool element there. Events go back and forth. There's other elements that go

back and So there's things that do and there's some

things that don't, but a lot of it does

work well together. Yeah. And I also just added to the

screen on the right hand side, you'll see sites

and integrations. If you click on

that on your screen, it'll take you to a

help center article, that kind of talks just

clarifies again what, Dana just shared with us, the places where the app and

the site have integrations and kind of crossover. So if you wanna click, you can. Let's see. Charles is asking on tap, is a giving form the same

as the Tithely giving page? And then where is the

preferred landing page for tap? It's a good question. Yeah. Those are good. So, I mean, what's cool about

TAP is it's not just giving. You can actually have them

land on a form too to fill out. But what we would say we

would say if you're doing giving, it would go

right to the giving form. Right? And and so that's the that's the

best way to load it up that way. But you can actually choose on

the tap where you want to have them land ahead of time and so

you can set up different taps or different elements. And so yeah, I think right

on the title of Giving Page, Giving Form. So Giving Page and giving form,

yeah, those are synonymous. I think you can you

can interchange them. If I say giving page, I'm thinking like the giving

page on a website where they land to click give, where the giving form is

the actual area where they give. And so you want to aim

them to the giving form. Again, less friction they get right

there instead of having to play around. So that's what I would say. Yeah. That's good. And I'll also, I'll

link a resource as well, here on the screen to our

Tithely Tap that just kind of talks a little bit more in-depth

about what we're covering. Yeah. But to summarize, it does go it can go

wherever you direct it to go, which is why the Tithely

tab feature is super cool. It's not just the giving page. It can also go to, like, connect forms for new

visitors or stuff like that. So let me link that

really quickly. And then while I'm

putting that on the stage, we have a question that I think

is a a little bit more nuanced that I think maybe you

can address, Daniel. But Bob is asking which

call to action is better, the word give or donate. Yeah. I kinda use them

interchangeably by accident. I think give sounds better

from a if you're giving to God versus donating to God. But, I I mean, it really just

depends on the culture of your church and what they feel like. In different parts

of the country, words have different

significant meanings too. And so for me personally, neither one would bother

me if you said it to me, but I would personally go either

give just because I want to give. Right? That's kind of

the idea behind it. God has given us life. So I want to give

back this opportunity. I wanna worship God with my giving

or worship God with my donation. I don't know. I think it's a semantics thing,

but I think give sounds better. Yeah. No. That's awesome. As far as I can see, I think

that was the last question. So I'll just click back to this

screen to give us another moment. Again, if you, do not have all access and

you're interested in it, and that includes, again, kind of what we showed just a

moment ago with sites, apps, Tithely, and then

our CHMS product, you can go ahead and scan the

QR code on the screen and get three months of all access

at ninety nine dollars. So that's a over it's sixty dollar

discount over those three months. So, definitely take

advantage of that, if that's something

you're interested in. But with that, I believe that

was the end of the questions. So as always, we're super thankful that you

guys joined us today Yeah. To address the common question. A recording will be sent to

anyone who registered for this webinar after this is over. And so please feel free to take

this and share it with your team. You know, put the word

out there and and, let other people get, some of this great information

that Daniel shared with us today. But with that, do you have

anything else you wanna share, Daniel, before we head out? No. Thanks, guys. It's an honor, and I loved kinda

turning on minister mode again. That was fun. So Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Well, again, thank you

guys so much for joining. If you have any questions, the best way to reach our team

is gonna be through the chat bubble in your account when

whether you're logged into Breeze or in Tithely. So feel free as always to

reach out to us if you have any additional questions. Check out our Tithely University

where that's stocked full of, videos that give you kind of

the basic rundown of all the products included in All Access. But we hope this was

helpful to you guys, and we'll see you

in the next one.