If you’ve been a reader of my blog for a while, you know I believe (and always say) that, “If you’re not measuring it, you’re not managing it.” This is especially important at this time of the year.
It really goes without saying. Right? If you’re not routinely looking at the data, you can very easily loose sight of what’s really happening. Problems can be hidden, preventing you from doing anything to correct them.
And, as you regular readers also know, I use the Performance Cycle as a model for continuous improvement. Based on a set of measures or “results” that I call Key Performance Measures (KPMs) we evaluate everything about our church’s effectiveness as it relates to what Jesus called us to do and what other “stakeholders” need from us as an organization, business, church, etc.
All of this to say, I’m afraid I’ve been a bit “blind” when it comes to any granular understanding of giving behavior in our church. We have the following measures in our set of KPMs:
- Average Weekly Giving By Month (General Fund)
- Average Weekly Giving Trend
- Average Weekly Giving Per Capita By Month (General Fund)
- Average Weekly Giving Per Capita Trend
- Accumulative Giving By Month (Total – General and Capital Campaign Funds)
- Percent Giving Online By Month
- Percent Giving Online By Month Year To Year
That’s it. Not very granular. Right?
Well thanks to a brand new tool we’re now using from MortarStone, we’re learning things about the giving behavior in our church that we’ve never even considered up to now. These guys rock!
Basically MortarStone’s Donor Analytic is an “add on” application that interfaces with your Church Management Software (Church Community Builder in our case), creating a user friendly “Dashboard” view of what’s happening in your church.
I’m learning that we need to start paying attention to:
- Front Door Donors – People who give to the church for the very first time.
- Back Door Donors – People who used to give but no longer do.
- Donor Retention – What percent of people who gave last year are still giving this year? And, what’s happened to the amount of giving from these donors?
We’re only scratching the surface of what this new tool has to offer. I will be posting more as we learn more and we begin to seriously examine our “systems, processes, and methods” as they pertain to this critical part of an individual’s spiritual growth and commitment to the ministry of the church.
Stay tuned … In the meantime, check out MortarStone! It can’t hurt to take advantage of their 2 week free trial offer. We did!
Related Posts:
The Performance Cycle – A Leadership Model
New Donor Development Resource!
The First Step In Any “Donor Development Strategy”