Is Your Church Fundraising Too Complicated?
I just spent an hour and a half on Amazon.com. I love that website. After spending an hour looking up vintage 90’s t-shirts, I finally remembered why I was on that site—to look for books on raising money.
Now, I may be a simpleton, but I’ve read a number of books on business and finance. And when skimming through the search results on church fundraising books, I had significant trouble understanding some of the ideas and terminology. To be completely honest, they might as well be written in a different language. Professionals write fundraising books full of fundraising plans that I can’t understand.
And that’s a problem. Because complicated strategies kill fundraising.
I remember taking Trigonometry in high school. Yikes, who doesn’t? I had no business taking that class. But I was in love with a girl who took it. That’s how I was in high school. I didn’t get crushes on girls—I just went ahead and fell flat-on-my-face in love with them. You would think girls would love a guy like me: admittedly passionate. They didn’t.
Anyway, when it came time to actually do Trig, I would stare at the questions, problems, equations—whatever you call them. I felt paralyzed. There were so many steps. So many ways to approach the problem. I didn’t know how to start. So, guess what broke down? My commitment to Trig (not my commitment to Miss Two-Seats-Ahead).
Let me throw another one at you. Have you ever looked at your house after you cooked a huge meal? You stare at it, wrecked kitchen and all, and think, I have no idea where to start. You could start with the sink and the dishes. But who wants to do that? So, you start gathering trash. But that’s too overwhelming and messy. So, for those of you without OCD, you just go to bed. Isn’t that a great feeling—when you decide you’re going to sleep instead of tackling the mess? What a great night’s sleep that provides! What you’ve done is procrastinated because you didn’t know where to start. Complexity killed your commitment to clean your house.
How has complexity effected your online giving? Does your church have a “scalpel-like” online giving solution or strategy? No? Then you need to explore Rocket Donations NOW.
