The day after Halloween, I saw my first advertisement for Black Friday sales. Go into any store the day after Halloween, and almost miraculously overnight, the aisles are filled with Christmas décor. At the same time, my neighbors are pulling down Halloween decorations to put up Christmas decorations. Their kids hadn’t had time to eat the candy from the night before, and they were already focusing on the next holiday. From commerce to your neighbors, the focus now is on a sprint to the New Year.
What is Black Friday, and why is this important for your church? Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving when shoppers typically crowd stores and begin their Christmas purchases looking for deals. With the emergence of online commerce, we have Cyber Monday, the Monday after Thanksgiving, when merchants offer huge discounts for online purchases. Combined, from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday, these days represent a considerable portion of a company’s fourth-quarter sales and their entire year. For your church, it could mean a positive close to the current year and enough revenue to start your New Year off strong. Amid this craziness, I have found some Black Friday lessons for churches that could inspire and motivate you to make the most of this financial opportunity.
The first lesson is to leverage the power of seasons. Over the years, I've collaborated with some of the largest churches in America, assisting them in crafting effective stewardship plans. One key insight I've gained is the wisdom in aligning plans with the various seasons in our nation. Just as businesses, schools, and governments plan their activities around the seasons, churches can also benefit from this approach.
The next lesson is the importance of planning. Retailers should immediately shift from Halloween messages to Christmas, which is not easily done. It takes advanced planning. This is one of the major reasons churches’ special offerings can fail. They lack advance planning. You can’t decide to do something on Sunday or Saturday night and expect great results. The more you plan out the offering, the better your chance of success. I started in July prepping church leaders for end-of-year strategies, empowering them to improve their financial future. I learned to do this the hard way.
When I first began in the stewardship ministry, I quickly realized the importance of timing in planning giving campaigns or offerings. ‘The Sunday after Alabama plays Auburn isn’t a good time to culminate a pledge drive,’ wisely advised one Alabama pastor. ‘One side is happy, and the other is sad.’ Another pastor pointed out that the first weekend of deer season isn’t ideal for churches in the South. These insights underscore the value of a well-thought-out seasonal giving strategy. At OnlineGiving.org, we provide our partners with a seasonal giving plan for every season of the year. Does your giving provider do the same for you?
Regarding planning, one crucial concern is making sure your message is heard and that people can easily respond to that message. Why do you think I got a Black Friday advertisement twenty-eight days early about a sale on some product? It’s all part of their marketing scheme to soften me up for the buy. I’ll hear and see the same message across multiple platforms. From TV ads during my football games to my email and social media feeds, I’m getting Black Friday appeals. Retailers aren’t taking any chances that I miss their message. A key lesson we can take from retailers is the need to broadcast your message across multiple platforms.
No one in our industry does a better job of this than OnlineGiving.org. First, our tools help churches engage with their donors to welcome their gifts. Then, we work to transact those gifts so they can quickly be used for Kingdom growth. Here is a great post that talks more about our engagement strategy for churches: https://www.onlinegiving.org/support/engagement-solutions-drive-generosity
Here is another lesson from commerce: if you want to engage with Americans today, you need a multi-tiered communications approach. I see marketing messages on my TV, hear them on my podcasts, on my social media feeds, and everywhere else. On average, we see and hear thousands of marketing messages a day. If you only depend on your weekend announcements, your end-of-year message might not be heard. In today’s information age, one communication platform isn’t enough. This is why we provide our partners with multiple ways to communicate with their potential donors. At the same time, we offer over a dozen easy, quick, and secure ways for people to give. As we say, the easier you make it for people to give, the more apt they are to give. But they won’t give if they don’t know about your need. This is why you need a plan of action.
Let me end with one final lesson for churches. It is not enough to have a plan and platform in place. You must execute your plan by implementing it across all your communication platforms to tell your story. We provide our church partners with the best online giving platform in the industry and give them playbooks to help them carry out their plans effectively.
One way to increase generosity in your church is to build a seasonal strategy. Millions of dollars will be spent on Black Friday. We can help you use Black Friday's lessons for your end-of-year strategy. Contact us today at (615) 206-4000 or support@onlinegiving.org.
The Stewardship Coach
What can church leaders learn from Black Friday? More than you think! Check out these tips to turn holiday buzz into year-end generosity for your church. #BlackFriday #Generosityhttps://t.co/BLKolqjhma pic.twitter.com/D8R53C3udn
— Online Giving (@onlinegivingorg) November 7, 2024