What is Your Annual Drive Strategy?

As a congregation planning an annual drive, you may want to change it up and try something different. We hear regularly from congregations who feel that their annual drive does not perform well. It is too arduous, burns out volunteers, distracts from the “real work” of the congregation (that is another blog post!), members don’t respond promptly, or it does not raise enough money to fund the budget.

So what do you do? Most congregations try to refresh the effort – with new volunteers or creative ideas. Thinking about your strategies first will help lay out your plan. So what are some potential strategies?

• Generalized communication. This usually includes a mailing to all congregants, announcements, newsletter articles and other outreach calls – to please pledge.
• Phone-based appeal. This is basing the drive around calls to each household to get them to pledge, including over the phone.
• Celebration Sunday model. This gears the whole drive toward one Sunday when you hope all congregants will make pledges on that day.
• Cottage meetings. These are small group gatherings, normally in people’s homes – although who lives in a cottage anymore?
• Stewardship conversations. These are normally done in with a steward hosting a conversation with an individual or couple.

Generally it takes a few years for congregations to get up to speed and do one of these strategies well. And if you have done the same thing for many years, it has probably lost some of its effectiveness. Those are factors you want to balance. Doing a different thing every year or doing the same thing for a long, long time are not good approaches.

As you can see, this list is organized from the least personal, to the most personal. They are also listed in the order of least volunteer intensive to the most volunteer intensive. And not coincidentally, they are listed from the least effective to the most effective. There are other creative solutions, which sometimes get a good response in the short-run. Yet those are usually variations on these strategies.

Some congregations are uncomfortable with having personal conversations that touch on any aspect of money. If that is the case, you might consider strategies that are a little less personal to grow people’s comfort. Or you might have personal conversations with you most loyal folks and grow the comfort out from a core group. Then the following year you can move to a more personal strategy or grow the households participating.

It is appealing and seemingly modern to try and have on-line pledging be one of your main strategies. Put this in the category of probably more efficient (for you and your responding members) yet less effective. The reality is that the personal approach continues to be the most effective across the charitable giving sector, and especially with larger amount givers.

Many congregations, particularly larger ones, will have the capacity to do more than one strategy at once; for instance general communications, celebration Sunday, and cottage meetings. This assures that if one strategy does not work for some of your member households, you may engage them with another. If you are considering this, be sure you have the resources that match your ambitions. It is better to do fewer things well, than lots of things poorly. If you have a committee of 5 volunteers, and no other active stewardship volunteers, better keep it simple – and do lots of recruiting for next year!

Remember, we have a webinar coming up in early December, Donor Advised Funds: The Giving Tool Every Congregation Should Know About. To sign up, visit the Eventbright event page: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/donor-advised-funds-the-giving-tool-every-congregation-should-know-about-tickets-29164729491

Mark Ewert is a stewardship consultant with the Stewardship For Us team. Mark can be reached at mewert@stewardshipforus.com, via the UUA’s Congregational Stewardship Network, (http://www.uua.org/finance/fundraising/index.shtml), or through your regional staff.