“On A Scale of 1 -10 (10 = Great), I Would Rate Stewardship on Our Website at About -3”

by Bill Clontz, Stewardship Consultant

Does the title above sound familiar? Your website is effectively your Electronic Commons and your Electronic Front Door. It’s where potential visitors find you and where members come for information, ideas, and inspiration.

Where and how stewardship is seen on your website is important. Unfortunately, on too many of our websites, stewardship is often displayed and integrated very poorly, if at all. That is a disservice to everyone concerned, and should not be acceptable to anyone who cares about their congregation or about Unitarian Universalism.

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Here are a few tips to help make stewardship on your website relevant and readable:

Stewardship is Practical AND Spiritual. So too, should be your website’s stewardship components. More than most areas of congregational life, stewardship is where inspiration and operations join. By the time someone has read your messages they should be inspired and know exactly how to contribute.

Remember, Stewardship Messaging Serves Three Main Purposes:

– To explain, educate, and motivate members and friends. There are other vehicles for this as well (live testimonials, visiting stewards, etc.), but these capabilities on your web site are foundational.

-To help visitors understand this key part of our Congregationalist tradition, that we expect to and are glad to meet our responsibilities as members and as individuals who “pay it forward.”

-To make it easy to give. Provide easy to access and links to contribute at any time, whether the individual is technically savvy online, prefers email, or just wants to to talk for assistance.

Make It Interesting, Colorful, and Readable. Like all of the website, stewardship components  compete for people’s time and attention. If your page looks more like the Rosetta Stone than an interesting magazine, get to work. Include photos of people, colorful charts and graphs, short but moving testimonials. Would it catch your eye, would you want to read it? No reason to be boring. Being readable means on a pad or a phone, not just on computers.

Stewardship Information Must be Easy to Find. This starts with the Landing Page. The fact that you are committed to each other and to our movement is certainly not something to be ashamed of; its an important part of who we are. And the layout does not need to be in one, long block of information. For example, a link marked Stewardship might include further links to stewardship, to the annual budget drive, to sharing the plate, to a capital campaign, etc. As a visitor to your site, I would want a single link that lead me to all of these types of discussions, allowing me to follow them all or choose my interest. Again, make sure what you have works on all types of devices, especially mobile.

Connect to and Reinforce with Other Media. Stewardship messaging should use all available media (social media, live and taped testimonials, bulletins, Sunday announcements, QR codes in the Order of Service, new member orientations, etc.). Be consistent in visuals and themes.

This is Not Just About Paying Bills or Meeting Obligations. If your messaging essentially only says “we do great work, but it costs money – please help pay,” you are shorting your congregation of inspiration they deserve. What about joy of giving, living a spirit of generosity, paying it forward, etc.?

But it IS also About Raising the Money and Paying the Bills. We are employers, keepers of the facilities we will pass on, providers of program resources. While this is only part of the stewardship story, it is important: this is our congregation, and we – not someone else – will care for it. Let’s say so.

Provide Links to Ask Questions or to Make Suggestions. Provide the opportunity to dialogue. Include  a dedicated email address (something like stewardship@1stUU.org) that is shared by several people to ensure mail is answered (have a plan for who replies with a cc to the others so no duplicate replies), as well as a phone number if that is their preferred way to communicate.

Be Clear That This is Part of Being in Community – We often speak of “the 3 T’s- Time, Talent, and Treasure.” Stewardship conversations  reinforce that we all do our part as best we can, sustaining each other and the institution. These “T’s” are not fungible or exchangeable, one for the other. We are each asked to do the best we can in each area – we can ask for no more. Some of us might have more time or talent, some more treasure, but we all do what we can, and that is enough.

Lots of Useful References and Benchmarks to Help Decide on Your Commitment. People will usually make good, generous decisions about their commitments if they have good information to work with and some comparative suggestions. Providing directly or by links useful tools for consideration is helpful. Suggestions might  include the Suggested Fair Share Giving Guide, SFSGG, Gift Ladders, Mean pledge, Median pledge, and  Cost per Household budget share.

Have an Annual Stewardship Communications Plan. Any message or medium will get stale, including the website. Nothing says “we don’t really care” as much as poorly constructed or outdated website posts. Keep it fresh  with regular reviews throughout the year;  plan for change.

Look Around and Steal (!) Good Ideas. Many congregations are doing clever things on their websites and with other media. Ask around, do some web surfing, consult sources like the UUA MONEY email group and the Facebook UU Stewardship Lab. Check YouTube for good  ideas and links to websites (not just Unitarian Universalists). If working with the Stewardship for Us consultants, we will bring  suggestions and links to good examples.

That should provide you a good start in looking at stewardship on your website with fresh eyes; now, ensure it’s functional, accessible, and engaging.

By the way, Carey McDonald, UUA Director of Outreach, just wrote an excellent blog you might find interesting “How I Made My Congregation’s Website in 90 Minutes.” You can find it at http://growinguu.blogs.uua.org

Bill Clontz is a stewardship consultant with the Stewardship for Us Team, supporting the UUA. You can reach him via email (bill@stewardshipforus.com), via  UUA Congregational Life (http://www.uua.org/finance/fundraising/index.shtml ), or through your regional staff.

This blog has a new posting no less than once a month. You may find it and more at our website, https://stewardshipforus.com. Comments and discussion are always welcome. You are welcome to sign up for stewardship updates at https://stewardshipforus.com/subscribe/.