Generosity Labs | Church Giving, Stewardship, Fundraising

https://www.barna.com/research/motivations-for-generosity/ 

https://healthresearchfunding.org/21-tithing-statistics/

CONTACT: jasonaltman@ehi.com

TRANSCRIPTION:

Kenny: Hey, welcome back, friends. This is Kenny Jahng, host of Generosity Labs podcast, where we talk about stewardship, giving and non-profit funding for churches as well as ministries. One of the things that we typically do is talk to pastors and other church leaders. Today, I'm excited because we're going to pivot a little bit on the conversation. I brought on today as a guest, Jason Altman from Enterprise Holdings, an organization in the marketplace so, that we can get a look on the inside of how corporate America and the marketplace is really looking at social good about volunteerism and other things related. So, welcome to the show today, Jason. Great to have you here today.

Jason: Hey, thanks Kenny. Thanks so much for having me.

Kenny: So right off the bat, let's talk about, who you are, what you do, what's your role at Enterprise Holdings? So, give us the 30-second rundown of Enterprise Holdings and your role there at the company.

Jason: Well, Enterprise Holdings provides a complete transportation solutions to large organizations right down to individuals. You probably know us best from enterprise rent-a-car or a car rental division. We've got an enterprise, national and LMO. I'm the regional vice president over central New Jersey in Staten Island. So, I've got responsibility for other stores and individuals that serve those markets.

Kenny: Nice. And, one of the things that I think people don't understand is that, you are more than just car rentals, right? As the transport systems. Why don't we just talk about that first, just for a second. What are some of the other things that you guys do? And then, also, the profile of the company itself is a little bit different. It's not a public company, right?

Jason: No, it's privately held. So your first question, when I say complete transportation solutions, we've got a leasing division, fleet services. Gosh, we've got a car-share, you know, ride share. We've got a bunch of different divisions of the organization up to and including a retail car sales. We actually sell our cars if you're in the market.

Kenny: You guys are one of the largest re-sellers of cars in the country, right? That's a little bit unknown fact. A hidden gem, basically. And then your structure, you are not a public company. You are private companies still, even though it's a behemoth of the brands that you own. It's quite amazing that you're still private.

Jason: Yeah. Privately held. One very committed family out of St Louis, Missouri.

Kenny: That's one of the things for me, my radar went off a little bit because it is one of those stories that because it's private because it's family-driven then culture and values usually come into play in a business setting. Is that something that you can share with us? What's the uniqueness of that which has helped enterprise flourish from that perspective?

Jason: Yeah. The company was certainly founded on a set of values and the larger we got becoming this behemoth, this you say, you know, ownership got concerned that we were straying from those values. So they established a set of criteria which really measures the operators against the degree to which they live and exhibit those values. And a lot of that involves supporting the communities. We serve to do good. But there's certainly operations and other things, but a great deal of it has to do with corporate social responsibility.

Year-end giving guide by Generis.com

leadnet.org

CONTACT INFORMATION

Blog: ChrisWillard.me

HIGHLIGHTS

[00:53] I started working at Leadership Network. I am the director of generosity and initiatives. In Leadership Network, what we try to do is to put churches into groups and we try to encourage them to kind of dream big about strategies that can really help them be more effective in the church. And the area that I lead is the area of generosity and stewardship and giving.

[1:35] Most of the work I am doing is trying to work with pastors who are trying to really create a revolution of generosity and stewardship and giving in their churches.

[2:09] We are entering a season talking about #GivingTuesday. #GivingTuesday, if you haven’t heard about it before, basically, is the Tuesday that follows Black Friday.

[3:04] #GivingTuesday is the place where I have given to things that are not necessarily connected to my church or to some of the ministries that I support.

[3:21] #GivingTuesday has encouraged me to give those gifts over the years and I think it’s a genius idea.

[4:07] Last year, 2016, there was 1.56 million individual gifts. And I think the total amount of donation over 40% growth over the year and I think it raised over $168 million this past year. That’s pretty size-able.

[4:33] I think churches need to get involved in Giving Tuesdays.

[4:54] I think the church is really in a perfect position to encourage people or to leverage the whole idea of #GivingTuesday.

[6:21] You need to raise money and draw attention not to your church but for what the church stands for.

[6:48] I think it would be a great way for a church to get a not-yet giver, to give a modest gift for the very first time.

[6:59] The reason people are sometimes a little bit suspicious about giving at churches is because churches haven’t done a great job with this topic.

[7:24] You can start to say in your congregation, “Look, if you’ve never given here in our church, we will encourage you to make Giving Tuesday your very first time to kind of get involved.”

[8:41] Probably, right now, here we are, in the beginning of October, it’s a little too early to start talking to your congregation about your year-end giving strategy, but it is definitely not too early for your team to start planning.your year-end giving strategy. And, in fact? You might also be a little bit behind. Christmas is coming, Kenny. It’s going to be here before you know it and we got to get ready for that.

[9:17] As the timing, when you’re going to be talking to your congregation about year-end giving, so you’re right. Because Giving Tuesday is the first Tuesday after Thanksgiving, it’s the perfect place to be the launching point for your year-end strategy. And if I could, I would encourage anybody, it’s a free download, on the Generis website, we got a free year-end giving guide. Look for the year-end giving guide. It is an awesome tool that gives you from start to finish what you need to do to put together a really effective year-end giving initiative.

[10:48] Anytime I hear a church leader say, “I am afraid if they give that money there, they won’t giv

• Destiny Life Church
• Kindrid
• Fellowship One

Contact John at johnray@dlc.tv

Recently, we sat down with Dean Sweetman of Tithe.ly to discuss the state of giving. In our discussion, we went how churches can find and use best practices when it comes to cultivating generosity.

Here are a few highlights:

[3:31] In ministry, we live on a budget and the budget has its forecast of regular revenue that comes in and whether it be weather-related cancellation or holidays or people just not showing up at the church on a weekly basis anymore on our culture.

[4:09] A lot of pastors don’t think business-mindset when it comes to church in giving. I think the shift that has to come to the body of Christ coming to mind is “I’m gonna run it as a business, I’m gonna use best business practices and to do that, I’ve had to have some kind of a way of projecting my income.”

[4:57] When you put on anywhere, anytime giving solutions in people’s hand it changes the whole dynamic.

[5:38] More than 50 % of the contribution that come in by a mobile are over 250 dollars. So, people, they are not scared to give with their phones. They’re actually okay to give big money. 18% of our contributions, a thousand dollars plus, we get a contribution of 50,000 dollars via text message so it’s a no-brainer.

[6:23] Everybody is pretty much there on trusting the mobile device being a point of sale and it’s just a matter of the church, instead of being behind that curve, staying in front of that curve.

[7:13] Digital giving is definitely three times the size the amount of the contribution. I think that’s the couple of things I think it’s the convenience it’s the easiness of people giving, but you’re also hitting the demographic that’s pretty affluent and surely doesn’t having problems that making contributions today.

[9:13] We found the people who are not wanting to give is that the church has made people give number one on a Sunday. And, they have to give a checkbook or cash. Well, millennials, 35 or under don’t know what a check account is, don’t know what a checkbook is. My kids don’t and you know, they don’t carry cash. Everything is debit card or credit card. So, it’s giving people the solution to be how to do it and then, use it by and in their vacation, listening to a church’s podcast, get a message, they looked in the calendar in the app whatever and then next kind of normal thing to do is to make their contribution.

[10:16] Once we tied in with the data, we found that across all these and we’re talking, tens of millions of dollars, ⅓  is on a Sunday, ⅔ is on Monday through Saturday

[12:35] Looking at the months of the year, the summer slump which is classic, like schools are getting out everyone is excited, but the pastor is not excited because he knows during the summer, his income gonna go down up to 30%. So, what happens is when you put again a mobile giving solution in the hands of the members, guess what? They’re going to use it and so what we see is the out numbers actually stay firm and our July-August is actually up and so, people when they have the ability to give with their phone, they are going to give even when they’re out of town and on vacation.

[15:40] other than the solution, providing tools, the other component probably the most key is education.

[16:37] The whole concept of Christianity is built around generosity, right? We’re taught in the New Testament to be generous with everything.

[16:51] So, whether you have a theological issue with tithe, let’s just put that aside for a second and decide that Jesus has taught us to be generous people. And I think that message can be preached, you know, if not on a weekly basis, certainly on a monthly basis, somewhere around the giving moment, you’re instructing your members about generosity and using the Bible to teach on God’s perspective on generosity.

[19:16] There’s the idea of getting people in the

CHECK OUT WWW.GENEROSITYLABS.ORG for more episodes, blog articles and more resources about giving and generosity.

TRANSCRIPTION

KENNY: Good day everybody. This is Kenny Jahng coming at you again and today, in the hot seat, we’ve got a good friend Joe Sangl. Thank you so much for being with us, Joe, today.

JOE: Fired up. Thanks so much brother.

KENNY: It is great to be with you especially because the conversation that we’ve been having with a lot of churches in the past recently center around the taboo topic of money. Giving and money. And I know that you are in that space. You’re talking about that everyday, actually. So, why don’t you share with our audience a little about who you are, what you do and how you help churches in particular.

JOE: My name is Joseph Sangl. And I founded an organization called I Was Broke, Now, I Am Not. and I’d like to say people, if you’re saying now, he is broke? You’re failing grammar class and it’s not fun being broke. And I got unbroke and I did it by following God’s Word and applying His principles. And as I went through the process, I have an Engineering degree from Purdue University, got my MBA, and I was still broke. And I was wondering, “Was it that difficult?” And I realized, I was thinking too hard that it’s really the reading of God’s Word and the application of it. I started finding all the scripture about money. And I’ve found out that God’s Word is not silent on it. But, my pastor had been silent on it. Therefore, I was educated by all those great marketers from Madison Avenue and I spend it all. I have the spiritual gift to making money disappear and I got deliverance. And I am on a one-man quest to help pastors get over their fear in talking about money because all their people, they make money decisions all day long.

KENNY: So, let’s get into that because I think it’s still even today in 2017, a little bit of a taboo topic for these pastors and church leaders that we’re talking to, they’re afraid to bring it up. They feel like they’re begging for money. They feel like it’s out of place. It’s not an etiquette. In fact, I’ve had lunch with a pastor this week who said, he literally doesn’t have any data on how much money people give in his church. They put up a security wall, so that he literally doesn’t know. So, what is the first step? If people here listening today want to embrace a culture of generosity, how do they bring up money and tithing and giving if they’ve never preached on it before, right, which is very possible, they don’t do it in classes, or workshops or seminars, or even in the bible studies, what’s the first step? How do you bring it up for the first time the pulpit or from the stage?

JOE: That’s a great question and I would say, they need to start with the “Why”. Why do they want to talk about it because if it’s just to get them to give, that’s not appropriate “why”. If

CHECK OUT WWW.GENEROSITYLABS.ORG for more episodes, blog articles and more resources about giving and generosity.

TRANSCRIPTION

KENNY: Welcome everybody. This is Kenny Jahng with Generosity Labs. Thank you so much for joining us for today's episode. I'm really happy and excited to talk to a new friend of mine across the digital information highway in the Oregon, Idaho Conference of the United Methodist Church. This is just one of the pleasures that I have a meeting people across the country that talk about generosity. So, Cesie, welcome to the show today.

CESIE: Thank you! Great to be here.

KENNY: Let’s just get started and I want to know a little bit of more about who you are and what your ministry is all about. Let's start with where you are located and how you're connected to the conference and some of your roles there.

CESIE: Okay, great. Well, I am located in Salem, Oregon and so it's a capital and I'm not even wearing Birkenstocks, so how's that? So, not really a true Oregonian. But, what I do for my work in general is I'm a Development Director. I do a lot of development stuff for nonprofits here in the Salem area, so I work with Arts. I work with some child abuse assessment program and I work with the program that helps kids get new clothes that poor kids and kids in need. And then, I have this whole other aspect of my life where I work with the church. I am a late person but have been a lifelong United Methodist with trails down to The Jesus Movement and Sojourners and a variety of different places all over the world. So, what I do now with United Methodist Church and a Methodist Church and with the Oregon Idaho conference is I write a blog called Inspiring Generosity. The work that I did through all my development work really lead me to see that clergy sadly are not trained in seminary to raise money or even how to do development work. And I see a very different fundraising which is a one-time event as opposed to development which is relationship building and the church is primed for just picking up the tips that somebody like myself has figured out over the last 20 years -- I've been doing this for about 20 years now -- that can translate very easily into the church. So, that’s what I do. So, I write a blog called Inspiring Generosity. I consult with churches about how they are doing stewardship or financial crisis that they’re in. I do all that kind of stuff.

KENNY: I love it and that is a good point. When I went to Princeton seminary. there were no classes on relationship donor developments and none of that stuff. And the question is, where is tha

• Kindrid
• Faith Family Church
• Leadership Triangle

TRANSCRIPTION

KENNY: Greetings podcast land. My name is Kenny Jahng and this is the Generosity Labs podcast. Generosity and giving as it relates to the church is one of the biggest and most important conversation we can have among faith communities. And, that’s why we’re here today with Cindy Petroff. So glad to have you on the show today, Cindy.

CINDY: Thank you for having me Kenny.

KENNY: You worked in many fields of accounting, I believe, including government and public manufacturing and now non-profit. I think you’re currently on staff there at Faith Family Church, leading the accounting department. I think you’ve been doing that for 15-18 years, now?

CINDY: Little over 18 years, yes.

KENNY: I’m sure you’ve seen the evolution and the growth and just different time periods of how the church has handled money and giving and generosity.

CINDY: Yes. From 18 years ago to what it is now today is literally different.

KENNY: Completely different.

KENNY: First, let’s just hear a little bit more about you, Cindy and the church.Tell us a little bit more about you and what your role really means for the church. Tell us also, what is your church community like? How many people gather on a Sunday? Who and what would we see if we came to visit in a service, sat in and take a look around on a Sunday?

CINDY: Faith Family Church is a rather large church. We’ve got, on weekends, anywhere between 3000 to 4000 people that regularly attends. We actually have a Saturday night service and a Sunday morning service. Because we do find a lot of people who prefer to come on a Saturday Night compared to Sunday morning. We got a real mixed crowd of people who attend here -- from young people who have a great youth program to people who have been here since the church began. Myself, am the Director of Finance here. I have been in that position, different titles, but basically the same position for 18 years. So, I like to try new technologies and I like to sometimes, there are some hesitation with that. But, you know, I’ve really watched not only the church grow but also things evolved with time.

KENNY: One of the things I love hearing about your church in Ohio is that you actually brought onboard digital giving, introduced it to the church as a response to some of the younger generation there. Tell

• Kindrid
• Christian Life Center
• Corporate Business Review

Reach out to Nadine on email nadine@clcftl.org

TRANSCRIPTION

Kenny: Hi to all our church leaders tuning in today. My name is Kenny Jahng, and Generosity and Giving as it relates to the church is one of the biggest and most important conversations we can have across faith communities. And, that’s why today we have Nadine Raphael. So glad to have you in the show today, Nadine!

Nadine: Thank you so much. Glad to be here.

Kenny: So, Nadine, you’ve been with the Christian Life Center in Florida for the last 16 years, right?

Nadine: That is correct. Yes.

Kenny: I believe that you served a variety of roles: business administrator, community life pastor and now, most recently taken a role of chief operating officer.

Nadine: It’s correct. Yes.

Kenny: So, let’s just get right into it. Let’s hear a little bit more about you and your church. Tell us a little bit about what your role really means on a daily basis and what is your church community look like. If we were to come visit on a Sunday and sit down on a seat and look around, what it would look like? What would we feel like in your community?

Nadine: Christian Life Center has been around for over 40 years. Recently, we went to a transition as our previous senior pastor took the opportunity to raise up the next generation of leaders and then, move out into more international missions. Our current senior pastor, Pastor Tom Manning has been for this for 5 years. Prior to him getting there was pretty much a traditional older crowd that we knew. It was a strong crowd. It has been around for a long time, but we knew that we needed to connect more with younger families, young adults and things of that nature. And so, over the past 5 years, we have more of into just a melting pot from the youngest of youngs. We have a strong children's ministry. Our young adults is a vibrant community of one thousand. And then, we have from young adults to obviously senior age. So we are populated for about forty-five thousand. Now, we are making a strong presence in the c

• Kindrid
• Hope Fellowship Church
• Fellowship One
• Global Leadership Summit
• Leadership Network

Find more interviews, transcripts and more at www.generositylabs.org/blog

We sat down with Craig Olson of Highland Park Church in Lakeland, FL to talk about digital giving.

Craig shares his congregation’s experience in, not just digital giving, but with a newly adopted text-to-give strategy.

The conversation includes how they are using keywords and text-based giving to raise funds for specific causes.

Show Notes

In our discussion, Craig mentioned:

• Kindrid - kindrid.com
• ACS - acstechnologies.com
• Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit willowcreek.com/events/leadership/index.html
• 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by John Maxwell
• Courageous Leadership by Bill Hybels
• Dan Reiland’s Blog - danreiland.com

Watch the video version of this episode at www.genersitylabs.org

Contact Craig -- craig@hpnaz.org

Watch the video version of this episode at www.generositylabs.org

• Bluebunny Ice Cream
• Kindrid
• Thompson Station Church
• Less Clutter and Noise by Kem Meyer
• Instagram

You can reach out to Matt via email-  mallen@tsclife.org

Watch the video version of this interview at www.generositylabs.org

Join us every week, right here, for The Generosity Labs Podcast. Check out www.generositylabs.org for more details and fantastic free resources made available just for you and your church!