We’ve all heard myths about fundraising.  These often lead us to do the exact opposite of what we should be doing to raise money.  We’ll be running a twelve part series de-bunking fundraising myths to take a close look at these false assumptions about giving.

This is the ninth in the series and we will run one each month (if you can’t wait to a year to read all of them you can purchase the book Beyond Fundraising: A Complete Guide to Congregational Stewardship and read them in Chapter 1: The Spiritual Roots of Stewardship).  Does it make sense to publicize past due financial commitments to the entire congregation (of course, without breaking confidentiality)?

As always, we encourage you to leave comments.

Fundraising Myth #9

Myth: The church newsletter is a good place to include current financial commitment fulfillment information because it prods people to keep their payments up-to-date.

Truth: People usually know their fulfillment status of their annual commitment. If I am current with my payments, a public newsletter article bemoaning the sad state of payments may only cause me to be upset at others who are not up-to-date. If I have fallen behind, I know that I have fallen behind and don’t need a public reminder in the newsletter. It is find to spend monthly personal reminders to all donors, and it is a caring gesture to make pastoral phone calls to those who have fallen behind, but avoid public broadcasting. Besides, financial fulfillment rates are often 95 percent or more of the initially committed amount. A lower fulfillment rate indicates a problem that won’t be resolved in the monthly newsletter. It often reflects the impersonal way in which people were asked to contribute.