Is Your Church Old-Fashioned? Business Tips To Help Bring Your Ministry Into The 21st Century
Most people who run churches don’t know the first thing about business and marketing. You may think that a religious organization has nothing to do with business, but it does. If you want people to come to your church, you need to make sure that they know about you. You have to convince people to choose your ministry over the competition. In the same respect, you also need to make money so that you can keep the church going and pay for maintenance costs. If people think that your church is old-fashioned, your attendance rates will drop and so will your funding. Use these business tips to ensure that does not happen.
Change the way people can donate
When people come to church, they can donate money by putting a few coins on a collection plate. As you know by now, that means of getting donations is not the most efficient in the world. Even when the room is full of people, you still don’t get enough money to cover the heating costs for the day. So, what can you do to change that? Well, if you make it easy for people to donate to you, you will find that they give you loads of cash. You could set up a ‘Just Giving’ page or allow people to make bank transfers to you. If you modernize your donation system, you will get much more money than you do now.
Engage with your congregation online
People come to church on a Sunday, go home and then forget about you for the rest of the week, right? Wrong. You need ways in which you can reach out to your congregation during the working week. You can use social media streams to communicate with people when they are at home. Set up a Twitter and Facebook for the church and ask your congregation to follow you on both platforms. You can update the accounts with inspirational quotes from the Bible or news about church events.
Get a bespoke website for your church
You may already have a web page, but do you use it? Many organizations have sites that they don’t touch at all. You need a good church website design and an interactive platform if you want your site to be functional. When people search for you online, they should come across your site. Make sure that you have all the information they need on there. You should include some background information about the building and organization. You will also need to highlight the times you have services and who takes them.
Sell merchandise and fun gifts
If funds are tight at your ministry, you need to think about ways you can make money. Most churches host jumble sales and bake sales in the hope of getting extra cash for the church. You need to set your sights a little higher than that if you want to secure proper funding for your organization. Why not start selling merchandise online or in the church itself? You can get some unique pieces, such as mugs or notebooks, which you can sell to people. If you don’t already have a gift shop on the church premises, it might be time to open one.
Reach out to people and market yourself
If only a handful of people attends your services, you need to do something about it fast. If you want to get your message out there, you can use marketing streams to do so. Of course, you can always try to expand your reach on social media so that new people hear about you. You might also want to create flyers for the church and speak to people on the street. Whatever you do, you need to find ways to engage with people so that they want to attend your services.
Just because your church is religious, that doesn’t mean that it can’t be a success. Use these tips to help you change your ministry for the better.
Featured image credit: ShutterStock
