Top 10 Church Stewardship Ideas,
Tips, and Trends to Inspire Generosity and Increase
Giving
Leading Philanthropy Expert and
Bestselling Generosity Author Provides Valuable Advice
to Churches, Pastors, and Leaders
COLORADO SPRINGS, CO - In today's changing financial
world, many churches need helpful ideas and
encouragement on how to encourage generosity and
increase giving. Dr. Brian Kluth, bestselling author of
"The 40 Day Spiritual Journey to a More Generous Life"
recommends the following Top 10 stewardship ideas, tips
and trends to help churches. Dr. Kluth is a leading
authority and media expert on the subject of charitable
and church giving, generosity, and philanthropy.
Here are the TOP 10 stewardship tips, ideas and trends
to help churches inspire generosity and increase giving:
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#1 - Help people
get out of debt and financial trouble.
Groups
like www.crown.org,
www.daveramsey.com, and
www.goodsenseministry.com
can help you offer
classes and counselors in your church to help get a
grip on their out of control finances
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#2 - Teach people
how to manage all of their finances.
The Bible has 2350 verses on this subject.
Organizations like
www.MAXIMUMgenerosity.org and
www.GenerousGiving.org has materials to
help churches teach people how to manage their
finances and generosity from time-tested principles
and wisdom found in the Bible.
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#3 - Make the
offering baskets bigger.
I am not speaking about incresing the actual size of
the plate, basket, bag, box or envelope - - but
increasing the number of ways you allow people to
give to your church. (See ideas #4-7)
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#4 -
Setup electronic and on-line giving.
More and
more people are moving away from check and cash
financial transations to managing nearly all of
their finances electronically. Tens of thousands of
churches around the country are signing up with
companies like
www.vancoservices.com and others to help people
be able to give electronically through an automatic
bank account deduction weekly, biweekly or monthly.
These companies can also provide for on-line website
giving directly from a church's website.
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#5 - Open up an
account to accept gifts of stock.
By opening up a brokerage account (which can be done
for no cost and no monthly fees), you can then let
your people know that you can accept stock
transfers. This provides a large tax savings to the
donor and increases the size of gift the church will
receive.
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#6 - Allow people
to give gifts of vehicles or appreciated assets.
By
signing up for an account with
www.idonate.com a church will be able to accept
donations of vehicles, jewelry, art, land, property,
stocks, investments, business interests, and much
more. The good news is that the www.idonate.com organization
handles the entire transactions and then gives the
proceeds of the sale to the church.
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#7 - Encourage
estate planning gifts.
91% of a person's
wealth is in their estate. Yet 90% of Americans
either don't have a will or have not remembered
their church in their will. Your denomination HQ,
www.plannedgiving.com,
www.TheFamilyOrganizer.org and other groups can
help provide you with resources to encourage this
type of gift. Not only will the church receive a
generous gift, but the person will likely save
thousands of dollars that would have been diverted
to tax payments. Oftentimes a church or charitable
gift through a person's estate does not short-change
family members but primarily cuts down the amount of
taxes a person has to pay out at their death.
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#8 - Put financial
information about your church on your website.
People want to know details about a church's
finances so they can give with confidence. Here's a
link to one church that provides helpful financial
information on their website:
www.1freechurch.org
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#9 - Conduct a
churchwide generosity focus.
The
www.GenerousLife.info Bible devotional has
become a nationwide (300,000 copies) and worldwide
bestseller (42 foreign language) because churches
have ordered the devotional and given copies to
every member of their church. The devotional takes
people through 40 Biblical principles, 400 Scripture
verses, and weekly worksheets to help them better
manage their finances and generosity. Some churches
have reported increases of 10-50% in their giving to
their general offerings or building fund campaigns
when utilizing this booklet in their church.
-
#10
- Get 35 more ideas on this subject.
There has been a FREE National Report
written on the "45 Best Church Practices to Increase
Giving". The webpage is: http://kluth.org/1NatlReport.htm.
If
you begin to practice any of these Top 10 tips, ideas
and trends, you will begin to leap forward in your
ability to inspire people to live more generously and
increase their giving to your church.
ABOUT
THE AUTHOR:
Dr. Brian Kluth is a pastor, bestselling generosity
author of the "40 Day Spiritual Journey to a More
Generous Life" (300,000 copies and translations in 40+
languages), conference speaker, and leading authority
and media expert on philanthropy, charitable and church
giving, and generosity. He has done media
interviews for Kiplinger Personal Money magazine, NBC
Dateline, CBN TV, NBC News, and national TV and radio
talk shows. He can be reached at
bk@kluth.org or 719-930-4000.
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