What do you do to prepare communication goals for the coming year? I can share a few things I do, using reports from the StaffWeb.

I regularly use the Top 50% report tab in the Ministry Partner Giving Analysis Report (MPGA). In our case, 37 of our financial partners provide 50% of our annual income, I save their names in TntMPD (I use the User Status field, but you could also put them in a group.) We also have another 38 names who provide the remaining 80% of our income.  We have 190 donors. The Top 50% make up 20% of our total donors while the High 80% names brings us up to 40% of our financial partners. (I recommend grouping names because you can’t possibly keep up with several hundred people equally.)

Once you’ve figured out the giving range of these two groups, you could just determine the groups by their average monthly donation. For us, donors at $85 per month and higher are in the Top 50% group; donors at $45 per month and up are in the High 80%. You could put all your churches in one of these groups, too.

Use these groups next year to be more effective in connecting with your donor team.  Try these ideas or something similar:

1. Plan to phone all in the Top 50% once during the year (for us, three per month)
2. Send an anniversary or birthday card to the financial partners in both groups
3. In addition to these cards, send an Easter card or Thanksgiving card to the Top 50%

You’re probably already sending Christmas cards to all your financial partners; your Top 50% would receive two cards and a phone call every year; your High 80% donors would receive one card.  In our case, that would only be 75 anniversary cards spread throughout the year and 37 cards to send at Easter and /or Thanksgiving.  If this is too much to start up, cut back on the cards and maybe just do the Top 50%. You can try more groups and types of communication another year after this is a habit for you. I’ve been doing this for decades.(Read more ideas for sending holiday cards.) 

Here’s another idea. Look at the Annual Donation Summary Report on the StaffWeb in the MPD & Donations section:

• Sort on First Gift or on Total Gifts to Date. Make a task in MPDx or a Group and tasks in TntMPD for this next year to send gifts to financial partners who’ve reached milestones, like donating for 5, 10, 20 years or reaching totals of $5000, $15,000, etc.
• Sort on the Number of Gifts. If monthly donors gave 9 to 11 gifts last year, then check the Ministry Partners Reminders report to make sure these donors are receiving a reminder or plan to contact them to consider giving through Recurring eGift.

How do you use these reports and tools?

NOTES:

• The links in this post will work if you are signed in to the Staff Web. Go to MPD & Donations if these aren’t working for you.
• You can print your MPGA and 13 Month reports at any time, but it’s advantageous to print them now. I’ll write about this on Monday. 
• Click here for more ideas on using TntMPD. Learn how to create Saved Groups in TntMPD.
• This image is available on Wikimedia Commons.