We’re excited to have church giving expert, Kacie Frazier, on this podcast. In this episode, we discuss transparency in church budgets, as well as how we can get over the stigma of talking about giving in our churches.
Our friends at Kindrid are being crazy generous. If you Tweet @_Kindrid and tell them why you need a church app, they’ll make sure you get one of those too. Did you hear that? Online giving AND a church app—FREE. Just tweet @_Kindrid and tell them why you need a church app.
For more information, click here! http://bit.ly/2GIA1JH
Transcript:
Katie Allred: Welcome to the Church Communications Podcast, the podcast that celebrates church communicators that are around the world. Our podcast offers practical advice for your church communication strategy needs. And this podcast is brought to you by Katie Allred and Josh Taylor of ChurchCommunications.com
Katie Allred: Welcome to the Church Communications Podcast. I’m Katie Allred. And joined with me today again is the Josh Taylor.
Josh Taylor: Hey, Katie.
Katie Allred: How’s it going?
Josh Taylor: Good. How are you?
Katie Allred: I’m hanging in there today.
Josh Taylor: Yeah? Every time you say, “Okay,” or, “I’m hanging in there.”
Katie Allred: That’s usually how I feel.
Josh Taylor: Has it been a tough summer?
Katie Allred: Yeah, it has been. I’ve been very-
Josh Taylor: Do we need to talk and do some counseling?
Katie Allred: I’ve been very busy. Maybe we’ll do that after this. But today is a really exciting podcast just because we’re joined with Kacie Frazier from the Kindrid team. You’ve heard a little bit about Kindrid throughout the season, and we’re just really excited that they joined us today. Kacie is the church success lead at Kindrid, and I’m sure we’ll actually learn what that means. So, hi Kacie. Thanks for joining us.
Kacie Frazier: Thank you. Hi, Katie. Hi, Josh.
Josh Taylor: Hey, Kacie.
Katie Allred: So how’s it going?
Kacie Frazier: It’s going, right? What did you say, “I’m hanging in there”?
Katie Allred: Yeah. I always imagine that kitten poster, right? With the cat that’s just barely hanging in there.
Kacie Frazier: I’m making it, yeah. No, busy summer. It’s all good.
Josh Taylor: Well, that’s good. So you are the church success leader for Kindrid. Tell us a little bit about what your role is at Kindrid. First, tell us more about Kindrid because our listeners have been hearing about Kindrid because you guys have sponsored this season. We’ve really enjoyed talking about giving and online giving throughout the season. And you guys are making that affordable, not only to have an app, but also to do online giving for churches.
Katie Allred: And texted gifts.
Josh Taylor: Yeah, and texted gifts. So tell us a little bit about Kindrid, and tell us about your role at Kindrid.
Kacie Frazier: Yeah, I’d love to. The short answer is Kindrid is a digital giving provider. So we provide exactly what you said, online, text, in app, kiosk. Just about any way that you would like to give your church or nonprofit organization money, Kindrid will help facilitate that. What I love about Kindrid is we were founded by the church for the church. And of course we’re faith based nonprofits, not just traditional churches. But with that in mind, stewardship is a huge piece of our heart, and growing generosity. So we love providing these really awesome and excellent tools, but at super affordable rates so that those churches and organizations can serve their communities and ultimately grow the kingdom with a really affordable product that truly meets their needs.
Kacie Frazier: So my role is really fun. I don’t have to sell anything. I just get to serve our churches. So once you are in the Kindrid family, it’s my role to partner. I love partnering with our pastors and communicators to help them become more comfortable talking about money, hopefully raising more money because churches are nonprofit organizations, right? At the end of the day, churches are fundraising. Of course we’re tithing. We’re offering. We’re giving, but it’s fundraising, so I have no problem talking about money. And I love teaching pastors how to be more comfortable doing that and hopefully raising more money to serve their communities and grow the kingdom.
Katie Allred: I think that’s a great segue into our first question for you. So we’re just recapping the season about all that we’ve talked about. So, why do you think churches are afraid to talk about giving?
Kacie Frazier: Talk about giving? I think people are really uncomfortable talking about money, right? especially in church settings. Everyone is so afraid when the bucket’s going to get passed, and you’re going to see, “Oh, so-and-so saw that I didn’t give.” And you want it to be like, “Oh, I gave online. I promise I gave,” or, “I have a recurring gift.” It’s uncomfortable, but I think we talk about money every day, right?
Katie Allred: Right.
Kacie Frazier: So why not talk about it in church? We talk about our bills. We talked about our groceries. We talk about how expensive our kids’ whatever. I just paid a whole bunch for my daughter’s gymnastics just yesterday. I talked about money a lot yesterday. Why not talk about it in church? It’s just uncomfortable. And honestly I think churches get a bad rap about only asking for money. So it’s kind of become this really weird like, “We just don’t want to talk about it. We don’t want to offend anybody.” Well, we talk about money all the time, so why not make it a really normal part of our church conversation?”
Josh Taylor: Yeah.
Katie Allred: Yeah. So what do you think’s at stake if people don’t give?
Kacie Frazier: Well, it’s like we said in the beginning, we don’t invest in our communities in the ways that we really can. One of the things I love about my home church is we talk about generosity every single time. You will never attend a service where you don’t hear generosity offered to every single person. Whether it’s the first time or the 100th time they’ve come, you’re going to hear us talk about the opportunity to be generous, right?
Katie Allred: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Kacie Frazier: And it’s not just this vague like, “Let’s give our money,” and we don’t know where it goes. Our community partners are so connected to the mission of our church that I know exactly where my money’s going in my community. Right?
Katie Allred: Right.
Kacie Frazier: And it’s so transparent. I love … We connect the cause to the ask. So what’s at stake is my actual community, my neighbors, my neighborhood. My community partners are not going to have what I know my church is supporting them in. So there’s this really tangible connection, and we often miss the boat on that. But so much is at stake, not just with missions and spreading the gospel, but our actual communities and meeting really tangible needs too.
Josh Taylor: So your role there is to help churches get more people invested into the ministries to be successful in the area, especially when it comes to giving and online giving. I want to talk more about that and some of the strategies that we have in just a minute. But as a followup to that last question, what would happen in our churches if more people did give.
Kacie Frazier: Well, our reach is just greater, right? It’s a numbers game. So if every single person gave, there are such a tangible connection to where those funds go. And I think that’s often the missed opportunity, right? So, so many people give, or they don’t give because they don’t know where those funds are going. So when we do connect that to a very tangible cause and we make that really transparent, I think people are looking for an opportunity to give and would be more generous if they knew exactly where those funds were going. We just need to do a better job of communicating how those funds are used and how truly important they are to fulfill these goals and these community engagement opportunities right there. I think the local church is the hope of the world, and we fund that quite literally with our dollars.
Katie Allred: Yeah. I think I love what you’re talking about with transparency. I think that matters to millennials on a whole different level because we’ve seen scandals where money has been mismanaged, and we also don’t have a lot of money. So when we give it, it’s so important, right? We want to make sure that what we’re giving towards is being used correctly and isn’t being mismanaged. There isn’t something I hate more than finding out a budget wasn’t used correctly, or wasn’t set, or that that money was mismanaged.
Kacie Frazier: Totally. I love the, you mentioned millennials. There’s different types of givers, right? And a more traditional giver most likely gives out of obedience, from biblical obedience. That’s just what we do. We give our tithe. But that’s not every generation. And we do have skeptical givers, but the younger generation statistically is very, very generous. They may not have as much to give, but they’re very eager to give. But they’re going to have some questions, so let’s have those answers prepared and transparent and readily available so that we can then accept and hopefully make it very easy to accept that donation, remove all the barriers to giving. And transparency is a barrier for giving, right? Not just the ease of the gift, but having that answer super easy. “Yes, we’d love for you to give. And here’s exactly where it’s going. Here’s the administrative cost. Here’s the overhead. Here’s exactly how much of your gift is going to reach the cause that you think you’re giving to.”
Josh Taylor: Yeah.
Katie Allred: Right.
Josh Taylor: I think that’s so important because there is a difference in those generations. I can think of my parents and my grandparents, they give because that was just … It was a habit that they created. It was a discipline that they did. There was a lot more trust with their leadership. And almost like, “We’re going to give to this, and it’s between them and God, what our leaders do with that. And we’re going to trust.”
Josh Taylor: With younger folks, we do often get a bad rap. But honestly, I do think millennials and younger, if you put a mission in front of us, we’re going to be all about it. But if you’re going to ask us to do something without there being a real mission or reason why, then we are going to be skeptical. We’re probably not going to jump on board and invest our resources into it. But if you put a mission in front of us, we’re going to jump on it, especially if it’s a mission that we’re really passionate about.
Katie Allred: Yeah.
Kacie Frazier: Oh yeah. I mean that’s kind of a different topic, but you’re talking about cause marketing, right? And that in and of itself is such a generational thing, almost impossible to find something that you can give towards that is not a give back or a matching donation. That is a very generational thing with cause marketing. So, churches really are not exempt from that or any different and can honestly lean into that to increase the generosity, to blow up the amount of giving in a community by connecting with a cause. And I’m not suggesting that you shouldn’t give without a cause, but helping connect the cause to the giver. People are just ready to give. They just want to know to where.
Katie Allred: Right.
Josh Taylor: That’s a great point. The followup question to that is, do you feel like in your experience most people are just naturally generous?
Kacie Frazier: I think we are. I think we are. Just innately, we want to give. But again, how much do I have available to give, and what is important to me? So as a mother, things like a women’s ministries and children’s services, that might be really dear to my heart where something completely different could appeal to a different type of giver. We all kind of have those avenues which, again, I love that my home church makes it very clear who our community partners are. And I don’t have to necessarily support all of them, but I know exactly what might connect with me and my family. So not just our tithe, but then my offering, “Where is that truly going?” It might be something that’s special to me. I want to be generous. I may not have a ton to give, but hopefully my church talked about money. Hopefully my pastor viewed speaking about money as a pastoral opportunity, right? teaching me and my family how to have financial freedom so that we have the margin to give. That is a pastoral opportunity. So going all the way back, why should we talk about money? Because it’s pastoral, right?
Katie Allred: Right.
Kacie Frazier: And then we have this margin. Then we’re allowing people an opportunity to connect with their innate generosity. I truly believe that generosity is a characteristic of God. So we are being like our creator when we are giving. We have to have the margin, therefore we have to have the training. We have to have the financial freedom to do it, and then we have to know where to give. And then ultimately it has to be really easy. We have to remove those barriers. When I have it to give, it’s got to be simple.
Katie Allred: Kacie, you’re just preaching over here. [crosstalk 00:11:52] I was like, “Tell me more.”
Kacie Frazier: I would love to.
Katie Allred: Want a giving solution that inspires generosity without blowing through your budget? Kindrid’s offering a totally free $0 per month online giving account Our Church Communications’ listeners. That’s right. You get online giving for free.
Josh Taylor: Look, this is a special offer, so act fast. Go to Kindrid.com/ChurchCommunications to join. That’s K-I-N-D-R-I-D.com/ChurchCommunications, and you can join there.
Katie Allred: Okay. So Kindrid believes generosity is one of the most powerful witnesses to the gospel. It transforms communities. We believe that too. That’s why they created this deal. They make it affordable for you to equip 100% of your church to participate in your vision.
Josh Taylor: Remember, this offer won’t last long, so go to Kindrid.com/ChurchCommunications and save thousands with an exclusive deal.
Katie Allred: Yeah, we can’t wait.
Josh Taylor: So I want to get into in just a minute some of the ways that you help churches be successful in the area of online giving. But before we do that, why should churches implement online giving as part of their giving strategy or giving methods?
Kacie Frazier: Because I don’t have a checkbook or carry cash. I think that I have a checkbook somewhere. I honestly know that I do. I don’t know where it is. Because, to be honest, I’m not present every single Sunday when the bucket passes by because I get paid a different day of the week. Sometimes I go on vacation. So, all of these and so many other reasons are why digital giving has to be available. There are so many statistics of how many people pay at least one monthly bill from their smartphone. We’re used to digital transaction. To not offer digital giving, you’re just simply giving people a reason not to give. And again, we just said they want to, so provide the opportunity, even whether they are physically present or not, in a variety of ways. So some people may want to go online. Some people still want to log on to an actual computer, totally cool. Click the church’s website. Click here to give. Great. I’ve got my smart phone. I might want to text. I may want to use a kiosk at the church or a mobile app. So making all of those available.
Kacie Frazier: I love that when I first came to to Kindrid, it talked about engaging 100% of your givers. And at first that kind of struck me as odd. “Are we trying to get everyone to text?” I was like, “My father is never going to text his offering.” It was like, “No, no. We’re just going to provide 100% of your congregation a way to give.” And if that’s still by writing a check and dropping cash in the bucket, that is fantastic. I don’t want to take that away from anyone. Generosity is generosity. But for me, who is never going to write a check, what method would I use to give? Great, let’s make that available.
Katie Allred: Right.
Josh Taylor: Yeah.
Katie Allred: And a lot of people aren’t in church on Sundays, like you said, right? I think it’s down. Church attendance obviously is down across the board. Even if you are what you would consider a regular church attender, I think it’s … There’s been some statistics. I should probably look this up and verify, but I think it’s like you go to one out of the four Sundays a month. That’s what most people consider like, “I’m a regular church attender.” I think we just have to figure out what does that look like for giving. We have to figure out ways to just engage those people with the rest of the days too, right? Not just Sunday, but every day of the week.
Josh Taylor: So I’m a church leader, and I have a opted into Kindrid and the online giving software. I’ve got it on my website. I have text to give capabilities. I have an app. Now how do I become successful in implementing this into our church, onboarding our church to get used to using it? What are some tips that you offer to pastors and church leaders to be successful in the area of online giving?
Kacie Frazier: I love that you asked this question. The very first thing you do is schedule a call with me, and I will teach you all of the ways. First, truly … I mean, I say that half jokingly, but Kindrid does offer free success coaching to every single one of our churches, everyone on your staff. There is no limit of how many times you can schedule some time with us, and we will dive into whatever topic you need. But launching digital giving successfully at your church is critical to seeing utilization, right? So what I mean by that is that pastor, that church communicator, who is that congregation trusted they’re giving to? So who is their communicator? Who’s the face that they see every Sunday? And then what is that person, what is that pastor saying about giving? What I hope they’re saying is, “I am so excited to tell you about a new way you can give. And it’s online. It’s through text. It’s through this app. I’ve done it myself.” And hold up your phone and show, “I done it,” or, “I’m going to do it right now.” We can do screen caps where it’s on the screen behind the pastor. He can do it live and say, “This is my family’s way of giving now.”
Kacie Frazier: One of the things I love that we can provide is the opportunity for the giver to actually help even cover the processing fee. Back to the very beginning, transparency, I would love for pastors to say, “I love that we can offer digital giving, but let’s be honest, there’s an expense involved. So in order for us to be an even more generous church, you have the option to help us absorb some of that cost. You’ll see it transparently on your transaction before you click give. You can opt in or out. It’s entirely up to you. We are never demanding that you do this. It is totally optional. But if you do that … ” And tell them the numbers, and I’ll run the math for you. Let’s say if in one year’s time if our congregation absorbed this 2%, or one and a half, or three, whatever it may be, we would actually be 50,000, 25,000, 1,000, whatever more dollars generous by you helping us with that expense. That level of transparency, I think people really, really respond to that. They go, “Man, my pastor’s really comfortable about talking about money, so I have no reason to doubt where this is actually going.”
Kacie Frazier: Back to the beginning, pastor demonstrate it, talk openly about it, and then talk about it again and again and again. You can’t just launch it once and hope that everyone understood or that everyone was present that weekend. So we say launch and then relaunch and then relaunch. How often are you talking about finances? How often are you having a financial series? Well when you do, go back and assume that … You hopefully have some new attenders who missed your first launch. Hopefully your church is growing. You got to give that message over and over. We offered the opportunity to receive salvation more than once, right?
Katie Allred: Right.
Kacie Frazier: So we should probably talk about giving more than once too, right?
Josh Taylor: Yeah.
Katie Allred: Yeah.
Kacie Frazier: It’s not a set it and forget it kind of thing.
Katie Allred: Right.
Josh Taylor: Yeah.
Katie Allred: And it’s an obedience thing. Like you talked about earlier, it’s definitely a thing. As you grow as a Christian, mature in your walk, it’s one of the steps that you take in obedience to following Christ. So it’s really important that we figure out the right way [crosstalk 00:19:31].
Josh Taylor: Yeah, it’s a discipline. We want to encourage people. It’s an act of worship that we want to make sure. To me, it’s not the tell all sign of a healthy church, but it’s one of them.
Kacie Frazier: Absolutely. Well, and even recurring giving, you just talked about how people are there maybe once a month. So how important is that congregation to hear, “Hey, it actually helps our church plan when you plan your giving as well.” So we make it very simple. Do your a gift and choose to make this a recurring gift. Once a month or the 1st and the 15th, you can control that. You can shift the start dates. You can change your amount any time, but that quite literally helps our church plan and, again, be more generous because we can prepare for that. Even when you’re not here, you’re still able to give. And that sincerely helps our church. We don’t make that an opportunity enough, and people don’t know that it’s truly a need unless they hear their pastor say it.
Katie Allred: Yeah.
Josh Taylor: So what are some of the tools that you provide church leaders in this onboarding, launching process? Specifically whether it’s timelines or strategies or copy. “Here’s emails you should do, graphics you should have.” What are some of the tools that you guys offer?
Kacie Frazier: Yeah, we do offer free engagement materials, so slides you can download, scripts that are not meant to be copy and pasted, but a template. I want it to sound like you, not like me. Your church knows your vocabulary, so take this just as an idea, as a launching pad, and then make it sound like you. Yeah, launch scripts, downloads, engagement slides, timelines, strategy sessions, we will … Every church is so different. It’s not a one size fits all method. So, how does your congregation talk about finances? How have you … Are you transitioning from a different platform? Is this the very first time digital giving is even an option? That’s a different conversation. So we really customized per pastor and per church what are your needs, and we’ll go from there.
Josh Taylor: Yeah.
Kacie Frazier: Awesome.
Josh Taylor: So I’m going to put you on the spot with one more question. We didn’t prep you for this one, but what are one or two success stories that you have seen? Something that just really set a church up for success because they moved to online giving. They launched it well, and what were they able to do that they couldn’t do before?
Kacie Frazier: Yeah, it did put me on the spot there. I hope that I have their permission to say this. Maybe I just to say the church name.
Katie Allred: No, don’t say the church name. That’s fine.
Kacie Frazier: I won’t. I won’t. A story instantly comes to mind with one of my favorite churches. They’re all my favorite churches, but we have a very, very sweet account manager at a church in California. She called, a little bit in the panic, one night. They wanted to utilize their Kindrid account to do kind of a separate giving page for an emergency fundraiser for a young lady in their church who needed a heart transplant. So the original … She already had a heart transplant. The parents of her original donor were helping her raise funds because that heart was expiring, so she needed a second heart and needed to very quickly, very quickly raise a lot of money.
Kacie Frazier: So they thought they had this capability. And in Kindrid you can. You can build an unlimited number of giving pages. So in this case, if you have a very specific cause, you can create a completely separate giving opportunity at the same cost. It’s all included in your account, unlimited event registration, on and on. It’s like, “I think we can do this. How do we do it? And they’re in California. I’m in Central, and it’s like 9:00 PM on a Saturday night. I’m just building this page for them really quickly so that they could launch a separate giving page and really rapidly raise funds for a young lady in their church who desperately, like literally life and death, needed to raise money to save her heart. So being able to do that, that’s really cool.
Katie Allred: Yeah, that’s cool.
Kacie Frazier: Yeah, it was awesome. So enable to engage givers. So that page was able to be shared well outside the walls of that specific church. We are the church. The church is not a building. We take it everywhere we go. So that family could share this opportunity to be generous. Like we said earlier, people love to be generous, so that may have been a cause who someone may not go to church, they may not know Christ, they wanted to give to this. And that could have been the way that they found the Lord, through giving. And I love that. I love that that’s part of my job.
Katie Allred: Yeah, that’s awesome.
Josh Taylor: That’s great.
Katie Allred: That’s a cool story. Thanks for joining us today.
Kacie Frazier: Yeah, thanks for having me.
Katie Allred: Yeah, we really appreciate it.
Josh Taylor: Yeah. We’re so grateful for what companies like you guys do and just what you’re offering. The generosity that you guys have been for the church leaders and this group that are listening to you. You guys are offering a really great deal, and we really do appreciate that. You really are making apps and online giving affordable, which is really an opportunity for churches to just grow and continue to increase their influence that they have in the community for the gospel. So thank you for what you guys are doing and being a part of our season this season for Church Communications.
Kacie Frazier: It’s really a pleasure of mine. Thank you so much.
Katie Allred: Yeah. If you want to learn more about Church Communications, you can find us at ChurchCommunications.com. You can find our Facebook page and group on Facebook, just look for Church Communications. You can find this podcast wherever you find your podcasts. And thanks for joining us today
Josh Taylor: And you can go to Kindrid.com/ChurchCommunications and take advantage of the deal that they’re offering an app and online giving for free.
Katie Allred: Their free offer for a limited time.
Josh Taylor: $0. That’s a great deal, so go check it out.
Katie Allred: Our friends at Kindrid are being crazy generous. If you tweet @_Kindrid, again, that is @_K-I-N-D-R-I-D, underscore Kindred, and tell them why you need a church app, they’ll make sure you get one of those too, for free. Okay? Did you hear that? Online giving and a church app for free. Just tweet @_Kindrid and tell them why you need a church app. Go and do it now. What are you waiting for?
Josh Taylor: Hey, thanks for listening to the Church Communications Podcast with Katie Allred and myself, Josh Taylor. If you like our show and want to know more about us, check out our website, ChurchCommunications.Com. You can also join us on our Facebook group, just search for ChurchCommunications on Facebook. And we would love for you to leave a five star review on iTunes.