Phone: 800.382.

0094

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Three Important Trends That WILL Impact Your Next

When was the last time your church conducted a capital campaign? The times they are
achanging! was a well known anthem of the sixties that could just as easily have been
written today. If you are considering a campaign for your church today, its probably
been a few years since your last campaign. A lot has changed since then, and your next
campaign will probably look a lot different from your last.
Our firm has three decades of experience helping hundreds of churches of every size and
type raise hundreds of millions of dollars for their campaigns. In recent years we have
observed three trends in particular that WILL have a significant impact on the way you
conduct the next capital campaign for your church, whether you realize it or not.

Communication Has Shifted from One Size Fits All to Multi Channel
Messaging
Church campaigns used to be simple. After all, the people you were trying to reach were
all together every Sunday. A nice brochure, a few sermons on stewardship, an inspiring
presentation from the platform, andvoilapass the plate and tally the pledges, you
were done!
Churches today are more transient. People are more apt to come and go. Its not unusual
for families to split their time between churches these days. Wealthier congregants may
travel frequently or have a second home and may miss services for large stretches.
Church members are also increasingly dispersed across a diversity of groupsyoung
adults, seniors, families, college aged, singles, etc.; its increasingly rare for a
congregation to fellowship together at a single event. You
must make sure that the vision for the campaign is
messaged in ways that are appropriate for each of these
groups.
It used to be that when you wanted to communicate
something to everyone in your church, you would make an
announcement from the platform and highlight it in the
bulletin. Today, church communications are much more
complex, across a myriad of channels and multiple types of
media intentionally focused on various groups. Personal
presentations, printed materials, video, website, email,
social media; all must be carefully conceived, produced,
and coordinated to ensure that the message you want to
convey gets across to everyone in your church who you want to hear it.

Major Contributors Must Be Specifically and Personally Asked

Major givers account for one half of the annual giving at a typical church, and an even
greater percentageoften 80% or morein a capital campaign. The expectations and
giving patterns of these donors have changed in recent years. It used to be that the first

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money people gave was to their church. Giving to the church was automatic, while other
charities were discretionary. Not anymore. Whether you agree with it or not, more and

more people now consider their church to be on an equal

footing with other charities they support; its all
discretionary giving now.
A recent study by Empty Tomb, a Christian research group,
discovered thatas a percentage of incomegiving to
churches has declined each of the past four years and
Christians are giving proportionately less to the church now
than they have since the Great Depression. According to
Giving USAs 2014 report, overall charitable giving
increased 4.2 percent while giving to churches declined by
0.2 percent. At the same time, the Evangelical Council for
Financial Accountability (ECFA) reported a record 6.4
percent increase in giving to evangelical Christian causes during the same period. These
studies bear this out: Christians today are giving more to Christian charities and less to
their church.
Churches have traditionally conducted capital campaigns very differently from how other
non profits run campaigns, particularly when relating to major contributors. Conduct a
campaign today and you would be unwise to expect major donors to automatically give.
They want to hear the vision and see the plans and have their questions answered,
preferably by the senior pastor or key church leaders. To be successful in a capital
campaign today increasingly requires making personal visits with these major
contributors to challenge them to invest in the vision. Take the time to do so and you will
be rewarded.

Lending to Churches Is Increasingly Tight

Prior to the 1980s it would have been considered somewhat unusual for a church to take
out a loan to pay for a new building. If a church needed money it went to its members
with a campaign. When churches did occasionally borrow, they did so with the help of
wealthy members willing to cosign the loans or put up security. That all changed in the
1990s, when church lending became a lucrative business. In the late 1990s and through
the 2000s churches began building at an unprecedented rate as hundreds of banks and
specialty lenders financed expansion of facilities with easy, cheap credit.

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Then came the financial crisis. Church giving declined, and

many struggled to make debt payments. Christianity Today
highlighted these facts in a recent, sobering article titled,
Churches: The New Risky Bet:

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600 congregations filed for bankruptcy between 2006

and 2012 and hundreds more are in default on
building loans that they can no longer afford.

The church bond marketonce considered a triple A

investment, has largely disappeared. Since 2008,
many church bond funds have closed; very few have
made any new investments since then. While the
market is picking up slightly today, it is still very thin.

Many banks instituted a hiatus on new loans, some are now just beginning to ease
up.

Many churches that need to expand facilities are having a difficult time finding
financing.

The days of easy money are over, at least for now. Far fewer banks are willing to lend to
churches today, and those that do have strict requirements. Churches are wisely much
more cautious about taking on debt today as well. In this environment a capital
campaign is no longer a luxury or an afterthought, but rather a critical part of what will
be needed to transform your vision into reality.
The times they are achanging, and in changing times you want to rely on experienced
counsel to help guide you through your churchs campaign. You only get one chance to
do it right. With so much at stake, most churches wisely choose to retain a capital
campaign consulting firm to navigate todays complex environment and to guide their
church capital campaign through to a successful completion.

Derric Bakker is President of Dickerson, Bakker & Associates, a capital campaign

consulting firm that has helped guide hundreds of churches in raising hundreds of millions
of dollars for successful capital campaigns since its founding in 1985. He can be reached
at 800-382-0094 or Derric@Dickerson-Bakker.com.

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