Elevate Your Year-End Strategy

Source: Horizons Stewardship

As we prepare to celebrate God’s incredible gift—Jesus Christ—people have a profound opportunity to respond with generosity. A strategic approach during this season ensures a focus that honors Christ and maximizes the ability to fund your ministry plan. This season is when givers are often the most generous, enabling you to accelerate your mission, elevate your impact, and change lives.

As a church leader, this guide will elevate your year-end giving strategies, inspire giver participation, and amplify the impact of your mission-driven work. 

This guide will explain essential principles, proven strategies, and actionable insights tailored to the unique landscape of today’s thriving churches. Whether you’re a seasoned leader looking to refine your approach or a newcomer eager to establish a strong foundation, this guide will equip you with the knowledge and tools necessary to navigate the complexities of any effective year-end giving strategy.

Why Year-End Giving Matters

Many churches experience fluctuations in giving throughout the year. Year-end giving can help strengthen your financial health, ensuring you have the resources to continue your transformative ministries. This season drives generosity like no other time of year. The last few days of December alone can provide the funds you need to ensure your ministry stays strong. A clear strategy focused on transformative ministry is key. 

Why You Need a Year-End Strategy 

For most churches, the end of the calendar year is the finish line for meeting your yearly ministry plan objectives and funding goals. Fully resourcing the work God has called your church to ensure your programs and ministries receive the needed funding. A successful year-end provides your church with a vital opportunity to plant seeds for future ministry and grow your ministry impact. 

Making Space for a Year-End Giving Strategy

Finding time for a successful year-end giving strategy can be challenging, given staff demands during this busy season. Here is an easy change you can make to significantly ease the administrative burden faced by churches that have not yet made this change. 

Change your fiscal year to match your ministry year. 

Here is a short list of why so many churches have shifted. 

• Your church ministry year and church funding plan/budget match. By starting your fiscal year in July or August, your ministry plans and ministry funding will match. Gone will be the days your youth, children’s, mission, etc. leaders plan and launch a new ministry year with only funding through December. 

• Your largest giving month occurs in the middle, not the end, of your budget cycle. Most churches receive about twice as much giving in December as the monthly average. Year-end giving is also the most difficult to project. Moving your fiscal year eliminates the anxiety of waiting until the last moment of the year to know if you have a surplus or deficit. If your year-end is unexpectedly good or disappointing, you have six months to adjust spending. 

• Reduces the Summer Giving Slump. Churches that have not moved most givers to automatically recurring giving typically experience lower giving in the summer months. This can often set off anxiety and even panic among your finance team. A July-June fiscal year tends to mitigate this as the new giving year launches in July, with regular giving returning in August. 

• January and February are the most effective times to conduct an annual estimate of giving campaign or generosity teaching series directed at growing givers’ generosity. For most churches, the best time to speak to generosity for new and younger members is in January and February. Fall is a very busy time for most families making attendance better in January. If your church does receive annual estimates of giving, these same families have a much better picture of the financial situation in January/February than they do in October. Too many churches still cling to October and November for a generosity focus. This dates back to when churches regularly “fully pledged the budget” and before modern software made flexible reporting periods quick and easy. 

• More accurate budgeting and forecasting. When churches use January/February to focus on growing giving, your finance team will have the actual increase in giving from January to June on which to build the July-June budget. This method should also create a reliable giving surplus each year, as the giving bump seen in January and February ideally builds until the year-end in June.

• You can choose the fiscal year that best fits your church’s needs. While I have used the common July-June fiscal year example, your church can choose the period that best meets your budgetary needs. If your denomination requires your report on a calendar basis, fear not. All modern software can report for any period. You set the dates for January to December and run the report. It’s not too late to start in 2025. Most churches shifting from a calendar year to a fiscal year approve a short budget (January-June 2025) and then approve a July 2025 to June 2026 budget. 

With the extra time not spent in the fall making a budget or conducting an annual giving effort, you will have time to develop an effective strategy to capture more of the year-end giving your members and regular attendees are already planning to give, much of which does not end up in your offering plate. Americans consistently report that 67% of their giving is spiritually motivated, but less than 30% is given to the church. 

Why Givers Like to Give at Year-End

For a successful year-end strategy, it is essential to understand why givers choose this time to show their generosity so that you can shape your communication to be “giver-centric,” focused on what is meaningful to the giver. Year-end giving is about more than just financial support—it’s a moment for people to engage in God’s work, express gratitude, and contribute to the ongoing impact of the church.

The Christmas season and the end of the calendar year bring out a spirit of giving in people, unlike any other time. It is a time when people are the most generous. Focus on intentional engagement with givers between Giving Tuesday in November and the last day of December.  It is not whether your members will be giving but if they will be giving to your church.  

Before starting your year-end planning and goal setting, it is vital to understand the many and varied reasons why people give and why year-end is so essential. Here are a few important facts to keep in mind.

• Giving in the United States has been remarkably consistent for the last 50 years at about 2% of disposable income and gross domestic product.  

• Giving to the church has fallen by half over the last 40 years.

• Competition is rapidly increasing for a pool of giving that, while not falling, is also not growing; since 2012, the number of 501(C)(3) organizations has increased by 27%, and there is nothing to suggest a change in this trend.

• Givers consistently report belief in the organization’s mission, their relationship with staff and volunteers, and their ability to connect their giving to measurable outcomes with transparency. These are the top three reasons for choosing one organization over another, including the church.  

• The importance of year-end has less to do with a person’s motivation for giving and more to do with its timing. The end of the calendar year prompts increased giving primarily because people must act by December 31 to achieve their giving goals and to receive preferential tax benefits. It is also when most people receive bonuses and profit sharing, when business owners make earnings distributions, and when people pay more attention to gains in their portfolios and may become aware of next year’s salary increases. The influence of Giving Tuesday and well-crafted year-end giving appeals also increases awareness of giving opportunities.

• Tax benefits are important, but virtually any nonprofit or church can provide the same benefit. The key is making the case that investing through your church will best motivate your members to create change in the world. Gone are the days when church leaders could focus only on why give; we must now answer the question, why give to our church? This is most effectively done when we connect generosity to spiritual growth and giving to impact.  

The bottom line is that your members choose to give for a combination of these reasons. It’s your job to disciple them on the spiritual underpinning of generosity and to learn what the Holy Spirit is making resonate most strongly in them.