Look around most churches, and after a while you'll see that the 80/20 rule holds true. 20% of the people are doing 80% of the volunteering, and 80% of the giving. So how do we break that? How do we create a more engaged community? In his article on how to break the 80/20 rule, Paul Steinbrueck points out some great tips/perspectives that can be helpful to anyone trying to get more people engaged. His tips include:
1) Don’t think about percentages.
For the sake of simplicity, let’s say your 80% is actually 80 people and your 20% is 20 people. You could improve your percentages by alienating 10 of the 80 less engaged people, causing them to leave. Not a very good plan, right? What’s important is growing the number of people who are more engaged with your organizations.
2) Do think about your “who’s.”
Many organizations split their “whos” into two groups and therefore their communications into categories. There are the people not yet connected to the organization for whom they do “marketing,” and there are those connected to the organization for whom they do “internal communication.”
If 20% of the people are contributing 80% of the money, time, etc, and we want to increase the number of highly engaged people in that 20% category, we need to further segment our “whos.” We need better understand the 80% – who they are, what they think about, what they need, what communications platforms they’re using. Then we need to develop a strategy designed to move people in the 80% to the 20%.
What's your experience? Have you sat down with your team to learn and really understand what makes your "Who's" tick, and how to engage them more? Do you have a plan for moving people from the 80% into the 20%? How about a plan to take people from the 20% into an even higher segment?
Source: Christian Web Trends
