Wikipedia has made available data on how different wording for their annual fundraiser impacts how many donations they receive. It’s interesting stuff with some important lessons for churches and Christian ministries. Click the image to download a larger version.

In this fundraising appeal, Wikipedia ran 4 different versions of a banner on its website requesting donations, and one of the banners was eight times more effective at attracting donations than the next most effective advertisement. Read more at Flowing Data.

This lessons for churches isn’t to concoct clever methods of convincing people to give money. The lesson is to be aware aware that the words we choose are important.

When it comes to our broader, impersonal outreach activities (e.g. posters on the noticeboard, postcards in letterboxes, ads in local newspapers etc), the choice of words will have an impact on how the readers respond.

I realised this when I was experimenting with Facebook advertising for carols. A slight change in wording resulted in many more people clicking on the ad, and finding out about our carols event.

The choice of some words will cause some people to give your information only a passing glance.

The choice of other words will cause other people to come along.

The latter is the result we all want. So when you’re thinking about how to connect with those outside your church, consider the wording that you use, and even experiment with different versions to see what’s effective, and what fails to have an impact.