The spiritual practice of writing a thank-you letter. Part 2 of the Annual Blessings of Charitable Receipts. Writing prompts and a sample thank-you letter from the perspective of a minister of a tiny church which you are welcome to adapt.

A sample letter for summer stewardship. A prayerful and grateful reminder that the church’s ministry of worship, prayer and hospitality continues throughout the summer!

Writing a thank-you letter with annual receipts: a joyful guide for church and charity

Sincerity is essential; eloquence is optional.
It’s more important to actually pick up the phone and make the call, than to prepare the perfect words. You can do this!

Giving is a spiritual discipline like prayer. Both are lifelong practices, and there’s always something new to discover.

Once you can write an offering prayer, you can write a thank-you letter. Both are grateful acknowledgements of everything we have received from God, and the blessing of being able to share with God’s people.

Generosity starts with a grateful heart.

How can churches say thank you? Sending a thank you card is an easy starting point. Here are eleven ways to use thank you cards.

If you give a wedding gift, you expect to receive a thank-you note.  It’s common courtesy.  If you don’t give a gift, you generally don’t get a thank-you note.  Obvious, right? However, in church giving often nobody gets a thank-you note.  Nobody gets thanked.  Really.  In many churches, donors get an annual receipt with no thank-you letter. But I’m proposing here that everybody gets a thank-you note. Here’s why: gratitude generally and thank-you letters in particular make a good springboard into generosity.

The hand-written notes appeared a month before the prefab letters. It seems paradoxical, but apparently a personal note is much quicker to write than a generic boilerplate.

This little experiment has shown how important thank-you letters are. I feel like if I didn't give again to some of these charities, they wouldn't notice.

My husband and I inadvertently launched an experiment in charitable giving. We gave similarly-sized donations to a number of charities, and sent all the cheques on the same day. Here’s what happened.