Tale of Two Churches

Here is an interesting story I would like to share with you. What we have are two churches that have been using Online Giving for a year. They are about the same size, within about 10 miles of each other and they both launched Online Giving at about the same time. However, one processed more than twice the dollar amount in online transactions than the other. So we decided to learn more about their experience with Online Giving.

As of July 1, 2011, 350 members at one church switched to giving online while the other, more affluent church signed up only 225 people in the same time frame. Also, the one with more families processed over $750,000 in online contributions while the other church processed less than $300,000. This is remarkable considering the fact that the first church does not offer credit card option for giving while the second one does.

When you dig deeper into the transactions, the reasons become quite obvious. The first church has allowed parents to pay for school tuition and hot lunch programs using Online Giving. They also set up funds to allow parents to pay for various athletic events. These payments made up more than half of the total payments processed online.

According to the church leadership, there are two distinct advantages in using Online Giving for processing payments for various activities in addition to weekly offering:

1. Church members do not have to write checks for payment, nor does the church have to process them manually. The bank has now started charging the church to process the checks, so fewer checks means lower cost to the church.
2. As parents make payments to the school or for athletic activities through Online Giving, they realize how easy it is and they have now started using it for their weekly collection. Those giving online do not miss the weekly contributions when they set up their gift with the recurring weekly option. The yearly offering for a family giving online will increase as much as 30% (52 weeks of online giving vs. 40 weeks of checks when the family attends the Sunday service).

Many churchgoers have commented that the only checks they wrote in the past were to the church. They like the convenience of giving electronically and the church stands the benefit too as its weekly collections go up significantly. This is a true win-win situation.

Post written by Vijay Jeste, Online Giving Product Manager