Best Way to Grow Church Offerings

Managing church offerings and tithes used to mean simply collecting cash and checks in an offering plate, counting it manually, then depositing it at the bank. But today’s contributions management tools offer more ways to give and easier ways to keep track of gifts, gift types, and even where to apply gifts.

Manage Church Offerings with Online Giving

Online giving allows you to enable givers to give through a debit card, credit card, or ACH bank draft online or through their phone. There are at least 5 benefits of online giving to your giver and to the church.

All online giving solutions offer multiple giving options. Look for these important features that are not found in most solutions:

• Automated processing of checks and cash to streamline processing of the offering. Data from these gifts is included with online giving data.

• Online format that distinguishes between tithes and church offerings. Beautiful, dynamic content encourages givers to tithe and then inspires them to go “Beyond the Tithe” in the ministry designations of their choice. See it here.

• Automated reconciliation and back office processing

The processing behind online giving is complex. The only way it can be simple for the church is if the platform does all the work for you. This is more important and rarer than you may realize.

Nurture Church Offerings with Donor Engagement

One of the benefits of online giving is the data that is stored in your system for each gift and each giver. This data holds a wealth of information that is valuable for:

• Knowing your members and better learning how to serve them.Their giving patterns can reflect ministry needs. We call this A Ministry-First Approach to Generosity
• Leadership insights for strategic budget planning
• Nurturing generosity

Streamline Church Offerings with the Best Giving Experience

Believe it or not, an online giving experience can actually drive givers away.

Even those who are comfortable with online financial transactions are wary of sites that don’t feel secure. They are impatient with slow, long or glitchy giving forms or double sign-on processes. The 5 Deadly Sins of Online Giving, as we call them, are:

• Lack of trust. When givers are whisked away from your website to a third-party site to complete their gift, it breaks their sense of trust in the process.
• Not seeing the impact of their gifts. Givers want to know how their gifts are being spent and to have the option to designate where their gifts will go, beyond “General Fund” in a drop-down menu. As mentioned above, beautiful, dynamic images and content should let them browse and choose the ministries of their choice.
• No guest checkout. Some givers don’t want to have to create an account and keep up with yet another password in order to give.
• Lack of personalization. Receiving a thank you email from a third-party organization’s DO-NOT-REPLY email address is impersonal and off-putting. It allows someone other than the church, the intended recipient of the gift, to have the final word in the gift experience.
• Frustrating forms. Most people will quickly abandon a glitchy, lengthy, multiple-step giving experience, perhaps never to return. For those givers who won’t give any other way, that’s a big loss.

These “Deadly Sins” are responsible for the dismal 83% rate of gift abandonment on charitable websites.

Learn how Vision2 addresses these issues with the most comprehensive giving and stewardship platform available to churches. 

Reach out with your questions today.