The Insanity of Expecting a Mobile CHURCH App to Increase Giving

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This is part 7 of 10 in a series called INSANITY: 10 Crazy Things Churches Do That Hinder Online Giving. When it comes to online giving, we’ve identified 10 ways your expectations don’t line up with most online giving vendors’ practices and platforms.

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How many items do you have in your toolbox, your hall closet, your toiletries cabinet and your garage sale that you, at one time, had to have? No matter how many products we buy but don’t use, we keep on buying!

Likewise, when it comes to online giving, insanity is asking your congregation to download a mobile CHURCH APP and expecting giving to increase.

Why a Church Mobile App Isn’t a Good Idea

Apps are convenient, fast and believed to help increase engagement by providing easy access to:

• Resources
• Support and social connection
• Consistent communication and information
• Giving channels

While apps can provide these things, keeping them constantly updated with fresh content is a lot of work. That extra effort might be worth it if people use the app, but do they? What you’ll never hear app builders say is that apps increase giving or engagement. 

Why? Because app use is not guaranteed and is, in fact, on the decline.

A 2019 study by Zipwhip found that 61% of people don’t want to add an app to their phone to communicate with a business. They don’t use even the ones they have:

• More than 20% abandon newly downloaded apps after just one use.
• 77% never use an app again 72 hours after installing it.
• The average consumer has about 80 apps on their device but uses less than half of them each month.

This data supports the anecdotal reports we hear from churches that their apps are used in only 1-3% of their overall giving.

Equally problematic: Apps take givers from the app to a payment processor’s website to complete their gift. If that’s the case, why not just have them start and complete the gift on YOUR website?

Vision2: Better Than a Church Mobile App

To make the best use of church resources, a mobile-optimized website with an embedded giving form produces an excellent user experience, no matter what device is being used.

On an optimized website site like this, givers can access a bookmarked giving page and give a gift just as quickly, but without the hassle of another battery-draining app. Add a text-to-give module and now you’ve got an additional mobile giving channel, usually for free.

And finally, your website can easily be found by your community, whereas people don’t look for a church in the app store. 

Vision2 has invested in technology that allows us to provide an optimized website experience with an embedded giving form that keeps givers on your site to complete their gift. Unlike an app, Vision2 has a proven average of 23% average increase in gifts in the first 12 months of usage.

Even better, that increase isn’t offset by a monthly fee. (Some churches tell us, that they’ve paid as much as $10,000 a month for their online giving platform. Talk about insanity!)

Simplify and increase giving with the proven technology found only in Vision2—without a big investment or a contract or having to maintain an additional platform.

 
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