#electronic giving

[givelify]

We at Givelify are thrilled to partner with Expolit as their official electronic giving platform for this year’s conference:

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[ryanwakefield-blog]

The Snow that Killed Staff

I can’t stress enough how important it is to be strategic about how you develop your culture of generosity within your organization.  The bottom line is that many churches have a lot of room to improve as it relates to online and electronic giving. 

One example of what can go wrong, if you’re not prepared, is what happens every time it snows and services are cancelled.  I was talking with one church accountant and he estimated that their church lost $150,000 in donations in 2010 because of the snow.  That’s 2.5 full-time staff members with benefits that got cut in an already tight year. 

That’s the bad news, the good news is that if you are focused and strategic about developing online and electronic giving you can minimize the impact of cancelling services.  Giving that is scheduled never goes on vacation and never misses because of bad weather.  I know for me personally I schedule my tithe and missions while giving additional offerings and over and above giving during worship services.  It’s a way to make sure we are honoring God with our first and still participating in the act of giving. 

What you need to know is that for electronic giving to be successful you need to do more than to just have it.  You have to have a strategy for the year on how it is going to become a part of your culture of generosity.  If you haven’t already check out these more specific ideas here. 

[newstfionline]

Church collection plates may go empty as electronic giving rises

By Susan Schept, Reuters, Jan 23, 2011 ARLINGTON, Virginia (Reuters)--Brie Hall felt awkward the first few times she passed the collection basket at her Catholic church without tossing in a donation envelope.

But it is more convenient to give her gift to God by direct debit from her checking account.

The tradition of passing the church plate might become a relic of the past, as a majority of Americans pay bills electronically and move away from using cash or writing checks.

Despite concerns about commercializing something so personal, electronic giving to churches is growing.

"You just kind of get over it ... because you know you've donated," said Hall, a communications manager for the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, D.C.

At the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Washington, about half of the 1,600 congregants who give regular donations do so electronically, up from 20 percent four years ago.

"For some people, they'll never change," said its pastor, Monsignor John Enzler. "Other people find it's a wonderful way to do their giving."

Along with Catholic dioceses, religious organizations such as the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America have approved electronic giving as an option for their members.

Each church can decide whether to adopt the practice, available from electronic payment processing companies since the late 1990s.

Church staff are often the toughest sell, said Vijay Jeste, product manager for electronic giving for Our Sunday Visitor, a Huntington, Indiana-based maker of donation envelopes for Catholic churches, which started offering electronic payment processing in 2009.

Reluctance to pay a fee to process collections melts away as parishes "realize that this is the way to go," Jeste said.

"This is not an option they can put off for too long," he said.

Some church leaders object to electronic giving because they do not want parishioners piling more debt onto overloaded credit cards. Others say it interferes with the ritual of making a tangible sacrifice during the service.

The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America learned the value of online donations when it made an appeal last year for victims of Haiti's earthquake, said Theo Nicolakis, its director of information technology and Internet ministries.

The archdiocese found almost 4 percent of its online visitors do not attend religious service, and about 28 percent of visitors are not even Greek Orthodox.

"We're technically reaching people who we would never reach," Nicolakis said.

The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese, an early adopter of online giving, allows donations via Facebook and cell phone texts.

"If we don't provide an easy way to give, they're going to give elsewhere," Nicolakis said.

While electronic giving has grown in popularity at Enzler's Catholic church in Washington, which signed up with payment company Faith Direct in 2006, only a quarter of the archdiocese's 140 churches have followed suit.

But last February's epic snowstorm in the Washington area converted some disbelievers, Enzler said. With many churchgoers trapped at home, he estimates the archdiocese lost about $1.4 million--about $10,000 per church.