Websites and Online Giving Tips for a Great Combination - Like Peanut Butter and Chocolate

This is an updated version of an earlier blog topic
 As we continue to learn from our work with the Archdiocese of Boston, and across the country, your website is your "virtual front door" to your parish. One of the key components of a great parish website is easy access to Online Giving. This past week we talked with several parishes who are very interested in pursuing Online Giving. The website is a significant impediment to their progress rather than a useful tool to enable access to web-based giving.  OSV "Faith In Action" websites are designed to make this easy for you.

Set a Communication Plan

As you prepare to offer web-based giving, you should create the initial communication plan and get the system set up so parishioners can immediately access the application. So one of the steps is to update your website to include information about Online Giving, plus a link that connects to Online Giving. Once you announce that the service is available, you want parishioners to be able to get to Online Giving easily so they can get started right away.
 Incorporate Website Best Practices

Your website must be organized well and easy to navigate. A great parish website can help you improve the acceptance of Online Giving by making it obvious how to get started, easy to access, and by providing useful information about the importance of Online Giving. If your website provides other compelling information about the Faith, then as parishioners access the site for Online Giving, they may also be able to spend time learning more about being a good Catholic!
 Here are a few tips:

• Display your parish name, city and address and contact information prominently
• Feature a map to your parish
• Add information about the Faith
• Add a section to welcome newcomers
• Add dynamic information
• Offer people the opportunity to give a gift! 

 Make Sure Your Website and Online Giving Are Easy to Manage
The parishes I referenced earlier were embarrassed and frustrated by their web sites. The web sites were not compelling and not up to date. The person who is setting up Online Giving did not have the ability to do updates. In a couple cases, the person who updated the website worked part time and was the only person who had access to update the site.

The parish website is the best place to access your online giving application. And we should all be implementing Online Giving at our parishes so that our parishioners have this additional convenient option to contribute to the parish. So we need both. Parish Website and Online Giving. When the website is good and you have your Online Giving link prominently displayed, they work together. That's why the web site and Online Giving are like peanut butter and chocolate, which is one of my personal favorite combinations!

How about your experience with your parish website and Online Giving?

By the way thousands of new parishioners per month are signing up to use OSV's Online Giving at parishes across the country. The average parishioner use for parish is now at 13 to 14% of parishioners, up to a high of more than 50%.

EFT is not the answer

Does your parish have EFT set up for direct debit with banks? Are many parishioners using it? Probably not. In one of my previous posts I wrote that I heard parishioners did not like EFT because they find it difficult to set up and even more difficult to make timely changes.

That was reinforced in a big way this week in discussion with a few dozen parishes. EFT originally seemed like a good way to go because it was a direct withdrawal from bank or checking accounts. However as banks have started charging for this service it all gets a double whammy because it is inflexible and now it has additional associated costs. Put this together with the requirement to provide bank account information to the parish office to set up the withdrawal and EFT becomes a “non-starter”.

Web based Online Giving offers parishioners the security of entering their own account information privately. The account information is immediately encrypted and secured. Parishioners can select and change their contribution amounts, frequencies, and the dates of contributions at any time. This kind of service provides the convenience and flexibility we have come to expect from electronic systems.

One business manager I spoke with this week had previously implemented EFT and changed to Online Giving, employing both direct withdrawal and credit card options for contributions. Today he regularly promotes Online Giving as an option for parishioners. In the materials he goes a step further to say that parish staff is NOT involved in the parishioner contributions. With this approach the parish has seen great acceptance of the new tool and over 20% of contributions are coming from this system.

Consider whether or not EFT is providing your parish a service that makes giving easy. You might be able to use a service that makes it more convenient plus provides a boost to parish income!

How Do You Justify The Cost of Electronic Giving Option?

Some of the church administrators are concerned about the added cost of electronic giving option when they look for ways to boost offertory collections. Even the ones who have been offering online giving option for a year or longer are not sure if it is paying off and delivering the results that were promised by the vendors.

If your members are not contributing to the church 52 weeks (or 12 months) in a year, it makes perfect sense to offer them an option to give electronically on a recurring basis – once a week or twice a month. That way, you will see an immediate return on your investment since you will now be collecting their contributions regardless of whether they attend the church or not. For instance, if a family attends the Sunday Mass three weeks in a month on an average, or 36 weeks in a year, and it gives $50 whenever it attends the service, it is contributing $1,800 a year. If this family switches to electronic giving and sets up recurring giving of only $40 a week for 52 weeks, it is still contributing $2,080 in a year or 15% more than it did before. Many churches that have been offering Online Giving from OSV for a year or longer report their members contributing as much as 30% more since they switched to the electronic giving option due to consistency in giving.

When you compare online giving programs from various vendors, it is important to look at how much flexibility they provide for giving. Some programs are designed for withdrawing funds from the donor’s accounts only once a month, generally on a fixed date. As we all know, not everyone is paid on a monthly basis. In fact, most of the people get their paychecks once a week or twice a month (e.g. 15^th and 31^st). It is very inconvenient for them to schedule their contributions to the church on a fixed date during the month.

Our analysis of almost half-a-million transactions we have processed in our Online Giving shows that 30% of these transactions are set as recurring contributions. On an annualized basis, the weekly and bi-weekly contributions add up to as much as 40% more than the monthly donations. Such is the benefit of greater flexibility.

A truly cost-effective online giving program should cost no more than 3 to 4% of the total online collections for the church. If offering this option results in an increase in collections in double digits, it more than pays for itself. It is therefore important to look at the cost of this program as a percentage of additional contributions it will bring in instead of a fixed cost per family. Any program that costs you a fixed dollar amount based on total number of registered families regardless of whether these families write checks or give electronically is likely to cost you more than a program with a cost structure tied to number of online givers and their contributions.