Why Parishioners like to give online

As we have talked with parishes about Online Giving we hear many reasons for using an electronic giving tool. We also hear from parishes that are reluctant to move to an electronic tool.

One big debate centers around those who support credit cards as an option and equally as many who have reasons to avoid supporting credit cards. The debate goes something like: " People use their credit cards as a standard way to pay. Young people in particular do not carry cash and do not use checks. They expect to be able to pay using a credit card". And the other viewpoint: "we do not want to contribute to family debt in any way, so we do not want to provide the option for credit card gifts".

Both of these are legitimate views. Part of the key for the parish is to make it easy for parishioners to give in the way that works best for them. There are other reasons people like these options, some of which are not tied very closely to celebration of the Mass. One I had heard but discounted was that people like to use their credit cards so they can add to their frequent traveler miles.

So imagine my surprise when recently I was sitting in our parish council meeting and the subject of electronic giving was raised ( we live in an area where many families leave for the beach during spring and summer weekends) one of our council members said "we need to be able to use credit cards. My wife and I like that option because it also adds to our frequent flyer miles". Now I know for sure its one of the many factors people consider as part of their contributions!

Regardless of credit card or ACH only, people do say they like the convenience of giving online. What are the reasons you hear about?

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.

Web sites are your parish front door

I just finished reading Scot Landry’s chapter in the newly released book by Brandon Vogt: The Church and the New Media. Scot describes the work they have done in the Archdiocese of Boston to use all forms of electronic and printed media to build the Catholic community across the Archdiocese. Scot makes an observation that really resonates with me. Your parish website is your front door to anyone searching for a parish (and those currently involved with the parish).

When a person makes that first step to look for a church home, where are they likely to start? Perhaps other people they know. It’s also very likely they will search the web! So what do they see when they look at our parish websites? Hopefully they will be compelled to read more, and to come to visit!

Based on the research done in the Archdiocese of Boston, approximately 30% of the parishes have a welcoming front door. Assuming this reflects the typical population, somewhere in the range of 60% of our parishes haven’t polished their electronic entrances. Will we attract people looking for a home?

We also miss the opportunity to reach our existing parish community and keep them engaged. As we at OSV talk with parishes about setting up Online Giving, we often hear “our website is not good”. As we incorporate our new tools for giving, we have an opportunity to provide other great information about the faith and our parish community through the website. We can improve the experience of Online Giving with a web site that opens the door and provides useful tools and information.

What is your experience?

Quick Give

Practically every church has one or more events during the year for fund raising or other social purposes. They sell tickets at the event site and most of the attendees pay by check or cash.  Many administrators had been asking us to provide them with an easy solution to process these payments on site or in advance through Online Giving. So we responded a few months ago by introducing “Quick Give.” Quick Give is designed to let anyone make a payment for an event set up in advance by the church in their Online Giving application as a fund. All the person has to do (without creating an account in Online Giving) is to enter their personal information, credit card or bank account data and click submit.

Although the process is quite simple and relatively quick, it requires a computer with internet access to be set up at the site for processing payments. The individual could also process their own payment online prior to the event if the parish has set it up as a fund and made them aware of  it. Obviously processing payments prior to an event will depend on the type of event being held. An auction –vs- a raffle would be a good example.

A resourceful and creative administrator came up with a really “cool” way to collect payments for an auction and process them through Online Giving. He created a simple paper form for people to fill out and provide all the required information. He then took all the completed forms back to the office and had a volunteer process them in the church’s Online Giving application using the Quick Give feature. When all was said and done it only took him less than an hour to process 57 payments.

This is what he had to say about the process: “We found the Quick Give feature to be very user friendly and fast as we uploaded all the charges from our weekend event. Another great feature was that all who signed up for express checkout received their auction receipt of total purchases on Monday when the credit information was uploaded in the Online Giving. Almost 60% of our total auction gross was from credit and debit cards. It was everything I hoped for and much more.”

Some of you might have reservations about the security and safety of collecting sensitive information, such as credit card numbers, on paper forms. Although this is not a “high tech” solution (we have other options in the planning stage), it does work very well, and as this administrator noted, it was fast, practical and very cost effective. After they processed all the payments in Online Giving, they shredded the paper forms so as not to store credit card data from any attendee. Best of all, Online Giving provided detailed report on all the transactions processed through Quick Give.

Some churches have been using a mechanical credit card printer (also dubbed the “knucklebuster” by some) to get an imprint of the credit card and processing the payment using the information from the imprint. It is not only a slower way to process payments but it also does not have any room for personal information of the cardholder. The form created by the church mentioned above serves the purpose very well.

Allowing people attending such events to pay by credit card helps draw more attendees to the event as many individuals, especially the younger generation, do not carry much cash these days. Combining the best features of Online Giving with the traditional form of processing payments results in a very cost effective and speedy solution. Other credit card readers may add to your cost of processing payments in the form of monthly fees or set up fees. The old fashioned form, combined with processing through Quick Give, is the most practical and cost effective way to manage church events.

Online Giving - How do we Stay Engaged with Our Parish?

Last week I had the opportunity to speak at the Northwest Region International Catholic Stewardship council event. It was a wonderful and uplifting experience. (The event! I hope my presentation offered something to those who listened and if they were uplifted then Thanks Be to God!)

During my talk I had just finished a section of the presentation during which I thought I made a compelling case for why all of our parishes should be using an electronic giving application. There were a number of questions and comments from the audience, supporting the use of electronic giving. Then a priest in the rear of the room suggested that electronic giving applications removed people from participation at offertory and the Mass. This concern brought me to a halt momentarily while I considered the implications.

This comment may be part of the reason behind why some parishes have not moved to embrace electronic giving applications. Please consider some of the data about how the United States population performs banking and payment functions. In 2007, the US Census reported that there were 60 million electronic bank transactions versus slightly more than 20 million checks.

Americanbanker.com reported in 2010 that 80% of all households with internet access do online banking. (I propose that its possible for parishioners who do not have internet at home to use the library or even the internet provided by the parish to access their online contributions). Of the households doing online banking, 28% are ages 21 to 34, 48% are ages 35 to 54, and 24% are age 54 or older. So online banking is distributed across all age groups!

The Leadership Network survey of 1000 churches found that 40% of them plan to do electronic giving in 2011. OSV did a survey of 1000 parishes in 2009 and ALL of them that use an electronic giving application indicated that contributions increased. The OSV Online Giving Indicator shows that about 10% of parishioners are using Online Giving at those parishes who have elected to offer OSVs Online Giving.

Any individual parish may not reflect the attributes of the United States overall population, but the data should generally apply. We have overwhelmingly moved to using the internet for our financial transactions. To respond to this change, our parishes should be making it very easy for our parishioners to give to the church using whatever tool works best for them. So we should offer both envelopes and Online Giving, teach people about the use and importance of both as tools for the parish, and thank them for using the tools provided.

Pope Benedict invites us to make good use of technology for the Catholic Church:

“Without fear we must set sail on the digital sea,

facing into the deep with the same passion that has

governed the ship of the Church for two thousand

years…. [W]e want to qualify ourselves by living

in the digital world with a believer’s heart, helping

to give a soul to the Internet’s incessant flow of

communication.” 22 — POPE BENEDICT XVI (2010)

So rather than avoid electronic giving, we should harness it for the good of the parish as a tool to serve our parishioners and increase our operational efficiency. To engage our parishioners we may need to look far deeper to match talents and strengths with parish ministry and mission. While we do the more challenging work to change lives, let’s create a plan for our “offertory tools” so that it is convenient to give financial gifts and so that we also provide a way to participate actively at Mass.