digital giving

It's no surprise that churches are affected by lulls in giving, spurring a need for churches to find ways to encourage recurring giving. Roughly 86% don’t meet their annual budget goals. When you boil it down, that means 43 out of 50 churches aren’t raising enough funds during the year to support their ministries.

Are you stuck in the same old routine when it comes to managing your online giving? It happens. Once you've found what works for getting daily tasks completed efficiently, you may never step outside your comfort zone. By not exploring the features available to you, you could be missing out.

iDonate, the leading provider of donor engagement solutions, and LifeWay Christian Resources, the world’s leading provider of church resources, today announced an agreement to develop, market and sell a new solution for LifeWay’s thousands of church customers that enables pastors and administrative staff to “build a generous church.”

Digital giving continues to rise among all nonprofits--including churches. The Digital Giving Index, produced by Network for Good, analyzes giving trends each year. In the most recent 2015 report, they noted the following interesting statistics: Overall giving rose 3% from last year 31% of annual giving occurred in the month of December 12% of annual giving occurs on the last three days of the year With that said, churches are heading into the most critical time of year to focus on giving and to encourage the use of online giving for churches and their members.

It’s Valentine’s Week, and that means a couple of things. First off, it means it’s cold--at least where I am. It means your social media feeds are likely cluttered with declarations of love, and/or diatribes about how V-Day is entirely arbitrary and unnecessary. And it means every blog post or “how to” article posted this week is required (by federal law) to include motifs of “love,” “affection,” and “romance.” Furthermore, since I’m the one doing the writing, you know we’ve got to talk about giving, generosity, and stewardship as well.

One of the most frequently cited and widely used reasons for the rapid growth of digital giving over the past decade is the proportionate decline in check writing during that time. And the trend continues. In fact, according to one report, we are on pace to write our final check sometime in the year 2021--a mere six years away. Nowhere is this “check-less” trend more prevalent than with millennials, 20% of whom have never written a check in their life.

If you’ve been on a church tech blog (like this one!) anytime in the past half-decade, you’ve probably heard a thing or three about online giving. You may have heard that online giving is continually linked to increases in overall giving.

That may sound like a crazy question, but it’s not. My mobile phone rests on my night stand about three feet away from me...