Online Giving

Often, churches tend to get wrapped up in the day-to-day grind and don't take a close look at the fact and figures about giving. It's important to take time out to consider giving statistics in order to look closely at your giving numbers and see how your organization can improve.

Church tech decisions can be overwhelming, and best practices can vary depending on church size, budget, and mission. Here are a few quick tips to get started.

Millennials are making up an increasing number of church attendees, and this generation doesn't carry cash or check. Even older folks are choosing debit cards and online payments over paper payments. Churches, however, struggle to find ways to process online donations, gifts, and offerings that do not eat into their bottom line.

Giving is a big deal, especially this time of year when churches often find themselves in the red, instead of the black. Once Thanksgiving and Giving Tuesday have passed, the race is on to encourage generosity and elicit donations from congregations. While trusting God to help close the year in the black is, of course, the goal, most pastors and church staff find themselves "sweating it" if even just a little. The annual State of the Plate survey is quite timely and offers insight into people's giving patterns.

Giving Tuesday - the first Tuesday after Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday - has turned into a phenomenon that delightfully transforms our focus, if only for one day, from shopping and consumerism to giving and generosity. According to WikiPedia, "Giving Tuesday was started in 2012 by the 92nd Street Y and the United Nations Foundation as a response to commercialization and consumerism in the post-Thanksgiving season.

Churches build community and support their mission through a wide range of programs: fundraisers, community work, study groups and more. Behind the scenes, however, keeping these programs running requires staying on top of a tedious expense management process.

Heading into the giving season, churches are looking for tools, techniques, and ways to achieve their donation goals and end the year in the black. Leadership Network sat down with the number crunchers at MortarStone, which has analyzed more than $1.5 billion in personal church giving, and asked them to calculate various benchmarks. What they found provided very interesting results.

Church leaders have the weighty responsibility of managing funds on behalf of the congregation. Whether church finances are handled by a board of directors, a staff accountant or a volunteer, the expense management process can be complicated and time-consuming.