According to a recent study, most churches and non-profits are leveraging 3rd party systems for their online donation efforts coming in at 51%. 16% say they are using a whitelabel solution while a whopping 33% don’t use any at all.
I’d imagine that the latter number decreases this year; I just can’t help but see more ministries jumping on the online bandwagon every day (and for good reasons, no less!).
Of those, Paypal and NetworkforGood take the biggest cake while a number of other smaller sources were mentioned.
Some of the other services mentioned were:
Google- eJoinMe.org
- ClickandPledge.com
- Groundspring.org
- Kintera
- GiveDirect.org
- BlackBaud
- Convio
- eTapestry
I know that a while ago I posted an open thread post asking what you guys used in terms of the “Best Online Payment Solutions“; you can see the community’s responses here.
So, is this about right? You guys using any of the above?
We use Paypal. What do you guys use?
we’ve built our own system for northpoint. we’re looking at others though.
Another web app that handles online donations for any non-profit, including churches, is http://www.razoo.com/ — what’s really nice about this one is they have no credit card transaction fee (bc of generous supporters subsidizing that, on behalf of non-profits.)
Any one out there using this as a donation processor?
ah, thanks for this!
It turns out Razoo has a 2.9% fee on all credit card transactions. They have no other fees.
John,
most of our north point strategic partnership (http://northpointpartners.org/)churches use egive (http://www.egive-usa.com) and have had great experiences.
We are looking into a payment system that works with our church database, ACS. ACS recommends TransactU http://www.serviceu.com/transactu/
sweet! i’ve heard good thing.s
Thank you so much for posting this! I’ve had researching this, for a proposal to our church leadership team, on my to-do list for months. I didn’t want to propose the idea without evidence. It’s too likely they’d just think it’s just their resident geek who thinks it’s a good idea.
sweet! enjoy. perfect timing.
I have to weigh in here — I think online donations are an unhealthy practice for congregations. They remove giving from the context of worship and instead put it in the context of bill-paying. This only encourages people to view their offerings as “membership dues” (furthering the view among the unchurched that “they only want my money,” or “I can’t join the church unless I pay my dues”), rather than as a practical expression of gratitude to God in the midst of worship.
I don’t deny for a moment the “convenience” factor. Neither would I be surprised to hear that some congregations experience an increase in offering after instituting such a practice. Nevertheless, I truly fear that any short-term gain is ultimately far outweighed by the commercialization of what is supposed to be an act of worship.
hey brint, love these thoughts. i do agree that something can be “lost” by doing it; there’s just something about the experience of giving physically and with others.
Not sure I agree with you here. This is probably a very subjective topic. For many people giving online can be just as rewarding as putting a check in the offering. We would love to give online rather than at church, but our church doesn’t offer this (coming in a couple months).
I can see that for some people this would be the case, but for others (like myself) giving this way is just as worshipful.
Anybody using RAZOO? If so, please email me. I’d love to talk to someone directly who is using it. Thanks!
I’ve learned a lot here but still don’t know if I can use Razoo to accept donations on http://www.christiansonearth.org in order to give my ebooks in return or any third party like Paypal. Paypal is not available in Ghana.