Is Online Tithing Popular Yet?
Google Checkout and Paypal make it easy for church websites to accept online donations. Google checkout is especially nice for churches since there are no credit card gateway fees until 2009 for 501c3's. Paypal charges about 2.9%. And there's a bunch of online donation management services with their own credit card gateways.
I've seen church websites with donation buttons. And I always wonder if their members are actually using them. One (very tech-savvy) church I talked to says 1/3rd of its tithes now come online.
What has your experience been? Do you think tithing will mostly be an online experience in the future?
- Joe Suh from MyChurch.org
My church has online tithing and I love the convenience. It was always an inconvenience for me to remember to write a check or prep an envelope for the offering. I found that I often would forget and would have to remember to bring it next week. Now, I can tithe anytime that it is convenient for me. They also have the option of setting up a recurring tithe that will come straight from my checking account and I don't have to worry about remembering. I am not sure how many people at church use that feature, but I am very happy with the option.
Posted by: Chris Walker | May 02, 2008 at 07:04 AM
Our church is up to about 10-20% of our total giving coming through the website. It's increasing every year, and everyone (members and staff) is very pleased with it.
Posted by: Mickey | May 02, 2008 at 07:28 AM
Our church is considering setting up online tithing, but I wonder if anyone could comment on these issues:
* Is it poor stewardship of God's funds to send cash through a route that doesn't let the church keep all of it? As in, while Google Checkout will help us out for the next 8 months, after that any transaction fees would add up.
* Since these methods are typically (exclusively?) credit card based, are we risking putting people in a position where they are worsening their credit debt?
* I think there's an act of worship associated with tithing. So, has anyone thought of how to foster this when tithing is done online? In a church service, someone can say something ahead of time and/or there's a suitable song playing, but online...?
It was a recent Geeks & God podcast (http://geeksandgod.com/episode79) that got me thinking about these issues (at least the first two).
Posted by: Jason Mock | May 02, 2008 at 02:05 PM
Our church leadership has been dealing with this question for a while now. We're not fans of the idea of people using credit cards to pay their tithe. Debit cards are great - but we don't like the idea of folks paying with credit cards and/or us having to pay a fee which cuts down on the money being donated.
However, my wife and I have begun tithing online through our bank. Our bank offers online bill pay for free (others offer it for a small monthly fee). We sat up the information for our church (just putting the church mailing address information etc as a payee). Now we can simply tell go online like we would to pay any normal bill and select our church and we're done. The bank takes care of the rest and no one pays anything. A check is mailed to our church office in the next day or so.
There are now several other families in our church that are setup with similar bill pays through their accounts.
Posted by: Jonathan Blundell | May 02, 2008 at 10:49 PM
We are just about to add online giving option to our website. www.mkcc.org.uk. For some time we have been encouraging our members to give by a regular monthly direct bank debit. (monthly salary payments are more the norm in the UK so most people give monthly not weekly) Around 35% of our offering is given this way.
We do not encourage people to give by credit card but by debit card which takes it straight from their bank account.
Posted by: Billy Ritchie | May 04, 2008 at 02:44 PM
Interesting comments. Does anyone know of a good service for churches to facilitate bill pays or debits through a bank account instead of credit card?
Mickey, seems like your church's donation gateway is credit card based (?). Are they OK with the 2-3% commission that the CC companies take?
Posted by: Joe Suh | May 07, 2008 at 12:30 PM
We view the credit card fees as a necessary evil. We also accept ACH (electronic checks), which have lower fees.
For the giving, we just eat the fees. For online registration we mix and match. Some departments eat the fees, and others raise the price to compensate.
Posted by: Mickey | May 07, 2008 at 01:12 PM