Published by Brian Slezak on 01 Aug 2008 at 08:40 am
Online Giving and Payment Gateways
I was excited to have been a part of the trip to Edmond, OK to visit the LifeChurch campus there. See team posts here, here, and here. One of the numerous things that crossed my mind, somewhat unrelated to why we were there, was the challenge of online giving. Using any gateway processor out there will cost you 3-5%, or more. It made me wonder if it were possible to create a non-profit infrastructure that provided payment processing at a much lower cost. If a group of interested Christian businesspersons had enough wealth and desire to solve that problem, could it be solved, or is what we have as good as it gets?
I can’t imagine the amount of money that would saved and returned to churches by lowering the barrier to online giving and eliminating the concern about throwing away that money. I understand the fear of churches allowing someone to give to the church via credit card, and I don’t encourage anyone to use that to their own destruction, but I think a reasonable and sound method of electronic giving would be a blessing to many.
Andrew Conard on 01 Aug 2008 at 4:51 pm #
Brian – I have thought about http://www.google.com/nonprofits/checkouttutorial.html as a possibility. It’s free through 2009, which is not a lot of time left, but it looks as if the pricing is reasonable ongoing…
Brian Slezak on 01 Aug 2008 at 5:44 pm #
That is a good find, and I agree, a reasonable price. Leave it to Google.
That would make it harder for anyone to compete in that market. Thanks Andrew!
I wonder if there are more out there?
Laura Guy on 02 Aug 2008 at 8:37 am #
Hi Brian,
As you might remember, we recently added an online donation capability at Living Water. I just wanted to see if anyone would use it if we offered it, so I went with PayPal. http://www.livingwaterchristian.org/worship/giving.php Clif wasn’t happy that I made this decision without consulting him, since he has been working on this issue for Resurrection
, but I went with PayPal because, as a consumer, I have purchased many things from the internet through PayPal. I trust it, and I can even do a direct withdrawal from my bank account. I was also aware of two other non-profit organizations I support that use it for all of their financial transactions, so I felt like it had a reputation in the community for being reliable. The Google name is also very recognizable, and it may soon become more popular than PayPal, but for all of us eBay folks, PayPal is near and dear to our hearts.
BTW, we’ve only had a few folks use the online giving option, but I think that’s because I told them about the service fee that would be taken out of the total. Our bookkeeper told me that I didn’t have to tell the congregation about that – it is just part of the cost of doing business, like ordering deposit slips or using gas to take the deposits to the bank – but I thought people should know that when they give online, the church does not get all the money. For some people, that was a big issue, and they questioned why I would even offer online giving if the church didn’t get all the money. But we are becoming a cash-less and check-less society, and churches need to make it convenient for people to give when they want to give!