Online Tithing

[cunningham1157]

I'd like to know what you are using for online tithing and what you like and don't like. I am leaning towards PayPal because of our size and demographics. I am the one who has to manage it and don't want to create anything more complicated than I have to. I am not worried about the bank statement and charges. Thank you.

[jwdick]

We use PayPal. It is convenient, gives good reports and the fees are not excessive when compared to other methods of accepting credit cards.

[beas]

We started using Vanco in December. After sorting out all of the reports they send and determining which were the most useful, it works very well. Prices are reasonable and maintenance of the giving page is easy. Also, since it's set up to be compatible with PC+, the files I receive for import are very easy to use with little to no editing. So far, I am very happy with it.

[wms7328]

We also use VANCO, have a congregation of about 700 members and currently receive about 40% of our contributions through either credit cards or direct debits to checking accounts. Have very good results with VANCO but they do send out a lot of reports. Have the data files sent to you on a weekly basis, you will get a data file each Saturday that reflects everything received since the previous report. This way you only download contributions once a week.

Now to reflect the charges that VANCO takes out for credit cards you will have to manually change the deposit amounts to reflect what was actually deposited in the bank. For example you receive $20 from credit card, what actually was deposited in the bank will be approx. $19.70 the 0.30 being the amount that was paid to credit card company directly. VANCO sends along a summary report with the weekly data file that gives you the total for all the credit card amounts and the total for each contribution fund that you have defined. So I have a expense account that is used to capture all the credit card fees and it has to be entered as an expense in the transaction. For the example above here is what the accounting would look like:

01-1130-000 Bank Account Asset Account Debit $19.70 (Reflects what is actually deposited in bank account)
01-4110-000 General Contributions Credit $20.00 (This is income account which reflects the total contribution)
01-6019-000 Electronic Banking Fee Debit $00.30 (Expense account used to account for credit card fee)

As you can see, the person making the contribution gets credit for the full contribution and the church then pays the credit card fee as a regular expense item. Credit card fees are deducted at time of payment, the other fees that VANCO charges per transaction are totaled and charged once a month so they are just entered as a separate expense item.

Hope this is not too confusing, once you get used to this, it saves our contribution entry clerk a lot of time since otherwise she would have to enter each contribution individually. Be glad to answer any other questions.

[Maranatha.Trsr]

We have been using Dwolla for online giving for about a year now.
www.Dwolla.com
The reports are good. I haven't attempted to upload any data files but simply enter the data once per month from the statement.

The fees are only 25 cents per transaction.
This is not a credit card transaction rather a transfer from the donor's bank account to the church's Dwolla Account.
Most of our donors are using the recurring gift option.
They allow donor's to note the type of gift also.

[jjaadavis@gmail.com]

We used to use VANCO but the fees were high, as with PayPal. Also, in keeping up the church trends of how to do more with less, we found a way to automate the process of updating or changing the online giving amounts per member, thus reducing the workload of our already over-worked office staff (VANCO requires secretary to update member account online - another step that can be eliminated). PayPal recently updated the cost of non-profit fees (read the fine print).

We are now using ContinueToGive at http://bit.ly/1i6u6dZ or http://goo.gl/NcALAa or https://tinyurl.com/q6clozn

The fees are the lowest in the industry, it has a really nice interface (and intro video), allows the member to enter/update changes on their own if they desire, also has smartphone giving option, etc. We added it to our mobile site as well, see http://m.allshepherds.org and look for dollar sign.


Also, if anyone is interested, I can share the company who created the mobile website (it is designed for an enriching mobile experience vs just shrinking a desktop website down for mobile use).

Hope this helps!
Jeff Davis
CFO
All Shepherds Lutheran Church
jdavis@allshepherds.org