Ask people how they pay for items, and most will say, “With a debit card.” Ask those same people how they pay their bills, and the popular answer is becoming, “Through online services.”
Now those electronic options are entering the church arena with the increased popularity of online tithing, or e-giving.
While the traditional passing of the offering plate within the church building on Sunday morning remains the most dominant form of giving, experts say that things are slowly changing.
More and more churches are now offering online giving options.
At Decatur Baptist Church in Morgan Baptist Association, online giving was implemented after several members asked if it was a feasible option for them.
Since the church and Business Administrator Jeff Gilliam had never considered it before, he did background research and talked to the church’s webmaster and found it was surprisingly easy to set up.
To give online, Decatur Baptist members access the online giving page on the church’s Web site and complete a form. The form gives members the option to donate to the general, building or missions fund.
Gilliam receives a confirmation of contributions from www.itransact.com, which handles the Internet portion of the process for the church, and he uses that to make the deposit to the church’s bank account.
Members of Northport Baptist Church in Tuscaloosa Baptist Association can also give through their church’s Web site.
They can set up an account and giving to an approved fund by automatic withdrawal from their bank after completing a form with the routing and account numbers from a personal check.
They can also give by credit or debit card.
Associate Pastor Bill Patton said the process is easy on church administrators as well. “Our bank notifies us, as does the online service, when contributions are made, and they are added to a person’s contribution record just like another gift,” he said.
Both Gilliam and Patton said that their online tithing options were created to give interested members an easier way to tithe and to create a more modern option that fits into the way younger people are doing things these days.
“So many people today are using the Internet to take care of just about all of their financial transactions such as direct deposit, online bill paying, balance transfers, etc.,” Patton said. “This is a convenient way for the ‘online’ portion of our congregation to give.”
The benefits of online giving services are varied, both for the church and the church member.
According to Matt Whitaker, president of Smart Payment Solutions (a Virginia-based company that handles electronic funds transfer accounts), electronic giving provides churches with a stable source of revenue year-round.
He added that e-giving eliminates the problem of church members who miss a tithing opportunity due to not attending church during illness or inclement weather.
“A small percentage of people will make up their donation the following week but many people won’t,” Whitaker said.
Patton agreed, saying he can see a difference in his tithing habits since using online giving in the past few months.
“I particularly like getting my tithes and offerings to church in a timely, ‘on-the-first-day-of-the-week,’ systematic way. It doesn’t matter if I’m out of town or sick,” he said. “I hate seeing that quarterly statement and discovering I missed a contribution. And this way, unless I cancel that contribution, it comes out first — (it) doesn’t get put on the back burner just because I need new tires this week.”
Another benefit to the church is that giving usually increases with online options available to members.
Statistics in the 2005 Kintera/Luth Nonprofit Trend Report show that online contributors give more than 50 percent more than those who give through traditional means.
Whitaker said this can be attributed to people making a one-time decision to give a certain amount each week, rather than deciding how much to give each week based on what’s in their wallet at the time.
Experts believe that online giving will only increase as the years go by and more people become comfortable with giving in that manner.
“The first year we started talking to churches, eight or nine of the 10 reactions I got was, ‘We’ve never thought about that,’ or ‘We didn’t know we could do that,’” Whitaker said.
“Now most churches are aware of it and are thinking more seriously about implementing such a program.”
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