As you closed out your books for the year, did you notice your online giving line item? Did it give you sticker shock?
Maybe your administrative oversight team even commented on it as they reviewed last year's financials.
We recently ran a report across a broad cross section of our churches with contributions in 2020. In it we discovered that Churchteams clients brought in 102% of the income in 2020 that they had in 2019.
Who would have thought that you could cancel Sunday services for weeks or months out of a year, ask people to register, wear masks and social distance for the rest of the year; and still maintain strong giving? It's mind-boggling for those of us who've worked with churches for decades.
The reason, of course, was the convenience and consistency provided by online giving. That same cross section of clients mentioned above had an online giving increase of 193% per church. So, if online was the giving method of choice almost twice as often last year, no wonder your finance team had sticker shock!
The use of online giving in your church is only going to grow. That is a really good thing for the growth of individual stewardship and for organizational fiscal health. But, it also makes it more important than ever that you have the right partner to help you manage service fees and processing rates. That's where we can help.
For Churchteams clients, the majority of the fees for processing credit and debit cards are taken by the banks that issue them. We add a small percentage to that which is fully disclosed to you. But we also encourage our clients to consider adding ACH to their giving options. We even made that the default option on our giving platform.
Credit card rates are important because you will have some givers who want their rewards and younger ones who would struggle to find their bank account numbers. If you're using Churchteams, as you'll see below, you can be sure you are getting the best rates available.
One large church with around $120,000 / month in online giving recently moved to Churchteams for the features, but was pleasantly surprised to find that even though they were already heavily committed to ACH giving, the lower cost of Churchteams ACH compared to their old provider would save them $500 / month!
Another mega church moved from using one of the mega online giving companies to Churchteams and realized a saving of tens of thousands of dollars / year. This is real money that can be used for ministry. Obviously the amount you save will vary based on the volume of giving, the mix of Credit Card versus ACH, and the system you are coming from.
Churchteams clients using our integrated online/text giving (used for registration payments as well) enjoy what we believe is the lowest processing rates in the industry. Our customers average around 2.2% in total processing fees on cards, not including our low monthly service fee. This is typically 15-25% lower than other solutions. Our ACH (electronic check) rates are industry leading as well at $10/month and only 39 cents + 0.25%.
If you are not a client or a client not using our online giving solution, give us a call at (877) 505-3260 or email Bryce@Churchteams.com. We will be happy to review how Churchteams giving works and our pricing. We will also do a free cost comparison and analysis of your processing fees compared to systems like Pushpay, Givelify, Vanco, Tithely and others.
So, if you have sticker shock and are looking for a change, consider Churchteams. Not only will you get the best prices possible on online giving, but you will have access to all of our amazing features like Contributions, Groups, Registration, Text-to-Church, Check-in, Volunteers, Email Marketing, Workflows, Automated Reports, and much more. And it's all fully integrated enabling you to keep all your people data under one umbrella.
