Wondering how to build a church donation form to boost giving? We've got you covered. In this blog, we'll teach you how to build the most effective church donation form and give you live examples and a free template to boot.
Join the fundraising movement! Join the fundraising movement!60% of church donors want to give to their church through digital methods. What is your church doing to make it happen for them?
This fact isn’t surprising – fewer people have cash on hand and they’re getting more comfortable using digital wallets and contactless payments.
Donation forms are an excellent way for churches to collect members’ offerings and tithes, as well as raise money for specific campaigns and programs.
In this article, we’ve shared ways to build an effective church donation form along with examples and a free template to help get started.
As more churches collect donations online, they find that building a donation form is crucial to how much they can raise. Here’s every measure you should take to build a church donation form that will work wonders for your church!
The first thing on most churches’ minds isn’t branding, but it is a crucial part of promoting your organization.
Your donation form is an excellent place to share your branding and build trust with donors. You can do this with your church’s mission statement, logo, and specific colors and fonts.
Donorbox Donation Forms are fully customizable and you can include a call-to-action message such as a brief version of your mission statement or something more meaningful. You can also change the form color to keep it on brand.
Here’s an example from the Northwood Evangelical Lutheran Church:
Create On-Brand Church Donation Form!
Since fewer people carry cash, it’s become harder to encourage weekly offerings or tithes. An online donation form should help you regain those recurring donations and encourage people to give more regularly.
Your average recurring donor will likely give 42% more throughout the year than your one-time donors. The reason being that people feel comfortable giving in smaller amounts over the course of a year than a larger amount at one time!
To make this possible, add recurring intervals to your online donation form. It is advisable that your church adds at least weekly and monthly intervals to accept tithes and offerings. However, it should also depend on your fundraising strategy for the year.
These gifts are convenient for donors as well. Once they set them up, the amount will be automatically deducted from their accounts at their chosen intervals.
Donorbox lets you add several recurring intervals including daily, weekly, biweekly, 1st and 15th, monthly, quarterly, and yearly. You can choose to add any four to your donation form. Your donors will be able to log in to their donor accounts on Donorbox and manage their recurring plans – plus download receipts!
Check out how the Metropolitan New York Synod accepts recurring donations through their Donorbox form:
When asking for a donation from your parishioners, it’s essential to be specific and request an amount that fits the donor’s ability to give.
Remember to track your donors’ contributions and add them to your donor database. This way, you can segment donors based on their giving history. When appealing to donors, you can add five or six amounts to your donation form.
You can easily customize your Donorbox donation form to add unlimited donation tiers to your church donation form.
See how the Tithe for Tradition has used tiers effectively here:
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Pro tip: Adding impact data for each donation tier will give your parishioners a clearer picture of how you’re going to use their donations. It increases trust and transparency, and naturally, helps you get more donations.
Your church may have different funds based on how you’re willing to grow, spread God’s word, and help the community or people in need. Why not let your congregants decide how they want to help your church?
Build a church donation form that gives your donors the freedom to choose. Restricted funds may not always be the best option for a church, however, they build trust among donors.
While making an appeal, let people know the different options you have added and why. Explain the same on your donation page. And let people decide which fund they’d want to give to.
Remember that your donation management system should be able to keep a track of these designations. That will help you utilize every donation in the right way and build on the trust of your donors. With Donorbox, it’s a breeze!
Check out this live example from The Church of the Good Shepherd – they’ve added all these options to help designate donations through their online offering form.
Online donors have short attention spans, so be careful about what you add to your church’s donation form. You’ll want to collect basic contact information and details about why visitors attend. It can be their names, email addresses, and phone numbers.
You can also add additional questions to gather more information, however, limit them as much as possible. It’s best to limit the number of times donors have to click to three.
If your nonprofit’s forms aren’t easily viewed on all devices, you won’t see the donations you hope for. Therefore, it is important that your online fundraising platform enables you to create forms that adhere to the accessibility guidelines.
Donorbox’s donation forms meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) at level AA. They are optimized to function well on all devices, including mobile devices.
Today’s donors have several choices to choose from when giving. Many donors will use credit cards, but most people prefer digital wallets – which are quick and easy to use.
Enabling UltraSwift ™ Pay on your Donorbox OmniGive™ Donation Form lets donors simply tap once to donate using Apple Pay, Google Pay, or other connected wallets.
Digital wallets on your church donation form are the simplest way to attract the attention of younger parishioners. And since UltraSwift Pay eliminates the need for typing personal details on the form, the rate of successful donations will likely increase!
Here’s what it looks like when enabled on a form (donors see the “Pay with” option):
Make Giving Fast With Digital Wallets
Your donation transactions must be safe and protected against fraud. Donors these days are aware of these safety measures when it comes to making a payment. Hence, it is likely that they would be concerned about giving online with your church donation form.
Firstly, choose an online donation system that makes it a priority to keep your transactions secure at all costs. Donorbox works with Stripe and PayPal to ensure your transactions are always safe – in fact, ultra-safe! Stripe remains our main payment processor with SSL protection, PCI compliance, fraud detection with machine learning, and encryption.
Let your donors know the payment processor your online donation form is using. Educate them about the security measures being taken with their precious donations. This will show them that not only donations, but your church also cares about their online payment security.
Turn donors into advocates with social media buttons like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. It is important that these buttons are added next to your form and they make it easy for donors to click and share.
People often love to share with their networks that they’re supporting your church. And why not – this also helps your church boost its outreach and be known by more people you’d not otherwise reach!
When you create a donation form for your church on Donorbox, a fundraising page is automatically created alongside it. You can customize this page to include all the important details as well as social media sharing buttons.
After you’ve followed these best practices, you must learn how to make the most of your donation form to get more people to give through it! Let our nonprofit expert, Jena Lynch, walk you through the best ways to make this happen. Give this insightful video a watch:
All set to build your church donation form? Follow these simple steps to get started with Donorbox right away! You can create and customize your form, embed it or use it as a popup form on your website, and also use the Donorbox-hosted fundraising page to accept donations with it.
We’ve created a template for an online church donation form that will help you customize your existing form or build a new form with all the necessary details, fields, and payment information for the utmost effectiveness.
Click here to download for free.
As online donating becomes more common, churches are finding creative ways to develop online donation forms that raise more funds for their organization.
Here are three examples for some inspiration.
Sign Up to Build a Church Donation Form!
Creating your church donation form shouldn’t take much time, but you must remember to add the items we’ve listed in this article. The template along with Donorbox’s powerful tool to easily customize your donation form should make this an even easier process!
At Donorbox MinistryMomentum, we love to help you carry out your important work! That’s why we’ve built a wide variety of tools that can elevate your fundraising efforts and get your church more donations! Learn about all our features here.
We also have hundreds of useful articles, free resources, templates, and more at the Nonprofit Blog. Be it church fundraising, donor management, nonprofit accounting, finances, leadership, or whatever else you might be interested in – we have it all.
Kristine Ensor is a freelance writer with over a decade of experience working with local and international nonprofits. As a nonprofit professional she has specialized in fundraising, marketing, event planning, volunteer management, and board development.
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