60% of church donors want to give to their church through digital methods. What is your church doing to make it happen for them? And if you’re still unsure, it is a proven fact that churches can boost their total donations by 32% if they accept tithing online! These facts aren’t surprising – fewer people have…
60% of church donors want to give to their church through digital methods. What is your church doing to make it happen for them? And if you’re still unsure, it is a proven fact that churches can boost their total donations by 32% if they accept tithing online!
These facts aren’t surprising – fewer people have cash on hand and they’re getting more comfortable using digital wallets and contactless payments. So, when your church makes giving more accessible to them, you will definitely see a greater response!
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 Holy Myrrhbearers Orthodox Christian 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, monthly, quarterly, and yearly. You can choose to add any 4 to your donation form and accept recurring donations. Your donors will be able to log in to their donor accounts on Donorbox and manage their recurring plans – and also download receipts!
Check out this example of a recurring donation form created with Donorbox.
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, that fit them best.
You can easily customize your Donorbox donation form to add unlimited donation tiers to your church donation form. Our database allows you to store and segment your donor data to find out the most suitable giving amounts for different donor levels. You can then add these amounts to your form along with impact data for each. See how the Pioneers Church has implemented this with a Donorbox Crowdfunding campaign –
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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, that would be a breeze!
Check out this live example from The Church of the Good Shepherd – they have added all these options to help designate donations through this 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. What Donorbox does to ensure this is enable Donorbox UltraSwift ™ Pay on all your donation forms by default.
Donorbox UltraSwift ™ Pay adds digital wallet options to your donation form and eliminates the need for donors to input their personal details. No worries – we still get this information from their chosen wallets! This makes your giving 4 times faster and reduces donor drop-off rates!
However, you can also collect donor information and add additional questions to gather more info directly from the Donorbox donation form. Check out this example from Holy Cross Church – Catford.
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.
Donorbox UltraSwift ™ Pay allows nonprofits to include digital wallets like Google Pay, Apple Pay, Venmo, and PayPal. Donors can use these options to quickly make a donation or they can proceed to give with their cards, direct debits, or bank transfers.
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, you can see the rate of successful donations increase!
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church has enabled Donorbox UltraSwift ™ Pay on its donation form. As you can see, they have PayPal and Venmo options available as well as a button to let donors opt for other payment options.
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. Check out this example below –
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 3 examples that will inspire you to create an efficient church donation form.
The Holy Myrrhbearers Orthodox Christian Church has created this donation form and page on Donorbox to raise money to build a church.
We love the form because it includes a crisp message on the church’s mission. It also includes recurring intervals. With Donorbox, they have highlighted their preferred giving interval as “Monthly”. This will encourage their members to make more monthly donations.
This church donation form also includes varied ask amounts that cater to their donor base. The form has been customized to include a tribute donation option and a donor wall. People opting to share their comments and donations will be added to the donor wall on this page.
This effective donation form has raised over $425,000 in donations and is helping the church with its building work. We also love how they’ve added updates in the campaign description to inspire more donations.
The Holy Cross Catholic Church embeds the Donorbox donation form on its website to accept online donations. They have added a weekly donation interval to the recurring donation form, encouraging parishioners to tithe online.
We love the range of donation amounts they’ve suggested on the form. This shows their research on their donors’ giving abilities. The custom amount is also a great way to make donors feel comfortable about giving what they like.
The church also lets donors designate their gifts to the various needs of the church. This flexibility would make their donors more willing to give.
Lastly, we like the many payment methods they’ve added to this form – credit cards, bank transfers, and Google Pay. It works best when it comes to donor satisfaction with online giving.
At the beginning of this article, we talked about the importance of adding your church’s branding to your donation form. Evangel Church does it perfectly!
They’ve utilized Donorbox’s advanced form customizations to mold the form in a way that it embeds flawlessly into their website donation page. As you can see, the form is also simple – with just a few ask amounts, 3 recurring intervals as per their strategy, and donation designation options.
It also asks only the necessary questions from its donors and keeps the form limited to a simple 3-step donation process. This ensures that your donors will be more likely to make a donation.
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, we love to help you help others! Therefore, we have built a wide variety of fundraising products that can elevate your fundraising efforts and get you more donations! Learn about our products and plans and start fundraising by signing up here!
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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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Kristine Ensor