Although regular giving is the bedrock of support for most churches, one-off donations are a very useful additional supplement to this.

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1 Funding Guide 15 Receiving Web, Text and Mobile Donations Parish Resources Although regular giving is the bedrock of support for most churches, one-off donations are a very useful additional supplement to this. Enabling people to donate online can really increase the amount your church can raise for specific appeals and one off events. Online giving and mobile phone giving are generally additional ways to give, not substitutes for regular giving to your church. Your regular givers should continue to give regularly in their usual way, whether that is by standing order / direct debit or by envelope (preferably the former as it is quicker, cheaper and more secure). Donors may wish to give online over and above their regular giving however; for example, to specific appeals or to mark special occasions. Online giving can also help attract donations from people who do not normally give; for example, people who do not usually attend church services, people who are attending a wedding or concert or other one-off event, tourists, people moved by a special appeal etc. Strategic Importance In the wider charitable sector, new forms of giving are growing fast. This is particularly true amongst younger givers, but many older givers give through digital giving portals. 1

2 1. Online Giving Online fundraising pages are particularly useful for one-off appeals or sponsored events where you are seeking a wide donor base, particularly among younger people or those further afield. An online giving page has now become the most popular way of raising money through a sponsored event such as a walk or run. It s convenient and allows people wherever they are to participate. There are now a number of providers of online giving. Before you decide which to go with, you should think about the costs and benefits of each. Costs may include a one-off set-up fee, a regular monthly fee, a % of each gift taken by the provider and the credit/debit card fee or other transaction charge which may be levied. Benefits can include whether the provider will claim Gift Aid for you, how well-known and trusted the provider is, how user-friendly it is for you and your donors, what sort of reporting it provides, whether people doing sponsored events can create team pages, whether you can link it to Facebook, Twitter etc. whether you can upload photos or news items to your page, whether it sends automated thank you messages etc. An online giving page needs to be more than just a link from the website. There needs to be wider publicity, and suggestions of how and when to give. For example, a Gift Day could be advertised in the parish magazine. However, remember the costs of giving this way, and if people would be willing to make an electronic transfer or to give by cheque, this will be a cheaper alternative for the parish. Online giving works best to extend the reach of the church into groups that otherwise may not give. 2

3 Which supplier should we choose? Currently, MyDonate offers the best return on donations - the only cost is the processing fee for credit or debit card transactions. They will also process the Gift Aid on your behalf. MyDonate is a not-for-profit, online fundraising service for UK charities from British Telecom (BT). How MyDonate compares with three other popular online giving websites BT - MyDonate Virgin Money Giving Give.net JustGiving Charity/church one-off registration fee None VAT None None Monthly fee None None None 15 + VAT Your donor gives Gift Aid Commission / Transaction fee to process your donation No fee 0.20 (2% of donation) 0.38 (3% of donation 0.63 (5% of donation+ Gift 3

4 + Gift Aid) Aid) Credit card fee 0.13 (1.3%*) 0.15 (1.45%*) 0.10 (1%*) 0.13 (1.3%*) Total cost to your charity Your charity receives BT Donate: Credit card charge is 1.3%. Debit card charge is set at 15p for all transactions. Virgin Money Giving: Credit card charge is 1.45% (except American Express which is 1.6%). The charges for business credit and debit cards are the same as the charges shown above. The PayPal processing fee is 1.6%. Give net: There are no card processing fees for debit card donations. If the giver makes a donation using a credit card, their card provider will charge a fee of 1% (2% for company cards). Just Giving: Credit card charge is 1.3%, debit card charges are set at 17p for Visa transactions, and 16p for Mastercard debit card transactions. The PayPal processing fee is 1.45%. Share Gift: Have no regustration fee or credit card fee. They have a PayPal processing fee of 2.9% and charge a transaction fee of 4.5%. You can also use Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) These services process Gift Aid claims automatically on behalf of the parish, remitting the HMRC refunds a few weeks or months later. This reduces the paperwork on one-off gifts for the parish so especially useful when trying to attract gifts from non-members for specific projects. * Creating your own Fundraising web-page Many of these services also encourage supporters to create their own unique (sponsorship) fundraising web-pages where you can add details of the parish s activities, projects and even photos. You will then need to promote the external website to your supporters, and the sites offer facilities to details of the fundraising activity to family 4

5 and friends asking for their support. In each case you will need to register, providing information such as the parish s full name and address, nominated contact s name, role and , details of the PCC s main bank account and the PCC s registration number (Charity Commission or HMRC). Strategic Importance We expect the ability for people to give online to be significant over the longer term. It will be essential to maintain regular giving, but the ability for people to give one-off donations will remain. The device that they use to do this may move from PC to mobile device, and be accessed via an app rather than a webpage, but the underlying channel is likely to remain important. 5

6 2. Text Giving JustGiving offer a service called JustTextGiving, which enables charities to receive donations made through their mobile phones. This is a free service for the church to register to, and for the donor to use however; there is a small processing fee (5%) and card-processing fee (1.3%) deducted from the donation. This service is now available to all churches, regardless of whether they have a registered charity number. This type of digital giving has great potential for one-off fundraising events, for churches in areas where tourists drop in, and for events with lots of young people present. Ramblers, tourists and other visitors may these days be more likely to have their mobile phones with them than to have any cash in their pockets! Parishes can then display the JTG code in their church, at events etc. and donors can donate by text for free using the unique code. When the donations come in to the diocese, the diocese re-allocates them to the correct parishes based on the unique JTG code of each parish. Each parish can also access branded posters to publicise the donation method in their church, and donors can add Gift Aid to the text-donation too. How can we register our church? If your church would like to try using text giving, you can visit to register as a charity. We have also produced a short guide on how to register your church, create a profile and establish a unique charity code to receive donations. Guidance-Jan-2016.pdf 6

7 How does it work? You ll be asked to choose your own unique charity code of 4 letters and 2 numbers e.g. COFE12. Once you ve received confirmation from JustTextGiving that you are set up, ask people to donate by texting COFE12 10 to the number If they prefer, they can donate 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 by texting COFE12 1, COFE12 2, COFE12 3 etc. instead. At present, the only amounts people can donate are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 & 10. How is the donation added? The donation is added to the donor s phone bill (or debited from their credit balance if they use pay as you go). They receive an automatic acknowledgement with a link for Gift Aiding, thanking them for their donation. This has great potential for one-off fundraising events, for churches in areas where tourists drop in and for events with lots of young people present. For example, you could have a poster on the wall saying: To help preserve our beautiful church, donate 10 now: just text COFE12 10 to ramblers, tourists and other visitors may these days be more likely to have their mobile phones with them than to have any cash in their pockets! You could also print it on service sheets or concert programmes, project it onto the wall at your youth group events, include it as the final slide on your PowerPoint presentation; there are lots of possibilities. That said, we have not heard of many churches which have managed to raise significant sums through mobile phone giving; please contact us if your church has! What if I m not a Registered Charity? If you are not a registered charity, you can still use this service. As of September 2015, you can register using either your charity registration number (which you will have if your parish income is above the 100,000 threshold) or your Gift Aid number. If you are signing up using a Gift Aid number, you will be asked to upload a copy of your HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) letter confirming your gift Aid eligibility. 7

8 What if my Diocese is registered with JustTextGiving? You may also want to check if your diocese has signed up for the fee-paying JustGiving service ( 15/month + VAT), as they may be able to provide additional support. The diocese of Norwich, for example, has signed up to the fee-paying JustGiving service and so is entitled to have as many JustTextGiving codes as it wishes. Parishes in Norwich can therefore sign up via Norwich's JustGiving page as 'fundraisers' for the diocese, and this enables the parish to generate its own unique JustTextGiving code. Strategic Importance We expect text giving to be of value in the short to medium term for parishes with large numbers of tourists, and occasional offices. Over time, we anticipate the routing of payments via the phone bill may be replaced with a more mainstream payment method whether that be from the bank account or a PayPal or Pingit account. 8

9 3. Mobile Giving Mobile banking is in its infancy, but is growing fast. Whilst many applications are only for account holders of a particular bank, the Pingit system from Barclays is more generically applicable. Pingit is a system for the mobile transfer of money in the UK. It is available to all UK current account holders aged 16 or over. The Pingit app is free and is available for Apple (ios), Android and Blackberry operating systems. At the beginning of 2014 there were 1.2 million live Pingit accounts. Although the system requires the app to send a payment, you can set up a mobile number and a Pingit account to receive payments through the Barclays website so people without smartphones can still receive payments. Doing it through the phone number has the attraction that payments can be exchanged without needing to share bank details with the other party. The Pingit service works on the Faster Payment Scheme, so payments are effectively instantaneous, even between Barclays and non Barclays customers, and they are free. The Pingit app now has a 'donate with Gift Aid' function, which account holders can use to make donations to charity, and to do so tax-effectively. Pingit users can make a donation by either scanning QR codes on the charity's marketing materials, or by selecting their charity from the app's business directory. They are then prompted whether they would like to give by Gift Aid, and if so to complete a declaration. The costs of the scheme are 15p per transaction, and so this is more cost effective, the larger the transaction; plus an initial fee of 250. Whilst this initial fee is a considerable investment, and is likely to negate the benefit for individual parishes, it is hoped that over time a bulk deal could be negotiated for the Church of England. 9

10 The flowchart overleaf illustrates the process. All that would be needed within the church would be a poster with a QR code, or this could be printed on baptism or wedding service sheets, or put on small cards in the pews. Strategic Importance We expect this will become a mainstream payment method, and so visitors or those attending a wedding or baptism, may become more likely to want to give using their mobile than by using cash. It could over time join, or even exceed, cards and cash as the dominant methods of financial transactions outside of the home. We recognise that many churches have poor mobile reception, but where there is high footfall, this is likely to become an important payment method. 10

11 * Piloting The National Stewardship and Resources team would love to hear from parishes that would be willing to pilot online, mobile or text giving. You would need to be a larger church, ideally registered with the Charity Commission in order to try text giving. For mobile giving, we would ideally find churches with high tourist footfall, or ones with large youth congregations. There are three aims of the piloting process: 1) First, to prove out the system and develop more detailed guidance on good practice. 2) Second, to work out how to use these tools culturally within the church context e.g. how do we make the ask at a baptism or wedding for text giving, how do we best publicise the QR codes for Pingit. 3) Third, to develop brief case studies that could be shared with other parishes to encourage them to adopt these approaches. 11