Online Giving Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Means

Online giving is taking away donations from your church or nonprofit.

There. I said it.

You may be thinking to yourself, “But our members and donors give online all the time! They go to our website, they fill out the form or they go to PayPal and donate.”

And that’s the problem. The two key words there are “website” and “form.” Why are you making it so hard to donate? Stop.

Online Giving Is Hard

As a church pastor when you look out over your congregation, how many laptops do you see during service? As a nonprofit fundraiser, how many people bring their computers to your events? The answer is zero.

Let’s take a look at the steps you’re requiring from your donors to give online:

1. Go home
2. Go to their computer
3. Go to your website
4. Fill out their login information
5. Fill out an online donation form
6. Print or save the donation confirmation

Mobile Giving Isn’t the Future: It’s the Present

Here are a few facts to consider when thinking about mobile giving.

• Online giving has increased by 13.5% over last year.
  People are clearly interested in making donations online. But …
• Only 16% of church and charity websites are optimized for mobile online giving.
  Despite the increase in online giving, fully 84% of organizations that rely on donations give people a good means of doing so. Besides …
• 74% of consumers will wait five seconds for a web page to load on their mobile device before abandoning the site.
  You have a very short time to deliver the donation experience before potential donors give up. And then …
• 46% of consumers are unlikely to return to a mobile site if it didn’t work properly during their last visit.
  So you’re leaving almost half your donations on the table because you didn’t serve the needs of your donors.

Don’t take our word for it: check out this recent article in ChurchMag, “Why Mobile Online Giving Is Important,” for a second opinion.

There Has To Be a Better Way

How many people have their smartphones in their pockets? More importantly how many people have their smartphones surgically implanted into their hands? Almost all of them.

If you’re not providing donors with a mobile-optimized giving experience, you are setting yourself up for failure. It may not be tomorrow or next week, but very soon you will be left wondering what happened.

One easy solution is a mobile giving app. A dedicated app ensures donors don’t have to fill out a form each and every time they want to give. They can donate spontaneously and generously as they’re moved to do so.