Giving grows when it’s convenient for everyone.
By now, you’ve probably seen that everyone likes to give in a different way. You have a handful of people who still regularly write a check to the church. You have others who like to give online before they pay the rest of their bills for the month. Many prefer to donate through text to give during your service. Some like to give through a mobile app on their phone. And there are still others who always give at a kiosk because it’s their visual reminder to tithe. Just like we all have our preferred device to hop on a Zoom call, we all have a preferred device to give from.
And when you meet people where they are by offering multiple options to give, your giving will grow. But providing different ways to give just scratches the surface with SecureGive. Our innovative software and time-saving features make everything easier and encourage even great giving participation. So, here are 10 features to utilize in SecureGive that will make giving easier and more convenient for your donors.
But there’s an added bonus to these features. Not only will they make giving easier for your donors, they will make management easier for your church staff with robust reporting, easy-to-read analytics, and time-saving features.
1. Customization
You want your online giving to look and feel like an extension of your church. You want everything to feel cohesive, as one, to not only fit the branding of your church but to also be something your givers recognize and feel comfortable with. SecureGive is safe and secure for everyone to use. In our 17 year history, we’ve never had a data breach. However, we know there’s also added peace of mind that comes when you recognize “the look” of something.
SecureGive makes it easy to brand your page to match your church with customized colors and logos. You can also customize messages and terms within SecureGive to match the language you use at your church. So if you regularly say “Give” instead of “Donate”, you can easily make this change. And if you’d like to include your church slogan, like “Love God, Love People, Serve the World”, in the email confirmation givers receive after a transaction, you can easily add this in too.
2. Analytics at a Glance
The SecureGive dashboard allows church administrators to see key reporting details with easy-to-read graphs and transaction break downs. Here you can view metrics like total transactions, total donors, new donors, daily transaction totals, cumulative transaction totals, how often giving sources were used (kiosk, online, mobile, text to give, cash and checks), and one time vs. recurring transactions. And, you can see these metrics in any date or time range you need. All of this means you can see the metrics you need in graph form right when you log in.
3. Locations
Does your church have multiple campuses? Or are you planning to expand soon? SecureGive has you covered. With our software, you can easily distinguish between different locations with customized branding, donation/purchase categories, and reporting. You can even deposit funds to separate bank accounts for each campus. Each of your locations may have specific needs and a unique style. SecureGive makes it easy to manage all your campuses individually or separately based on your needs.
4. Campaigns
Managing campaigns or yearly budget pledge drives can be tedious. SecureGive provides a place for your donors to make pledges and review progress with SecureGive Campaigns. See metrics like donation count, number of donors, how many pledges have been fulfilled, and so much more. And, as you might expect, Campaigns integrate seamlessly with the rest of SecureGive’s robust platform.
5. Donation Categories
SecureGive offers multiple donation categories, making it easy to give to multiple funds at once. This means your donors can give their regular tithes and offerings, support the missions fund, and make a donation to your new fundraising initiative for a church plant in a single transaction.
By offering multiple donation categories, you’re able to streamline the giving process for your donors. So instead of having to make three separate transactions to support three separate funds, they are able to support all three funds at once. As you may have seen, if it takes more than one transaction to give to a separate cause, they’re often not going to give to that second cause. With SecureGive, your donors can easily give the church initiatives that God is prompting them to support.
On the admin side, church staff can easily see a breakdown of collective transactions as well as individual donation categories, saving time and headaches with reporting.
6. Purchase Categories
Do you have some new t-shirts coming to your church store soon? Selling tickets to an upcoming marriage conference? Promoting a guest speaker’s new devotional? Or collecting tuition payments for your church’s preschool program? By utilizing purchase categories in SecureGive, you can easily accept payments and purchases for all of these examples and more.
And there’s a fixed amount feature to make payments even easier for your congregation. Let’s say you’re selling a book that’s $5, set that as the fixed amount for that purchase category. Then people can simply enter the number of books they’d like to buy and the total will automatically be calculated for them.
As a church admin, you’ll easily be able to separate purchases from tax-deductible donations in SecureGive, making reporting easier than ever.
7. Direct Category Links
While it’s often beneficial to make it easy to give to multiple categories in a single transaction, there are times you need to make it as straightforward as possible to give a single cause.Use direct category links to easily share or send donation or purchase categories to your donors. You can Use these links to highlight your missions fund on Facebook or send out this link in an email to high school parents for summer camp registration. When you send this link, it takes donors directly to the specific category in SecureGive so they can quickly complete their transaction with even more ease and convenience.
8. Check Scanning
Digital giving is great. But no matter how great the software is or how many features it has to offer, you’re still going to have people who refuse to give with anything besides a check. SecureGive’s Check Scanning makes keeping track of in-person donations easier than ever before. Quickly scan checks and record the information within SecureGive software so you can easily keep track of all transactions (both digital and in-person) in one place. And, when you scan the checks, they’ll automatically deposit to your account, saving you a trip to the bank.
9. Giving Statements
Something everyone knows and expects to come each year around January. But for church staff, it can be a headache to compile information, create statements, and send them out. But, for donors, they can be crucial for accurate tax records.
SecureGive makes sending giving statements easy, whether you send them via email or print a version for the mail. It will save your church staff countless hours. And once a giving statement is created, your donors can easily view or print it at any time in their SecureGive account thus taking away any frustrations of a misplaced, confusing, or hard-to-read giving statement.
10. Church Management Integrations
Church Management Systems (ChMS) are a wonderful tool for many churches. SecureGive has direct integrations with many of the top ChMS platforms like Salesforce, FellowshipOn, Planning Center, Rock, Ministry Platform, and Church Community Builder. But we also offer integrations with many others. These integrations streamline your workflow and save countless hours each week by sending over transaction details from SecureGive to your ChMS.
Make sure that your church is taking advantage of these features to offer the most convenient and comprehensive giving experience to your donors. Give your donors the tools they need to embrace biblical generosity and allow your church staff to make informed decisions based on the giving data within SecureGive as well as saving countless operation hours with easy-to-use features.