How do churches improve digital giving?
Churches that grow digital giving consistently do a few things well: they communicate giving options clearly and often, they build a giving page that both inspires and equips donors, they train staff and volunteers to answer questions on Sunday morning, they use email to thank givers and share ministry impact, and they make recurring giving easy to set up and visible in every giving conversation.
Setting up digital giving is the easy part. Getting your congregation to use it consistently, across every method you offer, week in and week out, is where most churches have room to grow.
How your church communicates, teaches, and equips people around those tools shapes whether digital giving becomes a real part of your church’s culture or just an option that sits quietly in the background.
After 22 years of working with churches on this, here’s what we’ve seen make a consistent difference.
1. Teach Generosity, Not Just How to Give
Consistent generosity grows from conviction, not convenience. The people in your church who give faithfully and regularly aren’t doing it because the technology is good. They’re doing it because they’ve been taught why it matters.
That doesn’t mean you need to devote a full sermon series to money every year. But generosity language woven throughout the calendar, small groups, and announcements does compound over time. Pastors who create space for it, even briefly and consistently, tend to see it reflected in giving patterns.
If you’re looking for a starting point, SecureGive hosts two free sermon series resources your team can use or adapt: Be Generous: A 4-Week Sermon Series and Let My Money Go.
2. Communicate Giving Options Clearly and Often
The most common reason digital giving goes underused at a church isn’t skepticism or resistance. It’s that a lot of people simply don’t know all the ways they can give.
Take a few minutes during your offering moment to walk through the options, not a quick mention, an actual brief explanation. Show the text-to-give number on screen. Point to the kiosk in the lobby. Remind people they can give from the app. Some of your regular attenders have never tried anything other than the method they first used. Some of your newer visitors don’t know you offer anything at all.
Include giving information in your pre-service and post-service slides too, not just during the offering moment. A simple three-step instruction slide gives a first-time giver something to follow without asking anyone for help.
A good rule of thumb: if it feels like you’ve been talking about it too much, you’re probably at about the right frequency. End every giving moment by thanking the people who gave. That’s not a small thing.
3. Build a Giving Page That Earns the Gift
Your church website is often where someone goes the first time they decide to give. What they find there shapes whether they follow through.
A giving page that works does several things well. It opens with a clear, compelling reason to give, what generosity makes possible at your church, grounded in your mission and in scripture if that fits your context. It shows the impact of past giving through stories, numbers, or a link to an annual report. It lists every available giving method with direct links to each one. And it gives first-time givers somewhere to turn if they have a question, whether that’s a direct email address, a phone number, or a staff contact by name.
For a full checklist of what an effective giving page includes, see our Giving Page Checklist.
4. Train Your Staff and Volunteers on Giving
On a Sunday morning when something isn’t working, the staff member or volunteer nearby is the one who gets asked for help. If that person doesn’t know how to answer, a first-time giver walks away without giving. That’s a real moment with a real outcome.
The fix isn’t complicated. It’s spending twenty or thirty minutes before a volunteer orientation walking your team through the giving experience. Have them try giving on the app. Show them where to find the text-to-give keyword. Let them log into the admin dashboard once so it isn’t foreign.
Most of the questions they’ll field are straightforward: How do I set up recurring giving? Is my information secure? I can’t find the fund I want. Your team just needs to have seen the answers once.
5. Use Church Emails to Thank Givers and Show Impact
An email that says “give now” does a lot less than one that first tells a giver what their generosity already made possible.
Consider starting with gratitude. A simple, specific thank-you, “Because of your generosity last month, our food pantry served 340 families,” does more to deepen giving culture than most campaigns. From there, a giving email can share a story, an update on a ministry initiative, or progress toward a goal. That combination of acknowledgment and outcome gives people a reason to keep going, and sometimes a reason to give more.
Every giving email should end with a clear next step: a button, a link, something that takes one tap.
If your church uses Mailchimp for email communication, SecureGive’s Zapier integration makes it straightforward to automate thank-you emails and giving follow-up workflows without manual work on the backend. More on that here: Save Time with SecureGive’s Zapier Integration.
6. Make Recurring Giving Part of the Conversation
The donors who have set up recurring giving tend to show up in your data as your most consistent givers, not always your largest, but your most reliable. That consistency matters to a church budget in ways a fluctuating deposit schedule can’t match.
Churches using SecureGive can choose to make recurring giving the default option in their giving setup, which means the conversation about frequency happens at the moment of first commitment rather than as a follow-up. For the recurring givers you already have, Auto Card Updater runs in the background to keep payment information current. When a card expires or gets reissued, the system communicates with the bank and updates the record automatically, so a gift that might have lapsed quietly stays active.
DonorIQ gives your team visibility into giving patterns over time, including donors who have given regularly but whose giving has slowed or stopped. That kind of early signal matters, both for your budget and for pastoral follow-up.
Remind your congregation that recurring giving is an option. Mention it specifically on Sunday. The people who need that nudge won’t act without it.
7. Embed Giving Directly on Your Church Website
Most churches send donors off-site to give. It works, but the moment someone leaves your website, they’ve left your church’s digital presence.
Embedding giving directly on your site keeps donors connected to your content through the entire experience. That’s when someone signs up for a small group, registers for an event, or explores a ministry they hadn’t noticed before.
SecureGive offers a few ways to do it depending on your site setup: a dedicated giving section, a page header widget, a modal that can be activated from any page, or a fully custom experience through the Checkout API for churches with a developer or agency partner.
For a full breakdown of each option, see 4 Ways to Embed Online Giving Directly on Your Church’s Website.
Ready to See What SecureGive Can Do for Your Church?
A 30-minute call with one of our giving consultants gives you a clear picture of where your setup stands and what SecureGive could look like for your church specifically.
Frequently Asked Questions
More often than most churches do. A brief mention during the offering moment each week, reinforced through pre- and post-service slides and occasional emails, keeps giving options visible to both regular attenders and new visitors. Churches that communicate giving options consistently tend to see higher adoption across all methods.
A giving page should open with a compelling reason to give grounded in your church's mission, show the impact of past generosity through stories or reports, list every available giving method with direct links, and include a contact for questions. See the Giving Page Checklist for a full breakdown.
Recurring gifts create predictable revenue that helps churches budget and plan. Churches that make recurring giving easy to set up and actively encourage it typically see more stable giving over time, including through the summer months when attendance and one-time gifts often dip.
The most effective giving emails lead with gratitude and impact before making an ask. Sharing what generosity has already made possible, whether a local outreach, a building project milestone, or a ministry initiative, gives readers a reason to give and a reason to keep going. Always include a single, clear giving link or button at the end.
SecureGive's Campaigns module lets churches run a capital campaign, building fund, or special initiative as a separate giving track alongside regular giving. Donors can give to both, and the church can track campaign progress independently. Campaigns are available on the Premium plan and can be activated for the duration of the drive.