Best Online Payment Solution for Ministries and Churches?
A great question that I’ve been asked a number of times has been:
What’s the best online giving and/or online payment solution for ministries and churches?
I got the question again in the most recent Sunday Special (Thanks Anthony!).
So, let’s hear it. What are some of the best choices out there for this type of thing? Paypal, Amazon, etc? Or are there some really great ministry-specific solutions that are servicing this demographic?
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23 Responses to “Best Online Payment Solution for Ministries and Churches?”
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Great question with lots of answers. There are a number of ministry focused payment processors. I have a client who uses Egiving Systems. They have one service particularly for churches, and one for Christian ministries. My client has been very happy. They find them very responsive. Here's the link – http://www.egivingsystems.org/
Since I work with a number of ministries and NP's I am particularly biased towards Network for Good. They are great people to work with and work exclusively with 501c(3) orgs. They provide custom donate pages that look exactly like your webpage (website), no merchant account required, and automatically receipt your donor with a customized receipt. Here's a link http://www1.networkforgood.org/for-nonprofits/fun...
I'm not crazy about Paypal. There customer service to nonprofits is terrible. Google checkout is good and easy. But as John Saddington is constantly preaching to us – "eliminate barriers to entry", Google does require you to sign-in with your Google account and associate a credit card with that account. Some people may be uncomfortable with that, some may find it too much work – both may abandon the payment process leaving your ministry with nothing.
Lastly, check out TechSoup. They often offer 501c(3) discounted offers for payment processors. Check out fees CLOSELY. All the processors differ and you need to know your giving pattern to pick the best solution. You don't want to lose all the well-intended money to fees.
Easytithe.com works great for us. No hang-ups, good customer service and has other features such as online registration, forms, etc. Some church data base software company's have it as a added feature (i.e. Fellowship One). But for straight giving purposes, I like EasyTithe.
Stratum Development offers an integrated donations system built into their ChurchSites content management system that allows you to manage campaigns and track giving. Check out http://churchsites.com/pricing.asp. They also offer a free stand alone option called GiveGiver that is more like a PayPal (that takes a percentage of the transactions) for churches. You can still manage multiple campaigns using this option as well. Visit https://www.givegiver.com/ for more info.
Kimbia. I've used them over and over again for lots of clients. Easiest thing in the world to setup and use on a site. It's just embedded JavaScript that you drop into a page or a site design. http://www.kimbia.com/
Paypal, at least in my experience
We just switched from paypal to amazon payments because it is slightly cheaper, and no extra cost for recurring payments.
Some people don't like paypal because of some of their social stances, but it is easy.
what are there social stances?
One of the best ways is to work with a Web Development company that can build the full site – including any items that require money transactions like donation, event registration, capital campaigns, etc. The Church/Ministry sets-up an Authorize.net account and works directly with them and their bank to process all funds. It is easier and less expensive then PayPal fees. Authorize also has the ability to do online checks and recurring donations which is really important to those setting up a regular tithe to the church.
thanks for this.
The problem with Authorize.net (and other payment gateways) is, in most cases, you also need to secure the website that is collecting the information (usually the church website) with a SSL certificate, which can be expensive. If you decide to go this route it may be worthwhile to look for hosting companies that offer a SSl certificate bundled with a hosting plan, and guarantee the security of the certificate. I know of at least one company that offers this on a $18/month plan. I personally prefer PayPal since there is no monthly fee (for the plan I'm using), and it isn't used too much.
In addition to the ones mentioned so far, here are a few more. PaySimple, Acceptiva, SimpleGive, QGiv. There are pros and cons of each from features to pricing. I've used Authorize.net on a few projects, but my understanding is that the church becomes responsible for doing some amount of PCI compliance when going this route, while the other solutions mentioned so far take care of that responsibility.
any idea how hard PCI compliance is?
They way we set-up the information/sites with Authorize is the Web site does not actually store the CC data so no concerns on the Web side. The site is secure and collects the data, but passes it over to Authorize and they process the information. Authorize then talks back to the site and notifies of approval or declination. This allows you to have reporting from the wed site and Authorize. Authorize.net takes care of all of the other PCI compliance concerns.
Wow…I've done extensive research on this (or so I thought) and I've never seen most of these suggestions!
Suffice it to say there are a ton.
Looking at the numbers, Paypal is a bit pricier than most other options, but easier in most cases. I'm looking at partnering with GivingKiosk but Authorize.net may be a better option…
I did the math a few years ago when my church was trying to decide between a solution that used a merchant account or Paypal. I can't remember how I came to it, but I remember figuring that we would have to collect over $30k/year before a merchant account would be cheaper than Paypal. We're about to hit that mark.
We've been using Paypal for the last 3 years and have had no trouble.
http://ministrygive.com is a good solution developed by the smart guys over at church media. If my memory serves me right…i think that they have a recommended merchant processing partner that works with it as well.
I'm at a 2000+ church and we use ACS as our Contrib and people suite with Access ACS as our portal(think thats the term) with Authorize.net doing our backend. Kind of a hassel for more than 20 contribs a week without Sage (ACS works really well with Sage, according to ACS). Also for accounting purposes ACS will be redoing their electronic contrib tracking in the next revision of their Contrib module to better align each contribution with the specific account/fund.
Our church has been using eGive for a couple of years now. It only handles electronic checks and not credit cards, so it is cheaper than most of the options that have been listed so far. You can also do recurring transactions as well. Overall, we have been pleased with it. More info at http://www.egive-usa.com/
Thanks everybody, good ideas and now to do some comparisons…
As a youth minister always having events I have been looking for something easy to use for event registration and payment.
I have noticed a few placed using Active http://www.active.com/activegiving/product.cfm
to help with this process. Collects payments, fundraise, registration, etc at the same place.
Anyone else use it?