Best Practices for Getting Your Congregation to Try Mobile Giving

Mobile giving can have a positive impact on your church’s engagement and budget. But it’s not enough to have mobile giving as an option. You need to prioritize getting your church to use it.

Maybe you’ve recently invested in a mobile option for your church and you’re not sure what’s next. Or maybe you’ve had one for a while, but it’s never really caught on. Either way, we’ve put together four easy steps to help your church embrace mobile giving.

1. Get your staff on board

Your first order of business is to get your volunteers and staff on board. You want as many of them as possible, not only to use the app themselves but also to sign up as recurring givers.

They need to know the app inside and out so that they can effectively train others in its use. If someone goes to the worship leader and asks for help to start and the worship leader says that they don’t use it or is obviously unfamiliar with it, it’s going to reflect poorly on the app. This can’t be a “Do as I say, not as I do” situation.

Set up staff meetings so that you can explain:

• Why mobile giving is important to the church
• How the app works
• How they can help encourage others to get on board
• What you expect from them

2. Give people time to download your app

Imagine you’re sitting in a church service and the pastor’s getting ready to take the offering. During that time he tells you, “Hey, we have an app that makes giving really quick and efficient!”

What are the chances that you’re going to go to the app store, find the app, download and install it, create an account, and give during the offering time? It’s probably not that likely. You want to communicate the app information a lot earlier in the service.

You can do that by creating some pre-service slides that alert people to the app. When it’s time to take the offering, you want to put that slide back up for as long as possible. You want to give them enough time to take in the information and then act.

You also want to take some time during the greeting to let people know that they can download your app. If the mobile-giving component is part of a larger church app the pitch is really simple, “Welcome! We’re glad you’re worshiping with us this morning. I just wanted to let you know that if you want to learn more about us, you can download our app. It will allow you to watch sermons, check out upcoming events, give, and generally stay connected.”

3. Walk them through the process of giving

Make a plan once or twice a quarter to walk people through the process of giving. Some of your congregants are afraid that mobile giving is a complicated process—but that’s a barrier you can easily help them overcome. Once they see it done a few times, they’ll realize how simple and quick it is.

You (or someone else) can screencast your phone and walk them through the act of giving. Just make sure that you’ve practiced it a couple times and you’ve ironed out all of the quirks. Even fumbles that have nothing to do with the app can turn people off before they give it a chance.

4. Take up a special mobile-only offering

Find a local issue that people are passionate about and raise money for it. It could be a clothing and school-supplies drive for kids in your community, or it could be raising assistance for a local charity. The key is that you want to find something that everyone in your church is able to get behind, then create a mobile-only drive to raise money for it.

Next, you want to cast a vision for what could be done if everyone contributed. Set the bar really low. Create excitement around what your church could accomplish if everyone gave $5. People caught in the rut of giving by check might be more likely to try the app in order to make a special offering. Once they’ve used it once, it’s easy to use it again.

We’ll Help You Get Your Church on Board

One of the things that set Pushpay apart from other mobile-giving solutions is our implementation strategy. Our track record for getting churches invested in mobile giving is unprecedented. Once you commit to the Total Engagement Package, we introduce you to a team member from our implementation team to partner with your church and develop a strategy that meets your church’s needs.