Online giving has never been more important than it is now. 

Two years post-pandemic, we are looking at a very changed landscape of how we pay for goods and services…and how we exercise generosity. 

Most people have become accustomed to using apps, QR codes, and saved credit card information for financial transactions. This doesn’t just apply to the commercial marketplace, however. The Church has followed suit, adopting tools that make it simple to tithe and make offerings on a laptop/desktop computer, mobile phone, or tablet.

During COVID-19, even small or very traditional churches adopted online giving in place of the physical offering plate. With churches no longer meeting in person, leaders had to quickly adapt and create a remote channel for giving. 

Online giving became ubiquitous at most churches. But did most churches stick with the trend and take full advantage of their new digital giving platform? 

Are Church Members Actually Giving Online?  

At the start of this year, we talked to over 6,000 church leaders–many from small-medium sized churches–to ask them about how their church members were giving in 2022. 

We asked key questions such as:

How are people giving to your church?

What percentage of your giving is digital?

Are your church members making recurring gifts?

Did you adopt online giving during the pandemic?

Here’s what we discovered…

Did you have an online giving tool prior to COVID-19 (March 20, 2020)?

As mentioned above, during COVID-19, most churches were no longer meeting in person for at least a few months. The result? Churches that relied on the offering plate had to switch gears fast and offer an easy-to-use digital solution for making gifts online.  

As you can see from the graph above, many churches (around 2,000 surveyed) did not have online giving prior to March of 2020. 

Do you have an online giving tool now?

The vast majority of churches do have an online giving tool–that’s a great start to creating a stronger habit of digital giving.

However, you’ll soon discover that many church members aren’t actually taking advantage of these tools. 

Where does the majority of the giving to your church come from?

The surprising conclusion is that many donors are still giving to churches with cash or check. We still have a long way to go with digital giving!

That being said, we took a deeper dive into digital giving, and asked survey takers just how many digital donors they have. 

Here are the results…

What percentage of your total giving originates digitally (web, text, or mobile)?

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Once again, the results showed a surprising trend: many church donors (and churches) are missing out on the opportunity to use technology to make giving fast, easy, and convenient. 

What percentage of your total giving is automated (recurring)?

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One of the benefits of online giving is that it makes it easy to make recurring gifts. All donors need to do is input credit/debit card information or ACH/bank information, choose a giving frequency, and click a button. 

Voila! Their giving is automated.

Ideally, the majority of church donors are recurring. That allows churches to better plan for the future…and empowers givers to be more consistently generous. 

Unfortunately, we found that nearly half of churches have less than 20% recurring donors. And only 1 in 10 churches have over 60% recurring donors. 

This leaves plenty of room for improvement…and for churches to start teaching members about the importance (and convenience) of recurring gifts. 

Discover More Digital Giving Trends with Our Free Ebook

We published the full results of our 2023 State of Giving Survey in a downloadable e-book. To download it for free, click here.