Crypto and Stock Giving for Churches: What Every Church Leader Should Know
Learn how crypto and stock giving works, why donors choose appreciated assets, and what churches should consider before accepting non-cash donations.
Most of what your congregation owns is not cash. Stocks. Business interests. Property. Retirement accounts. Digital assets. Fundraising researchers have estimated for years that roughly ninety percent of wealth in the United States is held in non-cash assets. The exact figure moves depending on who is measuring, but nobody argues with the direction.
Here is the number that should stop you. A review of 2023 Form 990 filings for more than 720,000 organizations found that only fourteen percent of nonprofits received any non-cash contributions that year.
That gap is the whole conversation. It is not that churches are doing giving wrong. It is that most churches have only ever built a door for one kind of gift, and a lot of what their people actually own cannot fit through it.
We recently hosted James Lawrence, CEO and co-founder of Engiven, and Doug Miller, enterprise account executive at Tithely, for a conversation about crypto and stock giving. Both of them have been in this space since long before it was comfortable. What follows is the practical version of what they covered, written for the person who has to explain this to a finance team on a Tuesday night.
Non-cash giving is not just a big-church thing
There is a fair assumption that appreciated asset giving belongs to universities and hospital foundations with planned giving departments. The research suggests the opposite is worth paying attention to. A Texas Tech study by Dr. Russell James, which analyzed roughly a million nonprofit tax returns, found that organizations receiving non-cash securities gifts grew contributions 66 percent over five years, compared with 11 percent for those taking only cash.
The size of the gift is not tied to the size of the church. It is tied to the donor.
Engiven's own numbers make that concrete. James said their average crypto donation runs around fifteen thousand dollars, and that in a typical year they process twenty to thirty individual crypto gifts of more than a million dollars each. One ten million dollar donation went to a small ministry. As he put it, at the end of the day it is still ten million US dollars landing in a bank account, even though it started as crypto.
A twenty thousand dollar gift is meaningful for most churches. A fifty thousand dollar gift changes a budget year. Those come through regularly, and they happen at congregations of every size.
Who actually gives crypto
There is a mental image of the young crypto millionaire, and it is mostly wrong.
Estimates of how many Americans own cryptocurrency vary widely depending on the survey. A Harris Poll of nearly 54,000 adults for the National Cryptocurrency Association put ownership at 21 percent of US adults, while Gallup found closer to one in seven and a Federal Reserve survey of about 13,000 adults landed at 10 percent at the end of 2025. Wherever the real number sits in that range, it is large enough that some of those people are in your pews.
Younger donors adopted crypto first, but they are usually not the ones making major gifts. In James's experience, the larger gifts tend to come from Gen X donors who bought in their late thirties and early forties, held for years, and watched the value climb. They are investors, engineers, and business owners. They take a long view, and they tend to be generous.
In other words, the person in your church with a six-figure crypto gift is very likely the same person who already wrote a fifty thousand dollar check or transferred stock last December. You already know them. They just have another asset you need to make room for.
Why donors give appreciated assets instead of cash
The IRS classifies cryptocurrency as property, the same category stock falls into. That classification comes with a real benefit on the giving side.
When a donor sells an appreciated asset and gives the proceeds, they pay capital gains tax first and give what is left. When they donate the asset directly to a qualified nonprofit, they generally avoid the capital gains tax on the appreciation and can deduct the fair market value. The church receives more, and the donor gives more efficiently.
One important detail for anyone tempted to donate something they bought last month: the asset needs to be held for at least a year to get the full benefit. Under a year, the donor is generally limited to deducting their cost basis. Buying Bitcoin at fifty thousand and donating it a year later at a hundred thousand is a very different tax outcome than buying and giving in the same quarter.
We are not tax advisors, and neither is your church. Point donors to their own CPA. But knowing the shape of the rule lets you have an intelligent first conversation, and it helps to have something you can send a donor who wants to understand the benefits of giving cryptocurrency on their own terms before they call their accountant.
Do churches have to hold crypto? No.
This is the question behind every finance team's hesitation, so here is the direct answer: your church never holds the asset. With Engiven, gifts are auto-liquidated. A donor transfers half a Bitcoin, it converts to US dollars within minutes, and the cash is sent to your church's bank account by ACH.
There is no waiting until Monday. No watching the market and hoping. James described it as set it and forget it, and the description holds up:
1. The donor fills out a pledge form your church never has to build.
2. They transfer the asset.
3. Engiven receives it, liquidates it, and sends the cash.
4. Your designated staff get email notifications at each step.
5. The donor gets a contribution receipt automatically.
Crypto actually settles faster than stock. A stock gift has to move from the broker, which usually takes one to three business days, and the market has to be open. A stock donated on Friday might not liquidate until Tuesday. Crypto is close to real time, which means very little market exposure between the gift and the deposit.
If your finance team wants to see it themselves, the Engiven dashboard shows every transaction in real time and exports cleanly into other systems.
What about the volatility argument?
Volatility is real, and it is also mostly irrelevant when the holding period is measured in minutes. The comparison people reach for is cash, and that is the wrong comparison. The right comparison is stock, which your church already accepts without anxiety, and which sits in limbo longer than crypto does.
Where the actual risk lives is in doing this without a platform. Crypto transfers are final. Send to the wrong address and it is very difficult, often impossible, to recover. There is no chargeback process. This is exactly why the answer is a platform that handles wallet security, blockchain monitoring, and settlement, rather than a staff member setting up an exchange account.
Done properly, James argues it is safer than card processing. Done improperly, it is genuinely risky. That distinction is the whole ballgame.
The appraisal rule nobody warns donors about
Because the IRS treats crypto as property, any crypto donation valued at five thousand dollars or more requires a qualified appraisal for the donor's tax return.
It is an outdated rule. Price discovery for major cryptocurrencies is now trivial and well documented. But the requirement stands, and James said appraisals typically run six to seven hundred dollars.
Engiven provides the qualified appraisal at no cost for donors giving through Tithely churches, handled through their foundation with a simple e-signature process. There is no paperwork on the ministry side. For a donor considering a significant gift, this is often the detail that removes the last bit of friction.
How to talk about it without making it weird
Two things worth understanding.
First, non-cash gifts usually come from a different place than tithes. Tithes come out of income. Crypto and stock gifts come out of accumulated wealth. They arrive at different moments and follow a different rhythm, which is worth naming internally so nobody is confused when a major asset gift does not look like a Sunday offering.
Second, the communication strategy is simpler than people expect. Present non-cash giving anywhere you already present giving. Your website, your giving page, your year-end appeal. That is genuinely most of the work.
Crypto owners tend to be private, so surveying the congregation to find out who owns Bitcoin is not a productive use of anyone's time. Set the table and let people come to it. If someone wants to make a six-figure gift, they will start a conversation with your senior or executive pastor, exactly like they would with any other major gift. The blocking and tackling of generosity does not change.
Celebrate these gifts the way you celebrate first-time and recurring givers. It is the same heart. If you want help finding language that feels pastoral instead of transactional, How to Talk About Year-End Giving Without Feeling Awkward covers the tone well.
How to know if your church is ready
Ask a better question: is there a downside to being ready? There is not.
Some ministries have the option live for years before their first crypto gift. Others are stunned immediately. James told the story of a church in Minnesota that signed up during a capital campaign with no expectation of receiving anything, and took in nearly five hundred thousand dollars in crypto on the first night. The pastor called him, genuinely shocked.
If you want to find out whether this resonates with your donor base, a capital campaign is the natural test. A campaign gives you permission to ask for larger gifts, and larger gifts are where major givers surface. Some of them will be sitting on appreciated assets. Related reading: 8 End-of-Year Giving Campaign Ideas.
The recurring theme is that you cannot tell by looking. You do not know who in your congregation bought Bitcoin in 2016. Make the option available, and let the Lord move people the way he is going to move them.
What to look for in a non-cash giving platform
If you are comparing options, these are the four things that matter.
Security. Ask about SOC 2 audits and internal security practices. This is not optional for an asset class with no chargeback protection.
Liquidation speed. Near-instant should be the baseline, not a premium feature.
Donor receipts. Automatic contribution receipts, with the ability to turn them off if your church prefers to send its own.
Cost. Many providers charge substantial annual fees on the theory that the fee will pay for itself in increased giving. It generally does not. Tithely churches access Engiven with no annual fee, and the donor covers the transaction cost. On the webinar, James put network fees on a fifty thousand dollar Bitcoin gift at roughly a dollar.
Watch the full conversation
Everything above came out of an hour-long conversation between James Lawrence and Doug Miller, and the recording is worth your time if you are the person who has to make the case internally. They get into the history of how churches adopted crypto, the pastoral side of talking about money in an AI age, and a live Q&A with questions from church leaders on day trading, fees, and what finance teams should look for in a platform.
Watch the full webinar: Beyond the Offering Plate, Crypto and Stock Giving for Churches
It is a good one to forward to a finance team member or an executive pastor before you bring the idea to a meeting.
Frequently asked questions
Do churches have to hold cryptocurrency to accept it?
No. With auto-liquidation, gifts convert to US dollars within minutes and arrive in your church's bank account as cash. Your church never holds the asset.
Who pays the transaction fees on a crypto donation?
The donor. According to Engiven, network fees on major cryptocurrencies run around a dollar, even on a large gift.
Does a crypto donation require an appraisal?
Crypto gifts valued at five thousand dollars or more require a qualified appraisal for the donor's tax return. Engiven provides this at no cost for donors giving through Tithely churches.
Is stock giving easier than crypto giving?
Stock is more familiar to most congregations and raises fewer questions. Mechanically, crypto settles faster, since stock transfers take one to three business days and depend on market hours.
How much do churches typically receive in crypto gifts?
Engiven reports an average crypto donation of around fifteen thousand dollars, and processes gifts above a million dollars every year. Amounts vary widely by congregation.
Getting started
The setup is short, and you do not have to change your existing giving platform to do it. Crypto and stock giving sits alongside what you already use.
• If you are a Tithely church, reach out to your Tithely contact for the partner link that waives the annual fee, or walk through the Engiven setup articles in the Tithely Help Center.
• If you are not on Tithely yet, take a look at Tithely Giving. Six ways to give, no monthly fees, and non-cash giving built into the same ecosystem as your text giving and online giving.
Then put the link on your giving page and leave it there.
None of this is about chasing a windfall. It is about not being the reason a gift never happens. Somebody in your congregation has been faithful with something they bought years ago and never thought to bring it to church, because church has never been a place that could receive it. Open the door, and let the Lord do what he is going to do with who walks through it.
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Laura is a writer and ministry leader with experience in church communications, administration, worship ministry, and nonprofit support. She is passionate about helping people grow in their faith through biblical truth, practical encouragement, and honest conversations about the messy middle of everyday life.
When she's not writing, she's spending time with her family and hoping for the swift return of side parts and high-waisted skinny jeans.
Most of what your congregation owns is not cash. Stocks. Business interests. Property. Retirement accounts. Digital assets. Fundraising researchers have estimated for years that roughly ninety percent of wealth in the United States is held in non-cash assets. The exact figure moves depending on who is measuring, but nobody argues with the direction.
Here is the number that should stop you. A review of 2023 Form 990 filings for more than 720,000 organizations found that only fourteen percent of nonprofits received any non-cash contributions that year.
That gap is the whole conversation. It is not that churches are doing giving wrong. It is that most churches have only ever built a door for one kind of gift, and a lot of what their people actually own cannot fit through it.
We recently hosted James Lawrence, CEO and co-founder of Engiven, and Doug Miller, enterprise account executive at Tithely, for a conversation about crypto and stock giving. Both of them have been in this space since long before it was comfortable. What follows is the practical version of what they covered, written for the person who has to explain this to a finance team on a Tuesday night.
Non-cash giving is not just a big-church thing
There is a fair assumption that appreciated asset giving belongs to universities and hospital foundations with planned giving departments. The research suggests the opposite is worth paying attention to. A Texas Tech study by Dr. Russell James, which analyzed roughly a million nonprofit tax returns, found that organizations receiving non-cash securities gifts grew contributions 66 percent over five years, compared with 11 percent for those taking only cash.
The size of the gift is not tied to the size of the church. It is tied to the donor.
Engiven's own numbers make that concrete. James said their average crypto donation runs around fifteen thousand dollars, and that in a typical year they process twenty to thirty individual crypto gifts of more than a million dollars each. One ten million dollar donation went to a small ministry. As he put it, at the end of the day it is still ten million US dollars landing in a bank account, even though it started as crypto.
A twenty thousand dollar gift is meaningful for most churches. A fifty thousand dollar gift changes a budget year. Those come through regularly, and they happen at congregations of every size.
Who actually gives crypto
There is a mental image of the young crypto millionaire, and it is mostly wrong.
Estimates of how many Americans own cryptocurrency vary widely depending on the survey. A Harris Poll of nearly 54,000 adults for the National Cryptocurrency Association put ownership at 21 percent of US adults, while Gallup found closer to one in seven and a Federal Reserve survey of about 13,000 adults landed at 10 percent at the end of 2025. Wherever the real number sits in that range, it is large enough that some of those people are in your pews.
Younger donors adopted crypto first, but they are usually not the ones making major gifts. In James's experience, the larger gifts tend to come from Gen X donors who bought in their late thirties and early forties, held for years, and watched the value climb. They are investors, engineers, and business owners. They take a long view, and they tend to be generous.
In other words, the person in your church with a six-figure crypto gift is very likely the same person who already wrote a fifty thousand dollar check or transferred stock last December. You already know them. They just have another asset you need to make room for.
Why donors give appreciated assets instead of cash
The IRS classifies cryptocurrency as property, the same category stock falls into. That classification comes with a real benefit on the giving side.
When a donor sells an appreciated asset and gives the proceeds, they pay capital gains tax first and give what is left. When they donate the asset directly to a qualified nonprofit, they generally avoid the capital gains tax on the appreciation and can deduct the fair market value. The church receives more, and the donor gives more efficiently.
One important detail for anyone tempted to donate something they bought last month: the asset needs to be held for at least a year to get the full benefit. Under a year, the donor is generally limited to deducting their cost basis. Buying Bitcoin at fifty thousand and donating it a year later at a hundred thousand is a very different tax outcome than buying and giving in the same quarter.
We are not tax advisors, and neither is your church. Point donors to their own CPA. But knowing the shape of the rule lets you have an intelligent first conversation, and it helps to have something you can send a donor who wants to understand the benefits of giving cryptocurrency on their own terms before they call their accountant.
Do churches have to hold crypto? No.
This is the question behind every finance team's hesitation, so here is the direct answer: your church never holds the asset. With Engiven, gifts are auto-liquidated. A donor transfers half a Bitcoin, it converts to US dollars within minutes, and the cash is sent to your church's bank account by ACH.
There is no waiting until Monday. No watching the market and hoping. James described it as set it and forget it, and the description holds up:
1. The donor fills out a pledge form your church never has to build.
2. They transfer the asset.
3. Engiven receives it, liquidates it, and sends the cash.
4. Your designated staff get email notifications at each step.
5. The donor gets a contribution receipt automatically.
Crypto actually settles faster than stock. A stock gift has to move from the broker, which usually takes one to three business days, and the market has to be open. A stock donated on Friday might not liquidate until Tuesday. Crypto is close to real time, which means very little market exposure between the gift and the deposit.
If your finance team wants to see it themselves, the Engiven dashboard shows every transaction in real time and exports cleanly into other systems.
What about the volatility argument?
Volatility is real, and it is also mostly irrelevant when the holding period is measured in minutes. The comparison people reach for is cash, and that is the wrong comparison. The right comparison is stock, which your church already accepts without anxiety, and which sits in limbo longer than crypto does.
Where the actual risk lives is in doing this without a platform. Crypto transfers are final. Send to the wrong address and it is very difficult, often impossible, to recover. There is no chargeback process. This is exactly why the answer is a platform that handles wallet security, blockchain monitoring, and settlement, rather than a staff member setting up an exchange account.
Done properly, James argues it is safer than card processing. Done improperly, it is genuinely risky. That distinction is the whole ballgame.
The appraisal rule nobody warns donors about
Because the IRS treats crypto as property, any crypto donation valued at five thousand dollars or more requires a qualified appraisal for the donor's tax return.
It is an outdated rule. Price discovery for major cryptocurrencies is now trivial and well documented. But the requirement stands, and James said appraisals typically run six to seven hundred dollars.
Engiven provides the qualified appraisal at no cost for donors giving through Tithely churches, handled through their foundation with a simple e-signature process. There is no paperwork on the ministry side. For a donor considering a significant gift, this is often the detail that removes the last bit of friction.
How to talk about it without making it weird
Two things worth understanding.
First, non-cash gifts usually come from a different place than tithes. Tithes come out of income. Crypto and stock gifts come out of accumulated wealth. They arrive at different moments and follow a different rhythm, which is worth naming internally so nobody is confused when a major asset gift does not look like a Sunday offering.
Second, the communication strategy is simpler than people expect. Present non-cash giving anywhere you already present giving. Your website, your giving page, your year-end appeal. That is genuinely most of the work.
Crypto owners tend to be private, so surveying the congregation to find out who owns Bitcoin is not a productive use of anyone's time. Set the table and let people come to it. If someone wants to make a six-figure gift, they will start a conversation with your senior or executive pastor, exactly like they would with any other major gift. The blocking and tackling of generosity does not change.
Celebrate these gifts the way you celebrate first-time and recurring givers. It is the same heart. If you want help finding language that feels pastoral instead of transactional, How to Talk About Year-End Giving Without Feeling Awkward covers the tone well.
How to know if your church is ready
Ask a better question: is there a downside to being ready? There is not.
Some ministries have the option live for years before their first crypto gift. Others are stunned immediately. James told the story of a church in Minnesota that signed up during a capital campaign with no expectation of receiving anything, and took in nearly five hundred thousand dollars in crypto on the first night. The pastor called him, genuinely shocked.
If you want to find out whether this resonates with your donor base, a capital campaign is the natural test. A campaign gives you permission to ask for larger gifts, and larger gifts are where major givers surface. Some of them will be sitting on appreciated assets. Related reading: 8 End-of-Year Giving Campaign Ideas.
The recurring theme is that you cannot tell by looking. You do not know who in your congregation bought Bitcoin in 2016. Make the option available, and let the Lord move people the way he is going to move them.
What to look for in a non-cash giving platform
If you are comparing options, these are the four things that matter.
Security. Ask about SOC 2 audits and internal security practices. This is not optional for an asset class with no chargeback protection.
Liquidation speed. Near-instant should be the baseline, not a premium feature.
Donor receipts. Automatic contribution receipts, with the ability to turn them off if your church prefers to send its own.
Cost. Many providers charge substantial annual fees on the theory that the fee will pay for itself in increased giving. It generally does not. Tithely churches access Engiven with no annual fee, and the donor covers the transaction cost. On the webinar, James put network fees on a fifty thousand dollar Bitcoin gift at roughly a dollar.
Watch the full conversation
Everything above came out of an hour-long conversation between James Lawrence and Doug Miller, and the recording is worth your time if you are the person who has to make the case internally. They get into the history of how churches adopted crypto, the pastoral side of talking about money in an AI age, and a live Q&A with questions from church leaders on day trading, fees, and what finance teams should look for in a platform.
Watch the full webinar: Beyond the Offering Plate, Crypto and Stock Giving for Churches
It is a good one to forward to a finance team member or an executive pastor before you bring the idea to a meeting.
Frequently asked questions
Do churches have to hold cryptocurrency to accept it?
No. With auto-liquidation, gifts convert to US dollars within minutes and arrive in your church's bank account as cash. Your church never holds the asset.
Who pays the transaction fees on a crypto donation?
The donor. According to Engiven, network fees on major cryptocurrencies run around a dollar, even on a large gift.
Does a crypto donation require an appraisal?
Crypto gifts valued at five thousand dollars or more require a qualified appraisal for the donor's tax return. Engiven provides this at no cost for donors giving through Tithely churches.
Is stock giving easier than crypto giving?
Stock is more familiar to most congregations and raises fewer questions. Mechanically, crypto settles faster, since stock transfers take one to three business days and depend on market hours.
How much do churches typically receive in crypto gifts?
Engiven reports an average crypto donation of around fifteen thousand dollars, and processes gifts above a million dollars every year. Amounts vary widely by congregation.
Getting started
The setup is short, and you do not have to change your existing giving platform to do it. Crypto and stock giving sits alongside what you already use.
• If you are a Tithely church, reach out to your Tithely contact for the partner link that waives the annual fee, or walk through the Engiven setup articles in the Tithely Help Center.
• If you are not on Tithely yet, take a look at Tithely Giving. Six ways to give, no monthly fees, and non-cash giving built into the same ecosystem as your text giving and online giving.
Then put the link on your giving page and leave it there.
None of this is about chasing a windfall. It is about not being the reason a gift never happens. Somebody in your congregation has been faithful with something they bought years ago and never thought to bring it to church, because church has never been a place that could receive it. Open the door, and let the Lord do what he is going to do with who walks through it.
podcast transcript
Laura is a writer and ministry leader with experience in church communications, administration, worship ministry, and nonprofit support. She is passionate about helping people grow in their faith through biblical truth, practical encouragement, and honest conversations about the messy middle of everyday life.
When she's not writing, she's spending time with her family and hoping for the swift return of side parts and high-waisted skinny jeans.
Most of what your congregation owns is not cash. Stocks. Business interests. Property. Retirement accounts. Digital assets. Fundraising researchers have estimated for years that roughly ninety percent of wealth in the United States is held in non-cash assets. The exact figure moves depending on who is measuring, but nobody argues with the direction.
Here is the number that should stop you. A review of 2023 Form 990 filings for more than 720,000 organizations found that only fourteen percent of nonprofits received any non-cash contributions that year.
That gap is the whole conversation. It is not that churches are doing giving wrong. It is that most churches have only ever built a door for one kind of gift, and a lot of what their people actually own cannot fit through it.
We recently hosted James Lawrence, CEO and co-founder of Engiven, and Doug Miller, enterprise account executive at Tithely, for a conversation about crypto and stock giving. Both of them have been in this space since long before it was comfortable. What follows is the practical version of what they covered, written for the person who has to explain this to a finance team on a Tuesday night.
Non-cash giving is not just a big-church thing
There is a fair assumption that appreciated asset giving belongs to universities and hospital foundations with planned giving departments. The research suggests the opposite is worth paying attention to. A Texas Tech study by Dr. Russell James, which analyzed roughly a million nonprofit tax returns, found that organizations receiving non-cash securities gifts grew contributions 66 percent over five years, compared with 11 percent for those taking only cash.
The size of the gift is not tied to the size of the church. It is tied to the donor.
Engiven's own numbers make that concrete. James said their average crypto donation runs around fifteen thousand dollars, and that in a typical year they process twenty to thirty individual crypto gifts of more than a million dollars each. One ten million dollar donation went to a small ministry. As he put it, at the end of the day it is still ten million US dollars landing in a bank account, even though it started as crypto.
A twenty thousand dollar gift is meaningful for most churches. A fifty thousand dollar gift changes a budget year. Those come through regularly, and they happen at congregations of every size.
Who actually gives crypto
There is a mental image of the young crypto millionaire, and it is mostly wrong.
Estimates of how many Americans own cryptocurrency vary widely depending on the survey. A Harris Poll of nearly 54,000 adults for the National Cryptocurrency Association put ownership at 21 percent of US adults, while Gallup found closer to one in seven and a Federal Reserve survey of about 13,000 adults landed at 10 percent at the end of 2025. Wherever the real number sits in that range, it is large enough that some of those people are in your pews.
Younger donors adopted crypto first, but they are usually not the ones making major gifts. In James's experience, the larger gifts tend to come from Gen X donors who bought in their late thirties and early forties, held for years, and watched the value climb. They are investors, engineers, and business owners. They take a long view, and they tend to be generous.
In other words, the person in your church with a six-figure crypto gift is very likely the same person who already wrote a fifty thousand dollar check or transferred stock last December. You already know them. They just have another asset you need to make room for.
Why donors give appreciated assets instead of cash
The IRS classifies cryptocurrency as property, the same category stock falls into. That classification comes with a real benefit on the giving side.
When a donor sells an appreciated asset and gives the proceeds, they pay capital gains tax first and give what is left. When they donate the asset directly to a qualified nonprofit, they generally avoid the capital gains tax on the appreciation and can deduct the fair market value. The church receives more, and the donor gives more efficiently.
One important detail for anyone tempted to donate something they bought last month: the asset needs to be held for at least a year to get the full benefit. Under a year, the donor is generally limited to deducting their cost basis. Buying Bitcoin at fifty thousand and donating it a year later at a hundred thousand is a very different tax outcome than buying and giving in the same quarter.
We are not tax advisors, and neither is your church. Point donors to their own CPA. But knowing the shape of the rule lets you have an intelligent first conversation, and it helps to have something you can send a donor who wants to understand the benefits of giving cryptocurrency on their own terms before they call their accountant.
Do churches have to hold crypto? No.
This is the question behind every finance team's hesitation, so here is the direct answer: your church never holds the asset. With Engiven, gifts are auto-liquidated. A donor transfers half a Bitcoin, it converts to US dollars within minutes, and the cash is sent to your church's bank account by ACH.
There is no waiting until Monday. No watching the market and hoping. James described it as set it and forget it, and the description holds up:
1. The donor fills out a pledge form your church never has to build.
2. They transfer the asset.
3. Engiven receives it, liquidates it, and sends the cash.
4. Your designated staff get email notifications at each step.
5. The donor gets a contribution receipt automatically.
Crypto actually settles faster than stock. A stock gift has to move from the broker, which usually takes one to three business days, and the market has to be open. A stock donated on Friday might not liquidate until Tuesday. Crypto is close to real time, which means very little market exposure between the gift and the deposit.
If your finance team wants to see it themselves, the Engiven dashboard shows every transaction in real time and exports cleanly into other systems.
What about the volatility argument?
Volatility is real, and it is also mostly irrelevant when the holding period is measured in minutes. The comparison people reach for is cash, and that is the wrong comparison. The right comparison is stock, which your church already accepts without anxiety, and which sits in limbo longer than crypto does.
Where the actual risk lives is in doing this without a platform. Crypto transfers are final. Send to the wrong address and it is very difficult, often impossible, to recover. There is no chargeback process. This is exactly why the answer is a platform that handles wallet security, blockchain monitoring, and settlement, rather than a staff member setting up an exchange account.
Done properly, James argues it is safer than card processing. Done improperly, it is genuinely risky. That distinction is the whole ballgame.
The appraisal rule nobody warns donors about
Because the IRS treats crypto as property, any crypto donation valued at five thousand dollars or more requires a qualified appraisal for the donor's tax return.
It is an outdated rule. Price discovery for major cryptocurrencies is now trivial and well documented. But the requirement stands, and James said appraisals typically run six to seven hundred dollars.
Engiven provides the qualified appraisal at no cost for donors giving through Tithely churches, handled through their foundation with a simple e-signature process. There is no paperwork on the ministry side. For a donor considering a significant gift, this is often the detail that removes the last bit of friction.
How to talk about it without making it weird
Two things worth understanding.
First, non-cash gifts usually come from a different place than tithes. Tithes come out of income. Crypto and stock gifts come out of accumulated wealth. They arrive at different moments and follow a different rhythm, which is worth naming internally so nobody is confused when a major asset gift does not look like a Sunday offering.
Second, the communication strategy is simpler than people expect. Present non-cash giving anywhere you already present giving. Your website, your giving page, your year-end appeal. That is genuinely most of the work.
Crypto owners tend to be private, so surveying the congregation to find out who owns Bitcoin is not a productive use of anyone's time. Set the table and let people come to it. If someone wants to make a six-figure gift, they will start a conversation with your senior or executive pastor, exactly like they would with any other major gift. The blocking and tackling of generosity does not change.
Celebrate these gifts the way you celebrate first-time and recurring givers. It is the same heart. If you want help finding language that feels pastoral instead of transactional, How to Talk About Year-End Giving Without Feeling Awkward covers the tone well.
How to know if your church is ready
Ask a better question: is there a downside to being ready? There is not.
Some ministries have the option live for years before their first crypto gift. Others are stunned immediately. James told the story of a church in Minnesota that signed up during a capital campaign with no expectation of receiving anything, and took in nearly five hundred thousand dollars in crypto on the first night. The pastor called him, genuinely shocked.
If you want to find out whether this resonates with your donor base, a capital campaign is the natural test. A campaign gives you permission to ask for larger gifts, and larger gifts are where major givers surface. Some of them will be sitting on appreciated assets. Related reading: 8 End-of-Year Giving Campaign Ideas.
The recurring theme is that you cannot tell by looking. You do not know who in your congregation bought Bitcoin in 2016. Make the option available, and let the Lord move people the way he is going to move them.
What to look for in a non-cash giving platform
If you are comparing options, these are the four things that matter.
Security. Ask about SOC 2 audits and internal security practices. This is not optional for an asset class with no chargeback protection.
Liquidation speed. Near-instant should be the baseline, not a premium feature.
Donor receipts. Automatic contribution receipts, with the ability to turn them off if your church prefers to send its own.
Cost. Many providers charge substantial annual fees on the theory that the fee will pay for itself in increased giving. It generally does not. Tithely churches access Engiven with no annual fee, and the donor covers the transaction cost. On the webinar, James put network fees on a fifty thousand dollar Bitcoin gift at roughly a dollar.
Watch the full conversation
Everything above came out of an hour-long conversation between James Lawrence and Doug Miller, and the recording is worth your time if you are the person who has to make the case internally. They get into the history of how churches adopted crypto, the pastoral side of talking about money in an AI age, and a live Q&A with questions from church leaders on day trading, fees, and what finance teams should look for in a platform.
Watch the full webinar: Beyond the Offering Plate, Crypto and Stock Giving for Churches
It is a good one to forward to a finance team member or an executive pastor before you bring the idea to a meeting.
Frequently asked questions
Do churches have to hold cryptocurrency to accept it?
No. With auto-liquidation, gifts convert to US dollars within minutes and arrive in your church's bank account as cash. Your church never holds the asset.
Who pays the transaction fees on a crypto donation?
The donor. According to Engiven, network fees on major cryptocurrencies run around a dollar, even on a large gift.
Does a crypto donation require an appraisal?
Crypto gifts valued at five thousand dollars or more require a qualified appraisal for the donor's tax return. Engiven provides this at no cost for donors giving through Tithely churches.
Is stock giving easier than crypto giving?
Stock is more familiar to most congregations and raises fewer questions. Mechanically, crypto settles faster, since stock transfers take one to three business days and depend on market hours.
How much do churches typically receive in crypto gifts?
Engiven reports an average crypto donation of around fifteen thousand dollars, and processes gifts above a million dollars every year. Amounts vary widely by congregation.
Getting started
The setup is short, and you do not have to change your existing giving platform to do it. Crypto and stock giving sits alongside what you already use.
• If you are a Tithely church, reach out to your Tithely contact for the partner link that waives the annual fee, or walk through the Engiven setup articles in the Tithely Help Center.
• If you are not on Tithely yet, take a look at Tithely Giving. Six ways to give, no monthly fees, and non-cash giving built into the same ecosystem as your text giving and online giving.
Then put the link on your giving page and leave it there.
None of this is about chasing a windfall. It is about not being the reason a gift never happens. Somebody in your congregation has been faithful with something they bought years ago and never thought to bring it to church, because church has never been a place that could receive it. Open the door, and let the Lord do what he is going to do with who walks through it.
VIDEO transcript
Most of what your congregation owns is not cash. Stocks. Business interests. Property. Retirement accounts. Digital assets. Fundraising researchers have estimated for years that roughly ninety percent of wealth in the United States is held in non-cash assets. The exact figure moves depending on who is measuring, but nobody argues with the direction.
Here is the number that should stop you. A review of 2023 Form 990 filings for more than 720,000 organizations found that only fourteen percent of nonprofits received any non-cash contributions that year.
That gap is the whole conversation. It is not that churches are doing giving wrong. It is that most churches have only ever built a door for one kind of gift, and a lot of what their people actually own cannot fit through it.
We recently hosted James Lawrence, CEO and co-founder of Engiven, and Doug Miller, enterprise account executive at Tithely, for a conversation about crypto and stock giving. Both of them have been in this space since long before it was comfortable. What follows is the practical version of what they covered, written for the person who has to explain this to a finance team on a Tuesday night.
Non-cash giving is not just a big-church thing
There is a fair assumption that appreciated asset giving belongs to universities and hospital foundations with planned giving departments. The research suggests the opposite is worth paying attention to. A Texas Tech study by Dr. Russell James, which analyzed roughly a million nonprofit tax returns, found that organizations receiving non-cash securities gifts grew contributions 66 percent over five years, compared with 11 percent for those taking only cash.
The size of the gift is not tied to the size of the church. It is tied to the donor.
Engiven's own numbers make that concrete. James said their average crypto donation runs around fifteen thousand dollars, and that in a typical year they process twenty to thirty individual crypto gifts of more than a million dollars each. One ten million dollar donation went to a small ministry. As he put it, at the end of the day it is still ten million US dollars landing in a bank account, even though it started as crypto.
A twenty thousand dollar gift is meaningful for most churches. A fifty thousand dollar gift changes a budget year. Those come through regularly, and they happen at congregations of every size.
Who actually gives crypto
There is a mental image of the young crypto millionaire, and it is mostly wrong.
Estimates of how many Americans own cryptocurrency vary widely depending on the survey. A Harris Poll of nearly 54,000 adults for the National Cryptocurrency Association put ownership at 21 percent of US adults, while Gallup found closer to one in seven and a Federal Reserve survey of about 13,000 adults landed at 10 percent at the end of 2025. Wherever the real number sits in that range, it is large enough that some of those people are in your pews.
Younger donors adopted crypto first, but they are usually not the ones making major gifts. In James's experience, the larger gifts tend to come from Gen X donors who bought in their late thirties and early forties, held for years, and watched the value climb. They are investors, engineers, and business owners. They take a long view, and they tend to be generous.
In other words, the person in your church with a six-figure crypto gift is very likely the same person who already wrote a fifty thousand dollar check or transferred stock last December. You already know them. They just have another asset you need to make room for.
Why donors give appreciated assets instead of cash
The IRS classifies cryptocurrency as property, the same category stock falls into. That classification comes with a real benefit on the giving side.
When a donor sells an appreciated asset and gives the proceeds, they pay capital gains tax first and give what is left. When they donate the asset directly to a qualified nonprofit, they generally avoid the capital gains tax on the appreciation and can deduct the fair market value. The church receives more, and the donor gives more efficiently.
One important detail for anyone tempted to donate something they bought last month: the asset needs to be held for at least a year to get the full benefit. Under a year, the donor is generally limited to deducting their cost basis. Buying Bitcoin at fifty thousand and donating it a year later at a hundred thousand is a very different tax outcome than buying and giving in the same quarter.
We are not tax advisors, and neither is your church. Point donors to their own CPA. But knowing the shape of the rule lets you have an intelligent first conversation, and it helps to have something you can send a donor who wants to understand the benefits of giving cryptocurrency on their own terms before they call their accountant.
Do churches have to hold crypto? No.
This is the question behind every finance team's hesitation, so here is the direct answer: your church never holds the asset. With Engiven, gifts are auto-liquidated. A donor transfers half a Bitcoin, it converts to US dollars within minutes, and the cash is sent to your church's bank account by ACH.
There is no waiting until Monday. No watching the market and hoping. James described it as set it and forget it, and the description holds up:
1. The donor fills out a pledge form your church never has to build.
2. They transfer the asset.
3. Engiven receives it, liquidates it, and sends the cash.
4. Your designated staff get email notifications at each step.
5. The donor gets a contribution receipt automatically.
Crypto actually settles faster than stock. A stock gift has to move from the broker, which usually takes one to three business days, and the market has to be open. A stock donated on Friday might not liquidate until Tuesday. Crypto is close to real time, which means very little market exposure between the gift and the deposit.
If your finance team wants to see it themselves, the Engiven dashboard shows every transaction in real time and exports cleanly into other systems.
What about the volatility argument?
Volatility is real, and it is also mostly irrelevant when the holding period is measured in minutes. The comparison people reach for is cash, and that is the wrong comparison. The right comparison is stock, which your church already accepts without anxiety, and which sits in limbo longer than crypto does.
Where the actual risk lives is in doing this without a platform. Crypto transfers are final. Send to the wrong address and it is very difficult, often impossible, to recover. There is no chargeback process. This is exactly why the answer is a platform that handles wallet security, blockchain monitoring, and settlement, rather than a staff member setting up an exchange account.
Done properly, James argues it is safer than card processing. Done improperly, it is genuinely risky. That distinction is the whole ballgame.
The appraisal rule nobody warns donors about
Because the IRS treats crypto as property, any crypto donation valued at five thousand dollars or more requires a qualified appraisal for the donor's tax return.
It is an outdated rule. Price discovery for major cryptocurrencies is now trivial and well documented. But the requirement stands, and James said appraisals typically run six to seven hundred dollars.
Engiven provides the qualified appraisal at no cost for donors giving through Tithely churches, handled through their foundation with a simple e-signature process. There is no paperwork on the ministry side. For a donor considering a significant gift, this is often the detail that removes the last bit of friction.
How to talk about it without making it weird
Two things worth understanding.
First, non-cash gifts usually come from a different place than tithes. Tithes come out of income. Crypto and stock gifts come out of accumulated wealth. They arrive at different moments and follow a different rhythm, which is worth naming internally so nobody is confused when a major asset gift does not look like a Sunday offering.
Second, the communication strategy is simpler than people expect. Present non-cash giving anywhere you already present giving. Your website, your giving page, your year-end appeal. That is genuinely most of the work.
Crypto owners tend to be private, so surveying the congregation to find out who owns Bitcoin is not a productive use of anyone's time. Set the table and let people come to it. If someone wants to make a six-figure gift, they will start a conversation with your senior or executive pastor, exactly like they would with any other major gift. The blocking and tackling of generosity does not change.
Celebrate these gifts the way you celebrate first-time and recurring givers. It is the same heart. If you want help finding language that feels pastoral instead of transactional, How to Talk About Year-End Giving Without Feeling Awkward covers the tone well.
How to know if your church is ready
Ask a better question: is there a downside to being ready? There is not.
Some ministries have the option live for years before their first crypto gift. Others are stunned immediately. James told the story of a church in Minnesota that signed up during a capital campaign with no expectation of receiving anything, and took in nearly five hundred thousand dollars in crypto on the first night. The pastor called him, genuinely shocked.
If you want to find out whether this resonates with your donor base, a capital campaign is the natural test. A campaign gives you permission to ask for larger gifts, and larger gifts are where major givers surface. Some of them will be sitting on appreciated assets. Related reading: 8 End-of-Year Giving Campaign Ideas.
The recurring theme is that you cannot tell by looking. You do not know who in your congregation bought Bitcoin in 2016. Make the option available, and let the Lord move people the way he is going to move them.
What to look for in a non-cash giving platform
If you are comparing options, these are the four things that matter.
Security. Ask about SOC 2 audits and internal security practices. This is not optional for an asset class with no chargeback protection.
Liquidation speed. Near-instant should be the baseline, not a premium feature.
Donor receipts. Automatic contribution receipts, with the ability to turn them off if your church prefers to send its own.
Cost. Many providers charge substantial annual fees on the theory that the fee will pay for itself in increased giving. It generally does not. Tithely churches access Engiven with no annual fee, and the donor covers the transaction cost. On the webinar, James put network fees on a fifty thousand dollar Bitcoin gift at roughly a dollar.
Watch the full conversation
Everything above came out of an hour-long conversation between James Lawrence and Doug Miller, and the recording is worth your time if you are the person who has to make the case internally. They get into the history of how churches adopted crypto, the pastoral side of talking about money in an AI age, and a live Q&A with questions from church leaders on day trading, fees, and what finance teams should look for in a platform.
Watch the full webinar: Beyond the Offering Plate, Crypto and Stock Giving for Churches
It is a good one to forward to a finance team member or an executive pastor before you bring the idea to a meeting.
Frequently asked questions
Do churches have to hold cryptocurrency to accept it?
No. With auto-liquidation, gifts convert to US dollars within minutes and arrive in your church's bank account as cash. Your church never holds the asset.
Who pays the transaction fees on a crypto donation?
The donor. According to Engiven, network fees on major cryptocurrencies run around a dollar, even on a large gift.
Does a crypto donation require an appraisal?
Crypto gifts valued at five thousand dollars or more require a qualified appraisal for the donor's tax return. Engiven provides this at no cost for donors giving through Tithely churches.
Is stock giving easier than crypto giving?
Stock is more familiar to most congregations and raises fewer questions. Mechanically, crypto settles faster, since stock transfers take one to three business days and depend on market hours.
How much do churches typically receive in crypto gifts?
Engiven reports an average crypto donation of around fifteen thousand dollars, and processes gifts above a million dollars every year. Amounts vary widely by congregation.
Getting started
The setup is short, and you do not have to change your existing giving platform to do it. Crypto and stock giving sits alongside what you already use.
• If you are a Tithely church, reach out to your Tithely contact for the partner link that waives the annual fee, or walk through the Engiven setup articles in the Tithely Help Center.
• If you are not on Tithely yet, take a look at Tithely Giving. Six ways to give, no monthly fees, and non-cash giving built into the same ecosystem as your text giving and online giving.
Then put the link on your giving page and leave it there.
None of this is about chasing a windfall. It is about not being the reason a gift never happens. Somebody in your congregation has been faithful with something they bought years ago and never thought to bring it to church, because church has never been a place that could receive it. Open the door, and let the Lord do what he is going to do with who walks through it.
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Laura is a writer and ministry leader with experience in church communications, administration, worship ministry, and nonprofit support. She is passionate about helping people grow in their faith through biblical truth, practical encouragement, and honest conversations about the messy middle of everyday life.
When she's not writing, she's spending time with her family and hoping for the swift return of side parts and high-waisted skinny jeans.
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