How to Move to Digital Giving

Your Church’s Move to Digital Giving

It’s important to equip your people to stay connected and support your mission. The good news is you have everything you need in your Aplos account for digital giving, communication, and connecting with your people. Let’s quickly walk through some options so you can find the right tools for your congregation. We’ll also provide some tips to make it easy for your people to make the switch when it comes to online church donations.

Step 1: Select Your Digital Giving Tools

Aplos has tools in place to help you quickly and easily set up online giving through a form, widget, or Text to Give feature. All of these can be set up in minutes, with no coding required. Each option provides the opportunity for people to give one-time or recurring gifts. You know your people best, so you can utilize any or all of the tools Aplos has available to keep your congregation connected digitally.

Text to Give

Text to Give is great for those who are watching a livestream or recording of your service. Simply show a phone number on a slide during the service with instructions to text the word GIVE. An auto message will guide them through a quick gift setup on their phone. This is our most popular option for church donations since people are able to respond right away to your call to give during the live or online service.

See the Text to Give Guide

Start Using Text to Give

Increase Church Donations Through Online Giving Pages or Widgets

Online giving pages are easy to customize with your logo. You can even create a dedicated page to ask for support for a specific need. A widget can be embedded on your website, or you can easily link a dedicated giving page to your weekly email or social media page.

See a Sample Giving Page

How to Customize Your Giving Page

Start Collecting Contributions in Aplos

Step 2: Share Your Message

Connect Through Social Media

Social media is a great tool to help your people feel like they are connected. Whether streaming over Facebook Live, Instagram TV, or posting a video on YouTube, they can join in to see live updates. You can also schedule regular posts to provide encouragement. Show how the church is assisting others, provide opportunities to serve with a local ministry, or post stories of how your people are responding positively.

Add Ways to Connect and Support Ministries in Your Emails

It’s important to build community and connection to your ministry. Whether that’s sharing the link to your online service, or ways people can get involved in the community, a personalized email to each person is a great mode of communication. You can easily use the email campaign tool within Aplos to spread the word and link to your multiple giving options.

See a Sample Email Campaign

Share Giving Options in The Service

As you encourage your congregation to remain connected and to participate in services, include easy-to-read graphics on the screen. These will show people how to participate and support your ministry. Check out this launch kit for sample slides and templates.

Church Giving Launch Kit

Add Giving Links to Your Website

If someone is looking to make a gift or send in tithes or offerings, your website is likely the first place they’ll go. Make sure a “Give” link is visible on your homepage so people can easily find it.

Free Recorded Webinar: How to Create an Online Church Giving Campaign

Online giving makes it more likely that people will set up recurring giving, which tends to mean larger gifts over time. It can also help your church plan for its finances if giving is more predictable and doesn’t slow down as much in the summer months. During this webinar, you will learn:

• To evaluate how online giving works with the principles of stewardship and tithing
• The essential questions to ask when selecting an online giving campaign
• Steps to launch an online giving campaign for your church
• Best practices in communicating online giving to your members before, during, and after launch
• To identify available tools for tracking and managing people’s contributions