The fall season brings many welcomed changes including a busier season for your parish. With more parish activities to plan and host, you need increased collections to support those activities. While passing the collection plate and receiving collections in envelopes is still important, don’t forget the many collections you may be missing out on due to not offering more ways for your parishioners to donate.
Using Abundant through PDS™ can help you raise money online for specific appeals, such as the Bishop’s Appeal, a building fund, or a mission trip. Abundant allows you to:
- Offer multiple giving options such as text, mobile, and online
- Customize giving forms for specific activities and appeals
Let’s take a look at why each of the above is important, and how Abundant helps you to accomplish those tasks to increase your donations. Plus, check out free resources to promote appeals and the many ways your parishioners can contribute.
Offer Multiple Giving Options
Now more than ever, many of us realize the importance of being able to offer flexibility and multiple options for accomplishing goals. With the recent pandemic, many of us were forced home for work, worship, and many other daily activities. Whether your parish is still meeting virtually or you have returned to in-person Mass, you are likely in one of these two buckets:
- You offered online giving to your parishioners and saw steady or increased contributions during the pandemic.
- You didn’t offer online giving and saw decreased contributions during the pandemic.
Either way, you see the need for multiple giving options, and Abundant can provide those.
Abundant allows your parishioners to give online, via text, or through the mobile app from anywhere at any time. With Abundant, parishioners can give one-time gifts or set up recurring donations, manage their gifts, and even view their online giving history online or via the Abundant app. Abundant also includes text giving, allowing your parishioners and even guests to text a keyword of your parish’s choosing to initiate a gift. Their payment method is automatically saved for future donations making it even quicker and easier to give moving forward.
Customize Giving Forms
You don’t shop blindly. You choose the store you prefer, select the items you need or want, and you know exactly what you’re spending your money on. Your parishioners want the same when they are contributing to your parish. They want to choose what they contribute towards and know where their collection is going.
Your parish likely has multiple campaigns or initiatives that need donor support. Abundant gives you the ability to create customized giving forms for each specific need. You can create a customized giving form for your main fall activity, or even one specifically for the Bishop’s Appeal, and embed that form on your parish website and share that link out to your parishioners via email or social media. When they know exactly where their contribution is going, they are more likely to give faithfully.
Promote Giving Options
You’ve heard the famous question, “If a tree falls in a forest, and there’s no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?” Let’s look at how that applies to your parish 𑁋 if you provide multiple ways to give and create customized giving forms, but you don’t tell anyone, does anyone know they are there?
You can’t expect your parishioners to know the many options you can provide them through Abundant unless you promote those options. Be sure to include online giving options in any of your parish communications including social media posts and emails. If you are live streaming mass, continue including the time you would normally spend passing the collection plate and use it to remind your parishioners they can still give their collection online or through text or the mobile app.
And don’t worry…you trust ACS Technologies as your ministry partner, which is why we provide you with resources already designed and ready to use to help you promote giving within your parish. Check out your free giving resources and start using them today!
By using Abundant through PDS, you provide your parishioners multiple ways to continue supporting the financial needs of your parish family from anywhere at any time.
Ready to implement Abundant? Take a look at these videos to walk you through setting up and implementing Abundant.
Leigh Ann Shelley joined the ACST team in 2019 as a Product Marketing Manager, overseeing the launch and overall communication of key solutions to support the church’s needs. Prior to joining ACST, she spent several years in communications and graphic design roles, most notably as a Communications Director for a large church in Florence, SC, where she leveraged Realm to help solve key ministry challenges.
