The legendary NFL coach Vince Lombardi is famous for leading the Green Bay Packers to dominate professional football in the 1960s.

The Packers, under his leadership, won the first two Super Bowls. Yet in the 1960 title game, the Packers squandered a lead and lost to the Philadelphia Eagles. On the first day of training camp the next year, Lombardi stood up with a football and said, “Gentlemen, this is a football.” His point was to get right the wrongs that cost them the championship; they needed to start with the basic fundamentals.

That is a great lesson for us in the church world to never forget the basics.  Never has that been more true than the present time of dealing with a worldwide pandemic.  We were forced to learn how we do church was not as important as doing church.  We moved from physical attendance to digitally engaging with our members.  This shift changed how we collected the offering.  We moved from a primarily physical offering plate to a digital offering.

A key takeaway from COVID-19  showed us the value of online giving.  Without online giving, your church might not have survived.  You are not alone.  As a result of COVID-19 online giving exploded in use.  Consider these facts the accounting firm CapinCrouse discovered in a survey of churches in early 2020.

  • 90% of churches have seen an increase in online giving.
  • 53% of churches that saw an online giving increase saw it increase by over 20%.

Yet, while having an online platform, many churches fail to use that platform properly in our experience.  As we move into the future, it is apparent that online giving will continue to be the primary source of nearly all your ministry funding.  As a result of this, every church needs to follow the basics of a digital giving strategy.  While I am no Vince Lombardi, let me share with you my “this is a football” view of the basics you need for a digital giving strategy.

First, you must have The Right Tools.  At Gyve, we provide you with all the basic tools you need to build a robust digital giving strategy.  It starts with our secure online giving portal.  From our dashboard, you are provided with all the tools necessary to build your digital giving strategy.

To make your giving portal effective, you set up a dedicated landing page on your church website that people can easily access.  While online giving has morphed from a single webpage to other tools, you will still find many donors prefer to log on to your website’s giving page to make their contributions.

One key to making online giving work is to always make the process easy and quick. So, the best-giving pages are simple to use and tell the story of what gifts to your church accomplish.  Check out how one Gyve church set up their giving page.

What’s your URL? When a geek like me asks you that they want to know what your church’s web address is. I ended my last paragraph by providing you a link, the URL, of a church that illustrated my point. Your giving page’s URL can be used to drive people to your site. That is another key to the success of a digital giving platform; you need to drive people to the site. In emails, social media, and other means of communication, you can tell your story and link people back to the giving page to support your cause.

So, your Portal is your first tool. Think of your giving page as the base or platform of the portal. Used correctly, your page can become a powerful tool to increase giving for your church. Yet here is another key for you; people love to have multiple options. That’s why we provide you with the latest and effective tools in the industry.

Let’s take a quick overview of the tools we provide for you.

The App – How many times a day do you use some app on your phone or smart device? Your answer shows the importance of having an app in place that allows your members to easily and quickly donate. We like to say that Gyve is not just another payment processing app; it is a generosity system. We believe everyone is at a different place in their generosity journey, and it is our mission to help guide people as they take their next steps in giving. In the next Generosity Journal, I’ll share more on this.  Let me share with you a key tool we provide for you as a generosity starting point. It’s called,

Round-Up – Our Round-Up giving app is precisely the tool you need to start people on the generosity journey! Donors can download an app onto their phone and designate where they want their rounded-up dollars sent.  Once donors sign up, they simply make purchases with accounts connected to round-up giving, and Gyve does the rest. Every transaction rounds to the nearest dollar, and Gyve collects the difference for donation. When the round-up change collects to $20, Gyve processes the donation and sends the round-up gift to the pre-selected church or charity.

On average, it takes just 74 days from when a person signs up for Round-Up to when they make their first donation to a church! Round-Up teaches them the joy of generosity, making it easier for them to transfer that newfound joy to your offering. The Round-Up App shows that the easier you make it for people to give, the more likely they will do just that, give!

Text Giving – How many texts do you read and send in a day? Again, your answer shows why providing potential donors the ability to text dollars to you is another key to your digital offering success.  Text giving is quick and easy yet effective.

Those are the basic tools you need to build out an effective digital giving strategy. This year, whoever wins the Super Bowl will be the team that executes the game’s basic fundamentals the best.  They’ll also be supported by a cast of coaches, trainers, doctors, etc.  The best teams hire the best. We are committed to helping provide the best online giving platform and the finest teaching and direction to increase generosity at your church!

Next week I’ll continue in The Basics of a Digital Giving Strategy by sharing The Right Strategy.

Know how generous your church is today to know how life-changing it can be tomorrow.


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