Electronic Giving Card: For Offering Plate

One day I looked at my personal checkbook and realized that I wrote checks for church and that was about it. It was inconvenient to look for my checkbook on Sundays before church and with inconsistent attendance, I occasionally found myself weeks behind on my pledge. I wondered if others had the same problem. Being treasure at St. Anne's I looked at our pledge performance and found that it ranged from 80% to 93% on an annual basis for all pledges combined in the church. Not only did this wild variation from year-to-year wreak havoc on budgets, it also represented a significant reduction of our annual planned income. At home, I had switched all of my bills to automatic withdrawal. Why not offer this option for pledging? Our church leadership team was interested. A key barrier was the spiritual aspect of giving in a liturgical church. If parishioners don't put their pledge offerings into the offering plate, how would their offerings get blessed? I was stumped until I discovered the colorful "I give electronically" laminated cards used at our local Methodist church. These cards give parishioners something to put into the offertory plate that could then be blessed with the other offerings. Follow the link below for a copy of the card which may be customized for use in your church. We intentionally used a bright color and the words "Electronic Giving" and "I give electronically" to call attention to the program. Please be sure your ushers are familiar with the program so they can answer basic questions and direct people to where to learn more or sign up.

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Electronic_Giving_Cards.pdf
Electronic_Giving_Cards.docx