A question that comes up from time to time is, “How can we accept donations on our website?”. Well, the answer used to be pretty simple, but it’s gotten a bit more complicated this year as we are in the middle of rolling out a new online giving platform powered by GivingFuel. The new platform sets up a specific online giving page for each church.
GivingFuel has several advantages in that you can link directly to it from your website, and for those who use WordPress, there are options to make it part of your website so your website visitors don’t leave your website to donate. Plus we include a mobile text number for people who want to give by texting from their phone. The real advantage of mobile text giving is the ease of giving during a worship service.
When is this coming to my church? Well, we are rolling it out to all churches in a region the week after their regional celebration this year. In addition, we are currently in the “early adoption” phase. So feel free to ask. As long as your church is up-to-date on reporting and your regional director has no objections, we’ll get you set up early as time permits.
What if your regional celebration has already passed and your pastor or treasurer hasn’t shared the information with you? Well, you can get the URL for your giving page and mobile text number by looking up your church at www.gci.org. In fact, even if you aren’t set up yet, it will display a link to the GCI donation page that automatically sets the church information to accept donations to the local church. If you use that URL, we will automatically transfer donors to the new GivingFuel page as soon as it’s set up.
OK, I have my information and we use WordPress. So how can I make it look like part of our website instead of going to GivingFuel? You’ll need to have the “Webconnex Form Management” plugin installed. With that installed, you’ll see a button at the top of your WordPress page editor to insert a GivingFuel form. Put your cursor where you want the button or form inserted and click the button. You can choose to “embed” the form, which makes it part of the current page; or you can use a “modal overlay” which pops the form up over the current page. When the donor is finished giving, it returns them to that page. We use the embed option at www.gci.org/online-giving, and the modal option on pastoral intern and resident pages like this one. The “GCILocal” WordPress theme we supply also has the “GivingFuel modal” option for online giving if you edit the home page.
What if I have more questions? Use “Contact Us” or email support@gci.org.