ChurchTrac's Online Giving is a powerful tool that enables your church to take donations online and have them automatically added to your Giving Screen.
To get started with Online Giving, navigate to the Giving Screen and select the "Online Giving" Tab. To enable online giving, create (or connect to an existing) Stripe account.
The first time you visit our Online Giving page, you will be prompted to set up your Stripe account. Make sure you have your church's EIN number as well as the church bank account and routing number where Stripe will deposit your funds. Upon clicking "Setup Your Online Giving Account", you will be taken to Stripe.com to complete the process of setting up your account.
The first step of creating your Stripe Account is to add the email address you wish to use for online giving. This will create a 2-step verification and an email validation.
Validate your email by clicking the button emailed to you by Stripe.
Once you have validated your account and logged in to your newly created Stripe Account, you will be prompted to activate payments for your account.
Please ensure you select "Nonprofit Organization" as the business type. Choosing any other option may cause your account to function incorrectly.
Stripe will also ask for your church's official name, EIN number, and address.
Stripe will also ask for your church website. Under the "Product description field, we recommend saying "Religious non-profit accepting donations from members. Using any other terminology may result in Stripe not completing your setup or requesting further information from your organization.
Stripe will ask for additional information to finalize your the setup for enabling payments on your account. Once completed, you will be able to use the Online Giving options in ChurchTrac.
Once you've created or linked your Stripe account, you will be redirected back to the Online Giving Screen in ChurchTrac. Now you'll see the unique link that we have provided for your Online Giving page. You can copy this link and add it to your church website or social media page(s).
The Online Giving page also has several configuration options that you can provide. You can also choose whether or not to enable guest donations, enable text giving, fees options, and more.
We recommend that you require donors to log in before giving. When donors log in, it is easier for ChurchTrac to match the donation to the correct person in your database. Signed-in donors can save their credit or debit card for future use, have the option to give using ACH (E-Check) and Text Giving, and can also set up recurring donations.
Once you have created your Stripe account, we recommend bookmarking stripe.com and log in regularly. Stripe's dashboard makes it easier to see when deposits come into your bank account. If you are a church or ministry in the United States, you can log in to your ChurchTrac account's online giving options and make sure that ACH is enabled. ACH allows donors to give directly from their checking account, with lower Stripe fees of only 25 cents per donation compared to credit card transaction fees.
You can specify which Categories will be displayed as Online Giving options. Go to the Giving Screen and click the "Categories" Tab. Each category has an option: "Use for Online Giving?" Select YES to have that category offered as an option for online donors.
Donors can give by sending a text message to your church's texting number. This option is already built into ChurchTrac's Online Giving platform. To start, donors can text the word "give" to your church number.
After texting "give", your donors will receive a link to setup their online giving account and add a payment method.
By navigating to the donor giving options, your donors have the ability to add their phone number for text giving.
Once donors have validated their mobile number, they can proceed in giving by simply texting "give" to your church. No further account setup will be necessary for them.