Increasing your church’s income and raising your profile.
Income for most parishes has been significantly impacted as a result of the lockdowns and the restrictions put in place to keep us all safe. As a diocese, we have been working hard to help our parishes overcome the financial challenges that the pandemic has created. We are continuing to work with fundraising website easyfundraising to help generate valuable new income at no cost and several parishes have already registered for free to use it.
One of those already reaping the benefits of this is The Parish of Three Saints (TPOTS) in Axbridge Deanery. Rector, the Rev Kevin Wright has shared some of their experience since registering to use easyfundraising. Talking to Gary Watson, the Diocesan Giving & Funding Advisor, Rev Kevin explained why he thought using easyfundraising was a “no brainer”, and how easy it had been to set up their account. He says, “I registered the parish back in June 2020 and the whole process including uploading a few identification documents took less than an hour in total!”
Kevin noted that, as a result of Covid and lockdown, he had already compiled a list of email contacts both from within the membership of his three churches and their wider communities, and had their permission to keep them up to date about what the church was doing during lockdown. “I sent an information email to everyone on the list explaining that we were using easyfundraising now and included a link to our cause page so they could just click on it and sign up to support us”. And it seems that they did! The parish now has a solid list of supporters who are helping them to raise hundreds of pounds and won a £100 prize in a draw offered by easyfundraising which was open to any of the Bath & Wells parishes who were registering or raising donations.
Why easyfundraising?
Easyfundraising enables parishes to raise free donations from retailers when their supporters shop online. It also provides an essential online giving tool so that anyone can make a donation of any size using a credit or debit card. The system will also capture gift aid information from each donor if they select this option and this is forwarded securely to the parish so that Gift Aid can be claimed on their donation.
The key to successfully using easyfundraising, or indeed any of the other online giving providers is to ensure that potential supporters are quickly and easily directed to your cause page in all of your communications. When done electronically, this involves nothing more than creating a link in an email or website, which, when clicked, will immediately take your supporter to the parish easyfundraising page.
Parishes already using this have added buttons and links on their website and in their online streamed or recorded content, an important development which has seen an incredible uptake since lockdown began.
Raising your profile in the parish.
Introducing a new online giving tool also provides the parish with a really good reason and strong opportunity to let their communities know how they are working to serve them, especially during this challenging time. From a fundraising perspective, it is really important to let people know what you’re doing and the difference the church makes in your area. Donors are always more inclined to give to causes where they can see how their donation would be used.
Ready to get started
So why not take this opportunity to get started with an easyfundraising account? It takes less than an hour to get through the whole process and immediately provides a great platform to communicate why your church is important in your community.
More information about setting up an easyfundraising account can be found on the website as well as help if you’re ready to get started.
Who to contact
Full support is available from the diocese, so if you have any queries or would prefer us to set it up for you then simply call or Email: givingteam@bathwells.anglican.org or contact Natalie Wainwright, Lead Giving and Funding Adviser