Church online giving works best when a member can give in under a minute from a phone, choose where the gift goes, and set it to repeat, without leaving your church’s website. The platform matters less than the setup: where the Give button sits, how short the form is, and what happens to the gift record afterward.
Here’s how to set up online giving on your church website, the features worth paying for, and the mistakes that quietly lower giving.
Why online giving matters now
Fewer people carry cash or checks, and many members watch services online some weeks. If the only way to give is the plate on Sunday, every missed Sunday is a missed gift. Recurring online giving also smooths the budget: gifts arrive during summer travel and holiday weeks, not just when attendance is high.
What a good giving setup includes
- A Give button in the header of every page, including on mobile.
- A short form on your own site: amount, fund, frequency, payment. Every extra field loses givers.
- Funds to choose from: tithes and offerings, missions, building, benevolence, special campaigns.
- Recurring giving, offered up front: weekly, every two weeks or monthly, to match how people are paid.
- Card, bank transfer and digital wallets. Bank transfers usually cost the church less in fees.
- An option to cover the processing fee, so more of the gift reaches the ministry.
- Automatic receipts, and year-end contribution statements members can use for their taxes.
Three ways to add giving to your church website
1. Link out to a giving platform
The simplest option: the Give button sends people to a page hosted by your giving or church management provider. Quick to set up, but members land somewhere that may not look like your church, and some will hesitate.
2. Embed your platform’s form
Most giving platforms offer a form or widget you can place on your own Give page. Members stay on your site, and records still flow to the system your office already uses. For most churches already on a platform, this is the right answer.
3. Build giving into the site itself
For churches without a platform, or tired of paying for one, giving can run directly on a WordPress site with a payment processor like Stripe: your forms, your funds, your records. See how to integrate Stripe with WordPress. The trade-off is that someone has to own receipts, statements and reporting, so plan that before you switch.
What to put on your Give page
- A sentence or two on why the church gives and what giving makes possible, in your pastor’s voice.
- The giving form itself, near the top.
- Other ways to give: in person, by mail, by text if you offer it, and stock or estate gifts if you accept them.
- How to manage a recurring gift or get a statement, so members don’t have to call the office.
- A short note on financial accountability, with a link to an annual report if you publish one.
Mistakes that lower online giving
- Hiding Give in a dropdown or the footer.
- Requiring an account before a first gift. Let people give as guests, then offer an account for managing recurring gifts.
- A form that’s hard to use on a phone: tiny fields, long dropdowns, no digital wallet option.
- Never mentioning it. A short reminder during services, on screens, and in the bulletin that recurring giving exists does more than any feature.
- A neglected site. A giving page on an outdated, unpatched site is a trust problem. See what website maintenance costs.
Beyond giving: the rest of the church office
Giving is usually the first thing a church moves online. Event registration, room and facility requests, volunteer scheduling and benevolence requests tend to be next, and they can run on the same website with records the office can actually find. See how we build systems.
We build church websites on WordPress, connecting giving to the platform you already use or setting it up with Stripe. Churches and ministries get our mission rate. Start with a free site review and we’ll look at your giving setup first.