San Diego church uses new platform to increase giving

Mobile giving technology at The Rock Church enables givers to donate any amount from their phones.

By Marisa Vallbona

When The Rock Church in San Diego, CA, wanted to offer its members a more relevant giving experience, the leadership turned to Mogiv, a new mobile giving technology that enables givers to donate any amount from any device at any time. The church reasoned that if it made giving easier, its congregation would give more readily — and it’s working.

Mogiv enables organizations to empower their donors by providing multiple ways to give, including text to give, email to give, and online giving. Central to the Mogiv platform is the patent-pending GivUp functionality, which allows donors to “GivUp” a discretionary purchase and instantly redirect the resources to the organization of their choosing, thereby “Giving Up” those funds to a greater cause.

According to The Rock’s senior pastor, Miles McPherson, “This church has always leveraged technology in an effort to establish pervasive hope in San Diego and around the globe.  By launching our campaign, we wanted to bring our daily spending habits into alignment with the needs we’re meeting in the community and around the world.”

Communication tools
The Rock Church, a church of 12,500 in five Sunday services, wanted to leverage a technology that could not only scale with their growth, but also provided compelling communication tools.

According to James Lawrence, co-founder of Mogiv and chief information officer for The Rock Church, “Ever since the first mobile text donation was made, nonprofits have been enamored with the idea of mobile giving, yet frustrated with the fact that it was limited to small amounts of $5 and $10, and basically anonymous. Caring for donors is one of the most important aspects of any nonprofit. If you don’t know who gave, it’s difficult to show them your appreciation. Mogiv enables The Rock to raise funds and take good care of our donors.”

Nonprofits like The Rock Church are using Mogiv to leverage mobile giving, e-giving and social media without monthly fees, set-up or support fees. In fact, it costs them 44 cents, the price of a postage stamp, to receive donations from givers. Merchant processing fees are paid by the nonprofit and typically total less than 3 percent, including the Mogiv fee. Givers pay zero fees to make the donation.

The church easily tracks the flow of giving by weekly reviewing the Mogiv reports dashboard.  All transactions are in real-time and can be viewed as they happen by The Rock’s accounting team.

Invested in the community
“We’re pioneering a new and sustainable approach to mobile giving, and making an impact on people’s lives at the same time. Hundreds of items have been given up and those funds have been redirected towards The Rock’s ministry efforts. Recently a GivUp donation was made to the church by a donor who said they gave up spending $25 on a destructive habit and decided to give it to The Rock instead,” says Lawrence.

In fact, since the congregation started using Mogiv in October 2010, its fundraising has increased. During the first few weeks of their campaign, the church had more than 600 GivUp pledges and now plans to make the platform part of its annual stewardship strategy.

Marisa Vallbona is a public relations specialist in Southern California. www.Mogiv.com

Share

Leave a Reply

HTML Snippets Powered By : XYZScripts.com