Local churches have a need for regular online giving and often their own members donate their time to build out a site. This is the case with Terra Nova Church.
Iron to Iron, the local agency that volunteers their time, has used WordPress since opening shop in 2010. They became accustomed to using WordPress for client work prior to starting the company and it has served them well with their community and business enterprise.
Kevin and Jonathan don’t specialize in nonprofit sites, but are active members of Terra Nova Church and worked closely with the church on many aspects of marketing including branding, design, and website development.
Cause: Terra Nova Church – Saratoga Campus
Terra Nova Church is an independent family of churches that focuses their efforts building up local communities. See their Saratoga Campus donation page here.
Kevin and Jonathan of Iron to Iron sat down with Terra Nova Church to build out the online giving portion of the site. They had previously evaluated potential solutions but wanted long term options.
Thinking long term, they decided it would be really useful to have church member and donor data stored locally using Give’s robust donor management features. Then, the church had freedom to utilize it well into the the future without being limited by a third party API or additional new investments. TerraNova Church now owns and manages congregation data directly on their own WordPress site.
How Terra Nova Saratoga Uses Give:
Iron to Iron has an internal starter theme they use for client work, but each project is custom built from the ground up. They found that the freedom WordPress allows when building a theme makes it easy enough to start from scratch each time, implementing lessons learned from previous projects along the way.
The main utilization of Give during this iteration of the site was to better integrate online giving to the church, so integration with a proper CRM wasn’t necessary at this time.
Improved Ongoing Giving:
There have been a number of improvements to the online giving process for Terra Nova Church after implementing Give. A few barriers to entry for non-members to easily give online were resolved and the stage has been set for future phases of the website which will integrate the giving process (and giving history) to a greater degree.
How does your church accept online donations?
Online giving for churches is a lot more simple than it used to be. Download our free eBook “More Than an Offering Plate” to see how you can improve your church donations through online giving.
About the Author
