Dunblane Cathedral turns to Give A Little and Payaz to collect contactless donations

Judith Frye, Gift Aid Administrator, Dunblane Cathedral, Kilmadock and Blair Drummond, explains:

“We were aware that we needed to invest in a cashless fundraising solution as people are carrying less cash since the pandemic. We started with a desktop machine from Payaz and a GivingStand, both of which use Give A Little software. The initial idea was to use them during services but then we opted for a softer approach to allow congregations to make donations during coffee so there wouldn’t be queues of people filling out the Gift Aid declarations on the devices. That approach worked really well. We have liaised with Payaz to help make the GivingStand more mobile so we can move it around the cathedral more easily, which has been very useful.”

Judith also found that creating a Give A Little campaign to raise money for new chairs for the cathedral worked really well. 

“The Give A Little system was absolutely brilliant for our campaign to raise funds for new chairs. We had to raise the money in a short period of time and we managed to raise £3.5k in three weeks and having the contactless device was crucial in that. Having an easy way to donate there and then is great because it’s human nature to forget by the time you get home. People had their cards and could make large donations and add Gift Aid too, which really shows its value.”

The GivingStand and GivingStation are now being utilised during services too. Judith adds:

“Having both devices in the cathedral means that we can raise more money, which is great. It’s been a fairly slow start but as people get used to having more ways to donate, we believe it will start to take off. The majority of people who give are regulars and they tend to opt-in to Gift Aid all future donations so that is proving really useful as once you have opted into that, you are not shown the Gift Aid form again which really speeds things up. We also have our coffee lounge open Monday - Friday mornings so we don’t just get donations on Sundays - getting donations coming through six days a week is great.”

The cathedral is also a tourist attraction and that may also generate more donations during the holiday periods:

“Historic Environment Scotland operates the cathedral as a tourist attraction during the week and they have their own donation point. However, they are happy for us to also have one in the cathedral during this time and the Give A Little software allows us to make it clear that the donations are going to the cathedral itself rather than Historic Environment Scotland. We are hopeful that we will see our donations increase during the summer when the cathedral receives more visitors.”

Judith has also found the devices and Give A Little useful for their concert series:

“We have a lot of concerts at the cathedral. For example, we have a summer series, which is 8 weeks of concerts. Having the devices and Give A Little is very helpful for that - it really helped us increase what we took in.”

On what she really likes about Give A Little, Judith sums up:

“Give A Little is really good to use. I’ve enjoyed setting up the campaigns and it seems really flexible. I like that I can login to our Give A Little account on my phone and change the campaign if I need to, or check how much we’ve raised if one of my colleagues is asking - that’s really good. It’s also useful to be able to change campaigns displayed on the devices from home without going down to the building - it’s so much easier to manage as you can do an awful lot from home. The fact that you can integrate Give A Little to MyGiving.Online was key in choosing the platform. I highly recommend using the integration if you’re using MyGiving.Online as it  saves a lot of work - to me, that’s magic!”