Shoeburyness & Thorpe Bay Baptist Church uses DIY approach to create eye-catching point of donation

Around the time the church were looking into contactless options, Give A Little produced a video on how to create a DIY (Do-It-Yourself) point of donation and Hannah Ashton, Executive Assistant to the Lead Pastor saw it and realised this was the solution they’d been searching for.

Hannah explains:

“We had been wanting to introduce cashless giving for a while but were put off by both the initial cost of the devices and the ongoing monthly expense. You’d really have to be raising a lot to justify paying that.  We already had a SumUp card reader and I’d seen that the Give A Little app works with that, but we wanted something people wouldn’t miss that we could mount to the wall.  So, when I saw Give A Little’s email on how to create a wall mounted DIY point of donation, I thought - this is exactly what we have been looking for.  We could create something really attractive and professional but also affordable.”

On how easy it was to follow the process set out in the video, Hannah said:

“We wanted the board that surrounds the tablet and card reader to really catch people’s attention as they walked past, so we asked one of our congregation, who has a graphic design company, to help. Working out what size holes we needed was a little tricky as I needed to make sure the card slot on the SumUp card reader could be accessed for Chip + PIN donations and that there was room for the charging cable, but thankfully everything fits properly!  We had to get an electrician to fit a socket where we wanted to locate the donation point and then we had someone else attach it to the wall so there was quite a bit of coordination but it’s all been worth it!”

On how the church visitors have responded, Hannah adds:

“We’ve had so many people commenting and saying how good it is. Our church members have been asking for this for a long time as they had seen contactless machines at other churches.  Now they have seen what we’ve created, they are all very excited and have really embraced using it. Having the Give A Little video made all the difference as I could show people what we were planning to create, which was easier than trying to explain it myself. Before we saw the video, it hadn’t occurred to us that we could create a wall mounted donation point in this way."

"The Give A Little team has been really helpful throughout the process. They sent us a template for the board and they also helped us design a really eye-catching fundraising campaign to display on the tablet, which features a picture of the church and a clear message asking people to donate.”

Hannah chose to locate the device in the church’s large reception area just as you go into the Sanctuary:

“There are quite a few community groups who use the church so we wanted to locate the donation point somewhere where everyone would see it. We have been really happy with how much we have raised so far and we expect this to increase as people get more used to it. We are using Give A Little’s QR codes as well and it’s so easy for people to donate - they have the flexibility to donate in the way they want to and we don’t get people saying, “I’d love to donate but I don’t have any cash on me”, any more! I’d definitely recommend other churches and charities try creating a DIY point of donation - Give A Little’s monthly subscription is really affordable as well in comparison to others so I would definitely give it a go!”

Read more in our blog on three ways to create a DIY (Do-It-Yourself) point of donation.