Somerset church raises £2000 a year through Give A Little’s DIY approach

The donation point was installed in 2019 and generates around £2000 a year – much of it from visitors who come to see the historic church, with artworks by Burne-Jones, Munnings and Lutyens and the grave of Siegfried Sassoon.

The system was set up by a member of the Parochial Church Council (PCC), Rob Waller, who explained that a need to keep costs down drove the decision to build their own point of donation rather than invest in a donation station: ‘We were early adopters to cashless giving and at the time, the PCC wasn’t sure that we’d get the money back if we invested in a donation station, especially as our churches are small rural churches with small congregations. Give A Little’s DIY approach gave us a way of setting up cashless giving at a very low cost and it’s been absolutely brilliant! We got the money back that we’d spent on creating the point of donation in a matter of weeks and we’ve raised around £6,000 in total since launching, which is a really significant income for our church.’

Rob decided to use an A4 perspex display stand for the point of donation as they are very inexpensive to buy (around £5 each) and they were already using them in the church. Rob explains:  ‘To ensure the device was secure, we glued the SumUp card reader and an old, donated tablet to the stand. The tablet and card reader are permanently plugged into the mains and we’ve tucked the cables away so they are not vulnerable to theft. We have five parishes in our group and we’ve set up another similar donation point in St Michael’s, Buckland Dinham. This time, we purchased an affordable £60 tablet from Argos. This church is not as well visited as St. Andrews but it’s really useful to have the point of donation for events such as carol services or weddings, as people want a way to give but increasingly no longer carry cash. We are planning to expand our usage of Give A Little by experimenting with their campaign list feature, which enables donors to select the campaign they would like to donate to, whether that’s for repairs to the roof, or a charity that we are supporting. I’m also keen to try out using QR codes to give our visitors and congregation even more ways to donate.’