St George’s Warminster ‘overwhelmed’ by funds raised through Give A Little

Parish Administrator, Nick Swann, explains: “Before we introduced Give A Little, we were only accepting cash donations or donations via bank transfer, so I approached our parish priest, Father Martin, with the idea of introducing a way to collect cashless donations. We were naturally a little unsure whether we would raise enough to cover the cost of the donation station and the monthly subscription to Give A Little. However, such fears were unfounded as we are now averaging almost £1,000 a month, which is absolutely wonderful and has exceeded our most optimistic expectations. Whether parishioners are choosing to donate to the church, the candles, the parish magazine or one of the other funds they can choose, we are seeing a steady increase month on month of the amounts we are raising. As with any public building, the ever-increasing costs of running our church need to be met and our Give A Little website and donation machine in our narthex (entrance hall!) is helping us do this.”

On why the church decided to go with Give A Little and the Payaz GivingStation, Nick adds: “Give A Little is incredibly easy to set up and use. Having done some extensive research, it seemed the best product available for our needs and brings us many useful features, including the ability to enable donors to add Gift Aid to putting the device into Quick Mode at busy times so that more donations can be processed. The software is half the cost of another we considered, at just £7.50 a month - and it’s a joy to use. The campaigns are quick and easy to set up and the GivingStation with the Give A Little screen looks really smart. At the beginning, when I was looking into Give A Little, I contacted their customer support many times and was impressed to receive detailed emails clearly answering the many questions I had. It was Give A Little’s clear, attractive interface, their competitive pricing and their rapid and helpful customer service that convinced me to recommend them to our priest and finance committee.”

Nick has also been surprised how quickly St George’s wonderfully generous congregation has taken to the new way of donating: “It’s incredible how the older generation especially has really embraced donating contactlessly - we have people in their 80s who are very happy to tap their card before or after Mass - and they seem to enjoy doing so! Our congregation is also assured that their donations are secure: sadly some cash has been stolen from our church in recent months. 

We are also, through Give A Little’s easy to use website, able to quickly update the lists of funds we have on offer if we need to. For example, if we have a second collection, we can add an option to pay into Cafod, The Priests’ Retirement Fund, or what the second collection is for, rather than just having a button that says Second Collection. We publicise what we’ve raised for each fund in our popular parish magazine and thereby raise awareness of the different funds parishioners can donate to.“

On whether he would recommend other churches to follow in St George’s footsteps, Nick is in no doubt. “I would 100% encourage any churches to do what we’ve done. You may need to start small and set up things like WiFi and ensure you have power in the right place, but it’s absolutely worth persevering as the amount of money you can raise make the initial effort really, really worthwhile. We’ve proved, as many other users have, that people are far more generous when giving via a machine or online. Whereas before, people may put their hand in their pocket and donate a couple of pounds, now we find people donating far more generously as they are not restricted by the amount of cash or loose change they have on them.

I would definitely recommend Give A Little without hesitation. In fact, I do believe we currently have the best looking, easiest to use and most impressive donation platform in our diocese- without question!!”