Working Royal Palace Adopts Cashless Fundraising
It’s not every day you are invited to a working Royal Palace for a cup of tea so it was a pleasure to meet the Revd Canon Dr Mark Powell to find out how he is using Give A Little and Payaz to collect contactless donations at St George’s Chapel, which is located in Windsor Castle.
June 1, 2023The College of St George was founded in 1348, at the same time as the Order of the Garter, and is made up of several buildings including St George’s School, St George’s House, the Chapter Archives and residential accommodation, as well as St George’s Chapel.
Canon Powell explains, “The chapel is self-funding, so we rely on donations from visitors, collections at services and money from other benefactors and grant-making trusts. We noticed that a lot of people don't carry or use cash anymore, so to encourage donations, we were keen to have contactless paying machines, both for visitors to the Chapel and for people coming to our services.”
There are now four Payaz GivingStations, which use Give A Little software, located in the Chapel. “We did some research on the best way of taking contactless donations, and were recommended to use Payaz and Give A Little, and we've been very happy with the way the gadgets work.”
Canon Powell was pleased with the support provided by Give A Little: “Give A Little have given us a lot of support, and were always on hand to explain how to install and get the machines working, which was really useful for someone who isn’t that good with IT! Give A Little also helped to design the campaign screen on the GivingStation, which is a slideshow, showing three different pictures of the chapel. It's very eye-catching and the fact that the image keeps changing draws attention to the machines. We take advantage of the Gift Aid scheme for our UK tax-paying visitors, so to be able to do that through the gadgets and get a report that's ready to send to HMRC is very useful for us. If anybody is visiting Windsor Castle and comes into the Chapel, we'd encourage you to make a donation to support our work as a Chapel and to support the upkeep and care of its buildings.”
St George’s Chapel is open to visitors from 10am to 4pm via the Windsor Castle admission centre on Mondays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, and at other times for Chapel services, which are open to the public. For more information, please visit: