ChurchSpring Giving: Platform Overview
All of your ministry's donation information is finally in one place!
We know you are excited to get going, but before you jump into the setup of your ChurchSpring Giving platform, it's important to understand how the ChurchSpring Giving platform is structured.
ChurchSpring Giving is for Non-profit Organizations
The first thing to recognize is that ChurchSpring Giving is designed to collect and manage donations for 501(c)3 non-profit organizations. Every part of the Giving platform works on the basis that donors (ie: church members) receive no goods or services in return for these contributions except intangible, religious benefits. This includes church swag and conference fees. If this doesn't describe your organization or how you plan to use payments, we don't advise using ChurchSpring Giving.
ChurchSpring Giving uses Stripe to Process Donations
The dependable and secure service of Stripe will be processing all online donations in ChurchSpring Giving. All financial data is handled by Stripe and stored on their PCI Level 1 compliant servers. ChurchSpring is committed to keeping all financial data safe for your organization and your donors.
When you log in to your website and click on the Giving icon in the left navigation bar, our system will walk you through setting up a new Stripe account or connecting your current one. If you are setting up a new Strip account, you will want to have all of the following information ready before you begin:
- Church email
- Church address
- Church phone number
- Church EIN number (or primary contact's SSN)
- Bank account & routing number
- Primary contact name, email, & phone
- Primary contact title
- Last 4 digits of the primary contact’s SSN
If you'd like to use another platform to process online donations, check out How To Setup Online Giving to Your 3rd-Party Provider.
Please note that your ChurchSpring login credentials will be separate from your Stripe login credentials. You will want to keep a record of your Stripe login information. Our ChurchSpring team will not have any access to your Stripe account or login credentials. If you misplace your information and need help logging in to Stripe, for the fastest help, you will want to email Stripe's support team at support@stripe.com.
NOTE: Stripe charges a processing fee of 2.9% + $0.30 each for credit and debit card transactions and 0.8% with a maximum fee of $5.00 for each ACH bank transfer. ChurchSpring does not add any additional fees.
ChurchSpring Giving Tracks Deductible Donations
This is an area that everyone on your Admin team needs to be aware of. ChurchSpring giving is for 100% tax-deductible donations only, not sales or services.
It’s common for an organization to receive income from many different sources (such as book sales, teen car washes, or special dinners), but because someone is receiving a physical good/service (such as their Bible study book, their car washed, or their event meal) from these types of transactions, they do not qualify as a tax-deductible donation and should not be entered into ChurchSpring Giving.
Any type of sales/service funds will need to be collected and processed with another system and entered into your general ledger outside of ChurchSpring Giving.
ChurchSpring Giving is Available in the US and Canada
Since ChurchSpring Giving is built on Stripe as the payment processor, your giving platform supports online donations made with US or Canadian dollars. Stripe does not support organizations outside of the main 50 states, Washington DC, and Puerto Rico.
ChurchSpring Giving Shouldn't be Used as a General Ledger
ChurchSpring Giving has a great system for tracking donations, but you will need separate software to cut checks, manage payroll, balance your books with your banks, and account for sales and reimbursements.
A Note on Deposits
Once your first donation is made through your ChurchSpring Giving platform, the first deposit/payout processed by Stripe may take 7-14 days. After that, funds will be deposited into your bank every 2 days.