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Sustaining Giving

Here you will find top tips about generosity and sustainability during our time of challenge.

With the suspension of public worship, churches will be dependent on the generosity of others as they themselves are able to be generous to the wider community at this time. The following Top Tips have been put together, to help explore ways to retain sustainability and serve our community during this difficult time. Each suggestion has a resource attached to help you further. For more information and FAQs, please see the Parish Resources website.

1. Use creative ways of including the offering in online worship

If you are filming or live streaming worship, you might want to include a virtual offering - ideas on how to do this can be found here. It might also be helpful to include some words explaining why giving is as valuable now as ever, while our mission remains constant and our churches continue to serve our communities.

2. Add an online donate button to church websites, ACNY and Facebook Pages

While our churches are unable to gather physically for worship, donate buttons* are a useful way of enabling people to give who would normally give by cash, or for people who have accessed your online worship and want to support you. You may want to include a link to this when live streaming services. You can now add a donate page on A Church Near You, click here to find out how.

3. Communicate with regular givers, particularly those who give by envelope

It might be helpful to communicate that, while we are unable to physically gather in worship, our giving is still important. This must be done carefully and sensitively. A draft letter can be found here. You might also want to use this form to encourage those who usually give by envelope to transfer to Standing Orders - we strongly recommend to use email as the main method of contact at this time.

4. Include a message on websites and social media

On homepages of church websites and social media, include a message about the importance of giving to resource your on-going mission. Suggested wording can be downloaded here.

5. Share the latest Generous Giving Team's resources and advice

All our latest resources and advice will be posted on our Facebook and Twitter pages, along with these website pages. Please Like and Share so that our support can be seen more widely.

* Some donation platforms have offers for charities. If you are a church excepted from registering with the Charity Commission (income of less than £100,000 per year), and therefore don't have a charity number, you may need another way to prove your charitable status. In this case, A Church Near You now has the function to download a certificate, which you can find by clicking on 'More Information' in the left hand menu, which serves this purpose. This is a new facility that the national church are working with providers on, so please contact us with feedback from providers, good or bad, so we can track it's performance.