Mark Simmons is Lead Giving Advisor for the Diocese. Here he asks if churches could be bolder in telling people about the impact of their work in our communities.
Christmas is a time when the Anglican Church is bold. We proclaim the good news of the birth of Jesus: God among us, living simply but generously. We gather people in the heart of our communities, not just with the promise of a mince pie or glass of mulled wine or a favourite carol but with what Christmas really means.
How effectively do we communicate – this Christmas and throughout the year – the impact and importance not only of the birth, life, ministry and death of Christ but also what God’s generosity to the world in Christ means for us? The Christmas story is a core part of what inspires us to strive to provide a Christian presence in every place, to maintain our ancient buildings, and to serve our communities.
For much of the year this may seem to go unnoticed, but Christmas reminds us why the Church is what it is and does what it does. Let’s not be shy in telling that story and inviting people to join in with it, and let’s make it as easy as possible for people to respond to God’s – and the Church’s – generosity.
In 2024, churches across the diocese raised over £210,000 in contactless gifts – enough to cover the full cost of three stipendiary priests – and are on track to receive more than £225,000 in 2025. Anecdotally, this is ‘new’ money that would otherwise have walked into a church building and back out again; churches are not seeing a corresponding drop in regular gifts or cash donations. Indeed, several churches have reported an increase in cash donations in the same period, probably because the presence of a card reader reminds people to leave a donation.
Card readers across our diocese collect on average one of the highest number of gifts in the Church of England, but the average gift is one of the lowest. It seems that people like to use our card readers to make a donation, but don’t feel moved to give as much as they do elsewhere. Perhaps that’s because we can be quite shy about talking about money: how much we need, why we need it, what it’s spent on, and, most importantly, what difference it makes. This Christmas, alongside offering people a convenient way to donate, can we be bolder in telling people why their support matters?
Some top tips for contactless and online giving this Christmas
-
Create a Give A Little campaign with the “Joy” Christmas branding, available from the Church of England’s website here (including a step-by-step guide); there are templates which you can customise for your churches on Canva (which provides free accounts for churches), but the simplest is to create a new “app campaign”, choose “background” and then simply upload the downloadable video files as if they were pictures – there’s one for the welcome page and one for the thank you page, and then select the amounts you want; you don’t need any further text as the text is embedded in the video file;
-
Don’t be shy in trying out different or higher amounts; givers can always choose another amount;
-
Turn your card reader around to face people as they enter, and then to face people where they are most likely to be congregating after the service; most card readers will have a battery life of at least 4 hours, so you can always unplug the card reader for services so that it’s in the place which best catches people’s eye – and chat to your flower arrangers about this so that they know what space to leave free of flowers and to make sure that for example the Christmas tree and decorations aren’t going to hide your QR code or “communicating impact”; posters;
-
Set your Give A Little campaign to capture Gift Aid on donations above £30 (you can claim under GASDS for gifts below £30) and to capture Gift Aid donations later – this will save time for givers, as they’ll only need to enter their email address and can complete the Gift Aid declaration later from the comfort of their own home;
-
If you’re relying on a 4G signal and it’s sometimes erratic (particularly if you have a Daisy multi-network SIM which needs a stronger signal than a single-network one), find one or two people in your church with a good signal and ask if they can hotspot their smartphone for a couple of hours (and have enough data to do so), and connect the card reader to those hotspots in advance so that you’re more certain of maintaining connectivity to your card reader;
-
Whether or not you have a card reader yet, you can still generate a QR code either from your Give A Little (web or magic) campaign or from your Parish Giving Scheme (PGS) page; add the QR code to your Christmas cards and service sheets – and always double-check that the QR code works;
-
It’s also very easy to enable donations on your A Church Near You (ACNY) page, which you can link to Give A Little or to the PGS. ACNY remains the first place where people check what services are on this Advent and Christmas, and the Church of England has resources specifically designed for ACNY which are available on ACNY to anyone with an editor login.
– ENDS –