Digital Giving Rollout Project reaches £100,000 in 2024
Following a successful pilot with a small number of chaplaincies in 2023, the Diocese in Europe formally joined the Church of England’s Digital Giving Rollout Project in the Spring of last year. A total of 49 churches across 19 countries in our diocese have now received large giving devices, enabling contactless giving via debit and credit cards, as well as smartphones and smartwatches.
The churchwardens are impressed how easy it is to operate, and the congregation was impressed by the look and speed of the machine. One of the younger ones told me she never carried cash, so she felt very much at home with the machine.
Juliet Evans, the Diocese’s Fundraising Adviser, who coordinated the project, explains:
“Several of our chaplaincies had already embraced simple chip & pin card readers, but the new devices offer a far better and more engaging giving experience.
It’s early days, but many of our chaplaincies have indicated that digital giving is new and additional income rather than simply replacing another method of giving, such as cash. We have a lot of visitors to our churches and the eye-catching devices are a really welcome addition, enabling people to give spontaneously and generously.
Increasingly, we are moving towards being cashless societies, so the ability to accept such donations - via contactless or online giving - is going to be very important for many churches in the years to come. Moving forward, we are aiming to offer more card reader devices to other chaplaincies, thanks to additional funding from our diocese."
For more information on the campaign, please see this web page: Digital Giving.
Here is an infographic which shows some of the key facts, figures and feedback from chaplaincies in 2024:
