Best Giving Apps for Churches

There are many great ways for your church to receive funds via a mobile device.  However, many are very limited.  Here are our top 3.

1.    SmartChurch - The Smart Church giving platform is integrated with Direct Connect and PayPal and provides a simple but beautiful interface to give quickly and easily.  What we love most about it are the pictures and ability to give various amounts to multiple funds in one transaction.  What we do not like is that they do not have a separate app just for Giving.  We wish they’d do that.

2.    PushPay - PushPay provides a simple giving platform without many distractions that allows someone to give to any church that is set up here.  What we like best is that its simple and easy to use and does not require you to get an entire church app.  What we do not like is that the interface is boring and you can not see what you’re giving to. It would be nice to be able to give to specific needs in the church in the future.

3.    Venmo - Venmo is the way young people give these days for free.  It’s not a church-based or faith-based app but it works like a charm.  What we like best about it is there are no transaction fees and simply transfers money from one bank account to another.  What is not great about it is you can not set up funds to give to on here and the interface, while socially viral, is not exciting.  Still, it could be a solution for churches in the future.

Privacy and Church Apps

How private are church apps? What are the security risks of getting a Church App for your church?  What legal ramifications should a church think through before getting a church app?

Privacy, security, and legal issues surrounding church apps is a new and growing field. For the sake of brevity, I want to direct church leaders to ask the following questions before purchasing or licensing their church app.

Will the church app store personal information of our members such as address, phone number, birthday, etc?  If so, who has access to this information?  -  It is fine if a church app stores this information.  The answer you are looking for here is whether the app limits the access to this information to church leaders or if everyone on the church app can see it.  Legally, a church likely will want to know this information but they will want to make sure the app puts the church member in control of who (besides the church itself) can view this information.  Double check to make sure that a church member has control of their personal profile and can easily edit and update it as she/he pleases.  Also, make sure that they can control who has access to see their personal information.  Often, this can be done similar to how Facebook does it by allowing members to approve “Connection Requests” inside the app. 

One of the best apps for providing a church member directory while also keeping that directory private is SmartChurch.com.  This app takes the legal responsibility off of the church (which is right) and moves it to the individual church member.  Each member’s profile is hidden until it is “shared” with another church member.  This is how online church member directories must be created in the future.