At ServiceU, we understand how critical year-end giving is to your budget. That’s why we compiled this list of five simple tips to assist your church in increasing online donations.

1. Make it easy to give

Put your giving button or link on your home page so that people can find it easily. If donors have to hunt to find the giving page on your website, the chances of them giving decreases.

2. Offer multiple payment options

People love to have options. By offering the ability to take payments by ACH/online checks, debit, and credit cards (which are the most used option for online giving), your donors can find the payment option that best meets their needs.

3. Accessible 24/7, even when your office doors are closed

By offering online donations from your organization’s website, your patrons will be able to give at any time. During the Christmas and New Year’s, it is often difficult to give in person, and it can be a challenge to staff your office with people to accept gifts from those who walk in or mail in their gift. And, those wanting to make a year-end gift for tax reasons can give right up to midnight on December 31. With online giving, your patrons can make a contribution even if your office doors are closed.

4. Allow donors to manage their own recurring giving

Provide donors with the ability to manage their giving and have total control over how they give, when they give, and how frequently they give. Finding a solution that sends auto reminders to donors before the recurring payment occurs can be helpful so that the donor can confirm the amount, increase or decrease their payment, or change the draft date with ease.

5. Use online giving technology that interfaces seamlessly with your website

It’s important that the look and feel of your church’s giving page matches your website and doesn’t appear to be supplied by another company. By integrating with your website seamlessly, the online donation page makes donors feel extremely comfortable.

Find out more about how TransactU can help you boost your year-end giving at www.ServiceU.com/FreeTransactU

Bookmark It

Year-end giving is critical for the budgets of churches and non-profits. For decades, year-end giving has helped churches and non-profits make up the annual deficit if they were in the red. This year, year-end giving can help with the shortfall that churches and nonprofits have experienced during the downturn in the economy.

Online giving offers churches and non-profits great advantages throughout the year, but it can be an especially useful tool for year-end giving.

Here’s a look at how online giving can help your year-end giving push:

Make it easy for people to give year-end gifts
During Christmas and New Year’s, it is often difficult to give in person, and it can be a challenge to staff your office with people to accept gifts from those who walk in or mail in their gift. With online giving, your patrons can make a contribution at any time, even if your office doors are closed. For those who want to give a gift for tax purposes, they can give right up until midnight on December 31!

The perfect introduction to online giving
Year-end giving can be a great way to introduce your patrons to online giving. By directing them to your online giving pages to make an end-of-year gift, patrons will see that they have the option to set up recurring donations. They may opt to make a one-time end-of-year gift AND decide to commit to a regular gift.

Online givers = consistent givers
When people set up online recurring donations, churches benefit because giving becomes more consistent. This is a fact and has been demonstrated again and again within the nonprofit industry. With TransactU, your patrons have the flexibility to decide how much, how often, and to which funds they want to contribute. By customizing their giving pattern, donors are more likely to give consistently.

Streamline accounting with powerful reporting capabilities
Generate customized reports to find exactly the information you need and make accounting easier. A simple click exports report data into Microsoft Excel as well as other program formats.

Receive your funds quickly and directly
We assist you with the creation of your own merchant account so that funds deposit directly into your bank account. You receive funds quickly and easily, with no middle man.

Be safe with our industry-leading PCI certified security
Because TransactU is completely hosted and meets rigorous PCI compliance standards, you’re not responsible for collecting and storing credit card information on your own server. We’ll handle all of that for you in our secure environment.

Click here to learn more about how TransactU can boost your year-end giving campaign.

Bookmark It

Heritage Preparatory School of Atlanta, Georgia has offered its students an exceptional educational experience for more than 12 years.  Heritage’s educational approach is specifically classical-Christian; the best of Western art, literature, and scholarship is systematically studied to best prepare students for a modern future.  Heritage has successfully brought a small-town classroom feel into the heart of the big city for its 143-member student body and their parents.

Simple Advancements;  Revolutionized Results
The 12-acre campus features a main school building with more than 16,000 square feet of space, including classrooms, a media center, science, art, and nature studies rooms, as well as a computer lab. The campus also offers a full size gymnasium, a beautiful sanctuary, and outdoor playgrounds and courtyards.

With such a large selection of facilities available for events and actives, Heritage recognized that keeping track of event registrations was becoming increasingly difficult.

“Compared to many of the larger private schools in Atlanta, we do not have as many administrative resources,” says Rev. Dr. W. Davies Owens, Head of School at Heritage Preparatory School.  “We are also unique in that we expect our parents to actively participate in many aspects of school life, especially volunteering.  TransactU has revolutionized how we register our students and collect funds for events, and more importantly TransactU allows our parents the convenience of never having to write a check again.”

Dr. Owens remembers when he first came to Heritage, parents would drop off their children in the carpool line and hand him a check for an upcoming event at the same time.

“I heard from more than one parent that the only time they would write a check was to pay the babysitter and pay for school events,” says Dr. Owens. “Even though we were a small organization, we needed to find a tool that could help us evolve into the 21st century and provide our parent community the conveniences they deserved.”

Technology to the Rescue
Enter ServiceU.  Dr. Owens had previously crossed paths with Tim Whitehorn, president and CEO of ServiceU, and knew of the company’s expertise in working with small organizations and schools.

“The more I analyzed our vision and what ServiceU could provide us with its TransactU product, the more sense it made,” says Dr. Owens. “Just the convenience factor ServiceU could provide our parents sold us on the product.”

Today, Heritage’s parents can register for school, sign up for events and pay tuition and fees right from their own computers via Heritage’s website.

“TransactU handles all of the economic transactions a school needs to make on a day-to-day, week-to-week, and month-to-month basis,” notes Dr. Owens. “Additionally, ServiceU’s customer service has been extremely helpful, and the company is always on the cutting edge of technology and updates as they become available. It has been an unbelievable partnership between Heritage and ServiceU.”

TransactU has allowed Heritage to focus on what it does best—teaching their youth and combining its unique balance of stellar academics, authentic Christ-centered teachers, and a community of like-minded parents and friends.

“ServiceU really is a turnkey option for schools and other non-profit organizations,” says Dr. Owens. “They offer organizations such as Heritage the tools they need by fulfilling unique and distinct needs at a price even a small organization can afford.  It is a win/win situation for everyone involved.”

Bookmark It

Fall is almost here and for many private schools and colleges, it is a time when educators and administrators look forward to helping a new group of students continue their academic journey.  During this busy back-to-school time, many schools and colleges are offering many events for parents and students as well as launching new fundraising programs.  This often means mountains of paperwork and accounting for faculty and staff. While fundraising and event management might be considered among the unpleasant aspects of operating a private educational institution, TransactU can help simplify the process.

“If you are responsible for administrating these projects, you know all too well the headaches that can accompany the process,” says Tim Whitehorn, president and CEO of ServiceU. “From managing information sent out to students, parents, and the community, to keeping track of pledges and donations, to hosting fundraising events, there are many factors involved. TransactU can help you simplify the process. It’s the uncomplicated, straightforward, easy-to-use online solution for keeping track of donations, event registrations, and online payments.”

TransactU can help your school with event registrations and online donations

TransactU offers everything you need to accept online registrations, payment and donations with a credit card or online check in a secure, hosted environment. Patrons, whether they are parents, grandparents, or friends of your organization, can simply visit your school’s website when it’s convenient for them, 24/7, whether your office doors are open or closed.

Here’s how TransactU can help your school:

Online event registration and payment – Your school has a lot going on. From workshops to alumni reunions to athletic training camps, there are a lot of ways for people to get involved. Make it easy for students, parents, alumni, and guests to participate in your events by offering online event registration and payment. Because TransactU enables your school to accept payments, you can use it to set up tuition payments and help your staff more effectively manage their events using TransactU’s powerful reporting capabilities.

With TransactU, there are no more hand-written forms to be filled out. People can simply go to your website to register for events and pay using their debit or credit card, or an e-check.

Online giving – Alumni may not return to the campus as frequently as they would like, but they can keep up-to-date with your organization through your website. Many busy parents and distant grandparents would like to contribute to the school or college, but don’t always have the time or the ability to go to your school to drop off a gift. Give them to the opportunity to make online contributions to your school, directly from your school’s website.

In addition to ongoing giving opportunities, TransactU is also a helpful addition to your development team’s fundraising efforts. As your school launches annual fundraising campaigns, your campaign materials can direct patrons to your “online giving” section of your school’s website. From there, patrons can contribute online.  By asking your patrons to give online, you can save your school countless dollars on postage and printing costs.

With TransactU, your patrons can:

• Set up recurring gifts and select amount
• Make payment with debit or credit cards, or e-checks
• Select which fund their gift goes to from a drop-down menu of choices

Sign up for a TransactU demo today and learn how to get a handle on the fundraising process, online donations and payments, and event registrations. Call us at 1.866.709.7420  today to get up-and-running in a week or less!

Bookmark It

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MEMPHIS, TN., July 21, 2009 – ServiceU Corporation, provider of the most complete on-demand event management software solutions designed specifically for organizations such as churches, nonprofits, schools, universities, festivals, and theaters, was recently recognized for its continued technology advancements by a number of the foremost technology experts in the world.

During the past six months, Microsoft, AMD, and Dell Computers each has recognized ServiceU’s technology advancements through a series of case studies written about the company.

“There’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes at ServiceU to make sure that we are supporting our customers with the best technology backbone—that’s tech talk for all the technology that goes on behind the product that you use every day,” says Tim Whitehorn, CEO of ServiceU. “From hardware and software, to onsite and offsite backups, to servers and processors, we are always looking for ways to improve the day-to-day operations of all that helps make ServiceU a successful company.”

Since ServiceU is a company that is up and running 24/7/365, it is constantly looking for ways to improve its technology backend, to shore up its data security, enhance data accessibility, and to put into practice the most cutting-edge solutions to enhance the performance of the products it offers.

The bottom line—the software and hardware in place to facilitate ServiceU’s products and services is stable, secure, reliable, and dependable. “While we serve the faith-based nonprofit market, we adhere to the standards of the secular business world to make sure that we’re offering our clients the best product available to date,” notes Whitehorn.

To read more about the recent improvements to ServiceU’s technology backend, feel free to visit the links below:

• Microsoft Case Study

• AMD Case Study

• Dell Case Study and Video

About ServiceU Corporation
ServiceU Corporation provides online event management software designed for churches, ministries, nonprofits, schools, universities, festivals, and theaters. ServiceU’s core product line includes: EventU™ for event, resource, and facility management through web-based calendar scheduling software; EventU Green™ is an add-on to EventU that automates facility heating and cooling (HVAC) online based on a facility’s events schedule; TransactU™ provides secure online donation, payment, and event registration tools; TicketU™ provides online ticket sales, box office management, and theater software. Founded in 1997, ServiceU is a trusted provider of online event management software to the faith-based and nonprofit markets.

Bookmark It