Dec
7
2009
Uncategorized By Lauren | No comments yet

Five simple tips to increase year-end gifts

Five simple tips to increase year-end gifts

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

Dec
7
2009
UNews By Lauren | No comments yet

Year-End Giving Solutions: Why Online Giving, Why Now?

The following article is a condensed version of a story that will appear in the December issue of Church & Worship Technology Magazine.

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.

Nov
30
2009
Uncategorized By Tim | No comments yet

December Founders Letter

Dear Friends,

I can hardly believe that 2009 is winding down. Even though the whirlwind of the holiday season is upon us,  it’s important for churches, schools and non-profit organizations to start thinking about year-end giving campaigns. At ServiceU, we understand how critical year-end giving is to your budget. That’s why we’ve focused this issue of the UNews on helping you understand how TransactU can help boost your year-end giving by providing you with everything you need to accept online gifts and donations from your website.

We hope that this information is helpful to you, and we are delighted to answer any additional questions that you may have – just give us a call at 866.709.7238.

I would like to take a moment to thank all of you,  our clients, for your continued patronage. I am truly grateful for your continued business and friendship. I hope you and your families have a Merry Christmas and a blessed New Year.

Sincerely,

Tim

Nov
11
2009
Press, Support, UNews By Mackenzie | No comments yet

Connect with ServiceU on Facebook and Twitter

Keep up with the latest ServiceU news, updates and more by connecting with us on Facebook and following us on Twitter.
We’re very excited about joining social media and getting to know you even better through these conversations.   We also hope that you will connect with other churches, schools and nonprofits so that we can share ideas, best practices and ways to simplify our service to others. And if you like what you experience with us, we hope that you will suggest that your friends connect with us as well. We would enjoy getting to know them, too!

We’ve added social networking buttons to the EventU event listings, the TicketU ticketing pages and the TransactU donations pages. Now you can share your organization’s activities and involvements on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others social networks. Read more about how you can add the social networking icons to your pages.

Here’s where you can find us:

Nov
11
2009
Support, UNews By Mackenzie | No comments yet

Share your event info on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and more

Now, you can share your church’s activities and involvements across social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and others.

We’ve added social networking buttons to EventU event listings, TicketU ticketing pages and TransactU donation pages.  As an administrative user, you can choose from more than 100 social networking site icons to display on your event pages.

As website visitors view an event listing or donation page on your website, they can simply click the social networking icons to share the link with their favorite social networking site or service. This eliminates the need to cut and paste links into Facebook or other sites. With one click, users can share links with very little effort.

“We have the privilege of serving many highly innovative organizations. This is just another example of the way we partner with our clients to make them as successful as possible,” said Tim Whitehorn, president and CEO of ServiceU Corporation. “Given the exponential growth of social networking, we wanted to give our clients the ability to quickly and easily share the events and causes that they care about with their social networking friends and followers.”

This is a tremendous opportunity for outreach.  “People naturally want to share causes and events they care about with people in their lives—both in person and online,” says Whitehorn. “With more people communicating through online networks, these tools will make it easier for you to reach a wider audience.”
 

How to activate your social networking settings:

1. Administrative users log into the system via my.ServiceU.com
2. Go to the Admin section and choose Public Events from the drop down menu
3. Choose Social Networking option
4. Click the top box to enable social links. This will allow visitors to your website to share the event listing or donation page on Facebook, Twitter or MySpace.
5.  If you would like your visitors to have other social media options, simply click on the “show choices” link and type your sections into the field. You can also optionally enable all social links by enabling Show Additional Links Popup.
6. You can also customize the text associated with the shared event or donation page. Simply enter the text you would like to use in the appropriate field. This will be the text your website visitors share when they post the event to their favorite social media site(s).

Need help? Contact Support!

If you have any questions about how to set up or use the new social media settings, please contact one of our courteous support team representatives at 901.869.5001 or email us at support@ServiceU.com. We’re always glad to help.

Click here to find out how you can connect with ServiceU!

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