6 ms·

Addo – Online Giving for Churches

27 points by roycehaynes 13y ago

prawn 13y ago
Firstly, I'm not the target market as I have nothing to do with churches. But I think the page probably needs to show more information before the signup. Description, diagram, screenshots, etc. I'm not even confident that I know what it does - accept donations I guess? Some sort of church CRM? Does it do something that other charity/donation sites don't do?
- pcmonk 13y ago
  It would be helpful to know more about what this is. I am involved with churches, so I'm curious about what exactly this is.
  - roycehaynes 13y ago
    pcmonk - royce here. Would love to connect. I'm basically building a super simple service for churchs and their members to interact starting with automating tithes and offering. Love to chat more about it - royce.haynes@gmail.com. Curious what your involvement is with churches?
    - pcmonk 13y ago
      I'm basically the tech guy for my church, and my parents are elders (we don't have a pastor, per se; we have four elder couples). I think that's an interesting idea. The first thing that jumps out at me is that it better be very simple to use, and there should be a way to integrate it well with the church website, regardless of what system they use to run their website. But, I'm sure you've thought of that already. I don't think this would work out well for my church since we're pretty small at this point (about a hundred attendees most weeks) and not particularly tech-literate, but I'll keep an eye on this.
      - roycehaynes 13y ago
        Thanks! Would love to get your feedback once v0.1 is out.
- roycehaynes 13y ago
  Hey prawn, appreciate the feedback. Awhile back I built a tool for my church to accept donations online. I later learned that 85% of donations in churches are given offline, and most churches don't interact with their members (or future members) online effectively. Enter Addo. Key v0.1 features: 1. Accept donations via Dwolla, where transaction fee is $0.25. Way less than other payment processors. 2. Super simple "dashboard" showing donations in intervals (weekly, monthly, etc.) 3. Members can check their giving history, and update account info. I'm currently fleshing it out for other churches to use. The landing page is pretty bare, but I hope to have more info up by end of week.
  - xiljin 13y ago
    royce, if you're ever interested in connecting your data to an online accounting app for nonprofits (with integrated fundraising CRM and payroll), I'd be happy to chat!
shanac 13y ago
Is this open to non-church religious organizations? I have a friend who is a rabbi of a small but extremely cool, open orthodox synagogue on the Lower East Side (he's also a former web developer) He's done crowd funding before for the synagogue, since the building is historically important. Due to the fact that the congregation is open to whomever showing up, compared to other orthodox synagogues on the LES, he has an extremely tech literate crowd. It might be a good match if it works for not-churches.
- roycehaynes 13y ago
  shanac - I'm currently focusing on religious organizations. Even though it may work, the usage will feel most comfortable to churches. Its definitely something to consider after I ship. :)
simon 13y ago
I'm a pastor (and former geek) and I would love to see more info on your landing page before handing out an email address. Not sure if my congregation is ready to go "online giving", but the organization I belong to may be interested. Is this only suitable for church congregations, or would a church organization (state level) be able to use it?
- roycehaynes 13y ago
  heyo simon! Totally understand. This is primarily for church organizations to manage tithes, offering, and interaction with members. But church congregations (members) will have limited access too. There's a great infographic that breaks down whether online giving is right for your church. Check it out: http://i.imgur.com/WLysi7d.png http://i.imgur.com/WLysi7d.png I'm going to update the landing page with more info here shortly...
chad_oliver 13y ago
Great work. I'll be keeping a close eye on this. I think the tagline "Grow your church community and increase giving" doesn't feel quite right. Specifically, "increase giving" sounds a little bit ... greedy, maybe? Every church I've been in recognizes that money is useful and necessary, but there's always that fear that people will feel like they have to give in order to be a Good Christian. I'm not really sure how to improve the tagline, but perhaps you could focus on what money enables. The pain-point isn't that churches want more money, it's that they want to be able do more, help more, serve more.
- blankenship 13y ago
  “Grow your church community and fund your mission.” Or something of the sort. People respond to vision, not need.
- roycehaynes 13y ago
  Chad - big thanks for your comment. I struggled on a tagline, but I think you nailed it. Focusing on "what money enables." After reading it more, its awkward to put money and church in the same phrase, especially for churches.
  - roycehaynes 13y ago
    ^I meant "increase giving" not "money"
  - ceautery 13y ago
    >>its awkward to put money and church in the same phrase I have attended churches that would disagree with that sentiment. :) Can you tell us what the ADDO name means?
    - roycehaynes 13y ago
      Addo means "to give" in latin.
jscheel 13y ago
I think is has a lot of potential. Two suggestions: 1. Consider adding more information to your landing page. It's just a little too sparse at the moment. 2. Online giving can be a sticky subject, so I would suggest adding some scripture and exegesis to your landing page that can help people be at ease with it.
- roycehaynes 13y ago
  - Good call. Adding more info to the landing page now. - I like the idea of scripture. It'll probably be something I do with a more fleshed out landing page.
iambateman 13y ago
This is cool! I've been thinking about doing something like this for a long time.
- roycehaynes 13y ago
  Glad you like it. Anything specific you think I should address?
eieio 13y ago
I'm not much of a churchgoer these days, but growing up Episcopalian I have nothing but respect for folks for faith. Is it cool if I send this to some of my non-techie friends/family? One of your comments says that you haven't really shipped yet, so I'm not sure what your target audience is at this point. edit: for what it's worth I also think chad_oliver and blankenship nailed it with their comments/suggestions.
- roycehaynes 13y ago
  heyo - please share with family/friends. I'm rolling out v0.1 very soon. about the edit: agreed.
  - intelliot 13y ago
    Site needs more info. Is this a startup? Or is it a non-profit?
yairharel 13y ago
Much addo about nothing?
malloreon 13y ago
Will this be useful for mosques, synagogues, temples, etc?
- roycehaynes 13y ago
  short answer, yes. Although, I'm assuming early adopters will be Christianity based.
fellowniusmonk 13y ago
A buddy of mine has a similar project that launched awhile back. Curious to see how similar this turns out to https://simpledonation.com/ https://simpledonation.com/
tbrooks 13y ago
Interesting to see new entrants to the church market. I built a similar product marketed specifically to churches - https://simpledonation.com https://simpledonation.com Here are some of the things I've learned: Building the technology is the easy part. Stripe/Balanced (and all the other payments APIs) have made it easy to do a payment startup. Customer acquisition and sales is the hard part. 1) Decisions are made by committee and for normal sized churches (< 500 attendance) the decision maker is not on staff. Therefore repeatable, cost-effective customer acquisition is really, really hard. Only a few channels are available. 2) The buyers are generally not business thinkers. I've tested different sales pitches, asking "would you rather have a service grow your top line by 10% OR cut costs by 15%?" Most say "cut costs" which is actually a net loss. Meaning: sales is consultative and educational and you have to sell it to over and over to every person on the committee. 3) Churches have a tough time justifying $50/mo for a SaaS service. The margins are too thin to make a lot of money in transaction rev. e.g. I processed $30k last month and made ~$300. You need a ton of volume for the math to make sense. There are churches like Newspring (hi Joshua!) that are run differently and understand the values of technology. Most of the 300,000 evangelical churches in the US are not like that.

27 points by roycehaynes 13y ago

prawn 13y ago

Firstly, I'm not the target market as I have nothing to do with churches. But I think the page probably needs to show more information before the signup. Description, diagram, screenshots, etc. I'm not even confident that I know what it does - accept donations I guess? Some sort of church CRM? Does it do something that other charity/donation sites don't do?

pcmonk 13y ago
It would be helpful to know more about what this is. I am involved with churches, so I'm curious about what exactly this is.
- roycehaynes 13y ago
  pcmonk - royce here. Would love to connect. I'm basically building a super simple service for churchs and their members to interact starting with automating tithes and offering. Love to chat more about it - royce.haynes@gmail.com. Curious what your involvement is with churches?
  - pcmonk 13y ago
    I'm basically the tech guy for my church, and my parents are elders (we don't have a pastor, per se; we have four elder couples). I think that's an interesting idea. The first thing that jumps out at me is that it better be very simple to use, and there should be a way to integrate it well with the church website, regardless of what system they use to run their website. But, I'm sure you've thought of that already. I don't think this would work out well for my church since we're pretty small at this point (about a hundred attendees most weeks) and not particularly tech-literate, but I'll keep an eye on this.
    - roycehaynes 13y ago
      Thanks! Would love to get your feedback once v0.1 is out.
roycehaynes 13y ago
Hey prawn, appreciate the feedback. Awhile back I built a tool for my church to accept donations online. I later learned that 85% of donations in churches are given offline, and most churches don't interact with their members (or future members) online effectively. Enter Addo. Key v0.1 features: 1. Accept donations via Dwolla, where transaction fee is $0.25. Way less than other payment processors. 2. Super simple "dashboard" showing donations in intervals (weekly, monthly, etc.) 3. Members can check their giving history, and update account info. I'm currently fleshing it out for other churches to use. The landing page is pretty bare, but I hope to have more info up by end of week.
- xiljin 13y ago
  royce, if you're ever interested in connecting your data to an online accounting app for nonprofits (with integrated fundraising CRM and payroll), I'd be happy to chat!

shanac 13y ago

Is this open to non-church religious organizations? I have a friend who is a rabbi of a small but extremely cool, open orthodox synagogue on the Lower East Side (he's also a former web developer) He's done crowd funding before for the synagogue, since the building is historically important. Due to the fact that the congregation is open to whomever showing up, compared to other orthodox synagogues on the LES, he has an extremely tech literate crowd. It might be a good match if it works for not-churches.

roycehaynes 13y ago
shanac - I'm currently focusing on religious organizations. Even though it may work, the usage will feel most comfortable to churches. Its definitely something to consider after I ship. :)

simon 13y ago

I'm a pastor (and former geek) and I would love to see more info on your landing page before handing out an email address. Not sure if my congregation is ready to go "online giving", but the organization I belong to may be interested. Is this only suitable for church congregations, or would a church organization (state level) be able to use it?

roycehaynes 13y ago
heyo simon! Totally understand. This is primarily for church organizations to manage tithes, offering, and interaction with members. But church congregations (members) will have limited access too. There's a great infographic that breaks down whether online giving is right for your church. Check it out: http://i.imgur.com/WLysi7d.png http://i.imgur.com/WLysi7d.png I'm going to update the landing page with more info here shortly...

chad_oliver 13y ago

Great work. I'll be keeping a close eye on this. I think the tagline "Grow your church community and increase giving" doesn't feel quite right. Specifically, "increase giving" sounds a little bit ... greedy, maybe? Every church I've been in recognizes that money is useful and necessary, but there's always that fear that people will feel like they have to give in order to be a Good Christian. I'm not really sure how to improve the tagline, but perhaps you could focus on what money enables. The pain-point isn't that churches want more money, it's that they want to be able do more, help more, serve more.

blankenship 13y ago
“Grow your church community and fund your mission.” Or something of the sort. People respond to vision, not need.
roycehaynes 13y ago
Chad - big thanks for your comment. I struggled on a tagline, but I think you nailed it. Focusing on "what money enables." After reading it more, its awkward to put money and church in the same phrase, especially for churches.
- roycehaynes 13y ago
  ^I meant "increase giving" not "money"
- ceautery 13y ago
  >>its awkward to put money and church in the same phrase I have attended churches that would disagree with that sentiment. :) Can you tell us what the ADDO name means?
  - roycehaynes 13y ago
    Addo means "to give" in latin.

jscheel 13y ago

I think is has a lot of potential. Two suggestions: 1. Consider adding more information to your landing page. It's just a little too sparse at the moment. 2. Online giving can be a sticky subject, so I would suggest adding some scripture and exegesis to your landing page that can help people be at ease with it.

roycehaynes 13y ago
- Good call. Adding more info to the landing page now. - I like the idea of scripture. It'll probably be something I do with a more fleshed out landing page.

iambateman 13y ago

This is cool! I've been thinking about doing something like this for a long time.

roycehaynes 13y ago
Glad you like it. Anything specific you think I should address?

eieio 13y ago

I'm not much of a churchgoer these days, but growing up Episcopalian I have nothing but respect for folks for faith. Is it cool if I send this to some of my non-techie friends/family? One of your comments says that you haven't really shipped yet, so I'm not sure what your target audience is at this point. edit: for what it's worth I also think chad_oliver and blankenship nailed it with their comments/suggestions.

roycehaynes 13y ago
heyo - please share with family/friends. I'm rolling out v0.1 very soon. about the edit: agreed.
- intelliot 13y ago
  Site needs more info. Is this a startup? Or is it a non-profit?

yairharel 13y ago

Much addo about nothing?

malloreon 13y ago

Will this be useful for mosques, synagogues, temples, etc?

roycehaynes 13y ago
short answer, yes. Although, I'm assuming early adopters will be Christianity based.

fellowniusmonk 13y ago

A buddy of mine has a similar project that launched awhile back. Curious to see how similar this turns out to https://simpledonation.com/ https://simpledonation.com/

tbrooks 13y ago

Interesting to see new entrants to the church market. I built a similar product marketed specifically to churches - https://simpledonation.com https://simpledonation.com Here are some of the things I've learned: Building the technology is the easy part. Stripe/Balanced (and all the other payments APIs) have made it easy to do a payment startup. Customer acquisition and sales is the hard part. 1) Decisions are made by committee and for normal sized churches (< 500 attendance) the decision maker is not on staff. Therefore repeatable, cost-effective customer acquisition is really, really hard. Only a few channels are available. 2) The buyers are generally not business thinkers. I've tested different sales pitches, asking "would you rather have a service grow your top line by 10% OR cut costs by 15%?" Most say "cut costs" which is actually a net loss. Meaning: sales is consultative and educational and you have to sell it to over and over to every person on the committee. 3) Churches have a tough time justifying $50/mo for a SaaS service. The margins are too thin to make a lot of money in transaction rev. e.g. I processed $30k last month and made ~$300. You need a ton of volume for the math to make sense. There are churches like Newspring (hi Joshua!) that are run differently and understand the values of technology. Most of the 300,000 evangelical churches in the US are not like that.