Giving Overview

Whether you're just setting up your church finances or a large church with well-established processes, this article helps you understand what Giving is meant to do.

Before you start with Giving, it's important to understand the key concepts described in the following sections.

sidebar. Giving tracks monetary and in-kind donations.

Giving is designed to track monetary and in-kind donations only, not sales or reimbursements. 

Donors often contribute to organizations in many ways. Giving allows you to track monetary donations received directly from donors (tax-deductible) or those received through donor-advised funds and qualified charitable distributions (non-deductible). Giving can also track in-kind donations received from donors, such as donations of physical items, stock, or services. 

Your organization may receive additional income from baked goods sales, thrift store sales, or small group members who bought books, but this income does not belong in Giving because someone is receiving a physical good or service from these types of transactions. Instead, this income can be entered into your general ledger (Quickbooks, Peachtree).

Tip

If you need to collect money without having people register, Stripe Payment Links is a good solution for these payments!

sidebar. Giving is not a general ledger.

You need separate software to cut checks, manage payroll, balance your books with your banks, and account for sales and reimbursements. 

Giving is not to be used to balance your church's basic finances like receivable and payable accounts.

sidebar. Giving uses Stripe to process donations.

Stripe processes all online donations initiated in Giving.

No financial data is stored on Planning Center servers. The data is handled by Stripe and stored on their PCI Level 1 compliant servers, which keeps all financial data safe for your organization and your donors.

sidebar. Giving is for non-profit organizations.

Giving is designed to collect and manage donations for non-profit 501c3 organizations. 

As the IRS puts it, donors receive ‘no goods or services in return for these contributions except intangible, religious benefits.’ If this doesn't describe your organization, Giving is not appropriate for you.

sidebar. Giving can be used for pledge campaigns.

Giving can be used to set up pledge campaigns and track pledge donations. 

If your church asks donors for a long-term commitment to give toward your overall budget or a special project (like a building project), you can use pledge campaigns to track those pledges and view the progress toward your financial goals.