Tap and grab
In the parish of Mundesley, the PCC explored the issue of giving in services across their two congregations as we’ve always struggled and often sought additional fundraising to bridge the gap.
Both congregations gathered every Sunday before COVID; the established traditional folk in the church and a new group at Café Church in the church hall, and although there were a number of regular givers the PCC income was insufficient to cover costs so, in September 2019, we introduced a Goodbox contactless machine to supplement the regular plate. Since then we have been really pleased with the uptake, especially with the new Café Church congregation.
The Café Church community is a new group of adults and children ranging from 0 to 90+ and they gather in an informal style around café tables. As well as donation baskets on each coffee table we placed the contactless machine near the coffee and cakes so people could ‘tap’ their donation at the same time as grabbing a coffee. With the informal style, this worked very well and with a reminder during the service, we’d regularly receive contactless donations in addition to cash in the baskets. Certainly the ease of contactless and the increasing acceptance that many people do not carry cash means that before we had the machine the PCC were missing out on many willing to contribute to the church, and in the first six months we’ve received over £1300 in contactless donations from the Café Church alone!
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