The median American congregation has about 70 regular attenders. When that church needs a new roof or a mission trip paid for, the problem isn't finding donors — it's that the fifty people who would give have no simple way to do it.
Source: Hartford Institute for Religion Research, 2025 Faith Communities Today
Pastor Reyes's congregation runs about 80 on a Sunday. The van that takes the youth group to summer camp failed its inspection, and the repair is $4,200. They have no website, no giving app, and no committee for this. What they have is a church directory, a Sunday announcement, and roughly fifty households who already give something each week.
The pancake breakfast is scheduled for the second Sunday in May. Camp leaves in June.
The pancake breakfast, the yard sale, the soup supper — keep them. They feed the church in a way money doesn't, and a congregation that only ever gets asked for money becomes a congregation that stops coming.
But a breakfast reaches the people who are already in the building on Sunday. A request reaches the ones who aren't — the family that moved to Arizona and still gets the newsletter, the daughter who grew up in that church, the member in the hospital who hasn't been able to attend since February.
| What the church keeps | 100% of every contribution. The 6.9% fee is added at checkout and paid by the contributor, not taken out of what you receive. |
| When it arrives | Standard payouts reach the bank in 2-3 business days. |
| Who sees it | Only the people you send the link to, unless you choose to make it public. Nothing is listed or searchable by default. |
A church of 70 is not a smaller version of a church of 700. It's a different fundraising problem.
Seven hundred people lets you run a campaign — a kickoff Sunday, pledge cards, a thermometer in the narthex. Seventy people doesn't. There's no anonymous middle; everyone's giving is visible to everyone else, and that's exactly why a direct, private ask works better than a pledge drive.
Forty-two contributions of $100 covers it. In a congregation of eighty households, that's the families who'd have put something in the plate anyway — just pointed at one thing, with a number attached.
Nothing to create a request. Nothing to send it. The only fee is the 6.9% a contributor pays on top of their own contribution — a $100 contribution costs the giver $106.90 and the church receives $100.00.
It's built for one specific thing with a number on it. A van repair, a roof, a trip with a departure date.
It works through your directory. The list you already have is the whole requirement.
Contributions start at $100. For a congregation, that's an ordinary Sunday for one family — and forty of them covers a $4,200 van.
