Case Study:

Origins Church of New York

“Weekly contributions have quadrupled since using PaySimple.”

--Sue Erickson, Executive Assistant and Vision Implementation, Origins Church of New York

The Opportunity:

Origins Church of New York is a young church community comprised of professionals, young families, students and emerging artists committed to seeking a renewed approach to Christian spirituality and the teachings of Jesus. The two year old community is growing very quickly and now attracts regular attendance levels of 450 - 500 people for weekend services.

Members were looking for flexible and convenient ways to contribute regularly, even if they missed a week of services.  And as a non-profit, Origins Church depends on the donations of congregants. Sue Erickson, Executive Assistant and Vision Implementation of Origins Church of New York, decided to do some research to investigate alternative ways to make it easier for people to give back to the church.

The Solution:

Because their demographic tends to be younger, the Origins Church website has emerged as a central place for congregants to learn more about its services, events and mission efforts.  “Since our website is where many of our members get their information when they are not at the church, it made sense to allow them to donate via the website as well,” Erickson said.

Following a referral from another church, Origins decided to deploy the PaySimple Solution.  “We were pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to get started with PaySimple; it was much faster than we had expected,” Erickson said. 

Because the PaySimple Solution is a Software as a Service (Saas) technology platform, and is securely hosted by PaySimple, Origins Church did not have to add any additional IT resources to implement.  They found it did not take much training for the staff to become knowledgeable and efficient at setting up online payments for the donors and running reports on the transactions.  Within two weeks of signing up, Origins Church started accepting donations by credit card and electronic check on their website.

The Benefits:

In the year Origins Church has been working with PaySimple, their weekly contributions have quadrupled, as well as have become more predictable.  Erickson has also found that the Origins Church staff saves a great deal of time now that they are using the PaySimple Solution, as they spend less time manually counting money or going to the bank to make deposits.  In addition, there is less opportunity for human error in the accounting process for incoming donations with those they accept electronically.  

Following their excellent experience with the PaySimple Solution, Origins Church plans to upgrade to the newly released PaySimple Solution 2.0.  Erikson is enthusiastic about implementing the recurring invoicing module as well as offering congregants the ability to edit their own settings for their already growing number of online donations.

Origins Church also appreciates the individual attention PaySimple has shown to make the setup and utilization of the system successful. “PaySimple is very responsive and has great customer service,” Erickson said.  “They are very friendly.  When I talk to anyone at PaySimple, I know they are focused on my concerns -- it’s not like dealing with some big, impersonal company.”