Learn How St. Anthony’s Increased Generosity, Even During the Pandemic
69%
increase in ACH giving
Summary
St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church was founded in 1997 in the Woodlands, Texas. Part of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, the parish started as 300 families meeting in a high school cafeteria for Mass. In the 21 years since inception, it’s grown considerably. In fact, the 23-acre campus is now the parish home of 7,800 families, with an average of 50 new families joining every month. It has 100 ministries including a K-8 National Blue Ribbon School of Excellence, Faith Formation, and Youth Ministry programs that evangelize thousands of students each year, and a Food Pantry that feeds thousands of people annually. The parish also sponsors an ongoing mission in Trujillo, Honduras, and holds Sunday Masses in both English and Spanish.
Challenges
St. Anthony of Padua’s previous giving software worked well for internal workflows, but the user interface was difficult for givers to navigate. So difficult in fact, the church saw an increase in registered members, but average weekly giving per family steadily declined. After five years of this trend, church staff started searching for a way to make giving more user-friendly. At the same time, the church was paying over $12,000 every month in credit card fees.
Pushpay
After months of researching and evaluating different giving tools, St. Anthony of Padua’s staff found Pushpay. Church administrators were able to access Pushpay’s customer success team with questions prior to the software’s official launch day and onboard the platform quickly. Furnished with templates for talking with their members about the new giving app, staff were able to reassure recurring givers of the functionality and security of the new platform and start getting recurring givers successfully transitioned. During the onboarding period, the church staff was also taught how to customize the app with colors, themes, and images relevant to St. Anthony of Padua’s look and feel.
One of the features the church’s team used right away was Pushpay’s integrations with other popular church software. In fact, Pushpay integrated seamlessly with their previous giving tool, making it easy to move recurring givers to the new system. This integration was also crucial when it came time for end-of-year statements. Staff found it easy and intuitive to generate and distribute statements that year, even after switching platforms.
Additionally, the church was finally able to offer their community a tool that made giving and engagement easy. Unlike previous giving platforms, Pushpay did not require their parishioners to enter a password each time they gave, and staff could customize the giving platform to account for Catholic giving nuances. In fact, they were now able to create unique Catholic-specific app add-ons, and communicate to parishioners using terms they were familiar with. The church also customized their app to feature multiple campuses while making sure the app was available in both English and Spanish.
Results
Within the first month of using Pushpay, St. Anthony of Padua saw growth in average weekly giving, participation, and total dollars given. They also saw a 69% increase in ACH giving.
Recently, the parish built a new chapel and used Pushpay to facilitate giving and manage their building campaign—Horizon. With 7,800 families, and an average of 50 new families joining every month, they were bursting at the seams and turning away brides during the busy Spring wedding season. A new chapel was an answer to their prayers. They launched their campaign in January 2020, just before the pandemic. Their goal was to raise $6.5 million. Through Pushpay and the pledges, they were able to surpass their goal and raised $7.5 million.
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...digital tools in this time and age, especially coming out of COVID, is immensely helpful for a church to be able to allow its people to give generously from their hearts so that beautiful creations may come to be for the greater glory of God.
