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I-tithe???

Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2009 9:52 am
by Enigma1-p40
So there are many online transaction companies (including all banks). The Church has programs like MLS and CFIS, How hard would it be for the church to make online tithing available to members? I mean, its definitely a step into the future but i find it vary inconvenient as a college student, getting paid through direct deposit (BYU wont do it any other way), to have to actually go to the bank or an ATM machine once a month to pull out money. The only time I EVER go to the bank now is to pull money for tithing.

do you think the % of full-tithe payers would increase with the ease of being able to pay online?

Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2009 9:55 am
by techgy
Enigma1 wrote:So there are many online transaction companies (including all banks). The Church has programs like MLS and CFIS, How hard would it be for the church to make online tithing available to members? I mean, its definitely a step into the future but i find it vary inconvenient as a college student, getting paid through direct deposit (BYU wont do it any other way), to have to actually go to the bank or an ATM machine once a month to pull out money. The only time I EVER go to the bank now is to pull money for tithing.

do you think the % of full-tithe payers would increase with the ease of being able to pay online?
The payment of tithing is more an act of faith and willingness to follow the commandments. Personally, I don't think there would be any increase simply based upon convenience. Just my $0.02

Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2009 10:08 am
by russellhltn
Enigma1 wrote:The only time I EVER go to the bank now is to pull money for tithing.
I've always paid by check.

But yes, it would be nice to pay on-line while I'm doing my other on-line bill paying.

One concern would be to make sure that donations to the Ward Missionary account make it to the ward. That's something that's currently not available in current systems.

Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2009 10:37 am
by aebrown
Enigma1 wrote:So there are many online transaction companies (including all banks). The Church has programs like MLS and CFIS, How hard would it be for the church to make online tithing available to members?
There are several options already available for this. See the wiki article Electronic donations.

Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2009 1:34 pm
by JamesAnderson
The Tech Wiki article was good, but it also showed some flaws in the process, namely several types of donations could not be made online at present, and the added cost of sending out paper statements each month to the member making donations to the Church is not a good thing either, given it takes time (and employee cost) to print the statements, get them down to the mailroom, and then if not picked up by the USPS, getting the statements to the post office, not to mention the cost of postage, which is at least 44 cents (US).

But other Church departments have made strides in segregating members out by ward. new FamilySearch has a new 'Find local help' feature that gives the name and contact info for the family history consultants in that member's ward. That way it avoids a call to the toll-free number if possible initially. If the Family and Church History Department can do it, the Financial Department at some point might be able to build on that functionality to create a way to tie any online financial donations with the ward that the member resides in that are made online. Additionally, all present, and possible future donation categories, could be accomodated, and the member's online donation data could then be transmitted back to the local ward he or she's in when it comes time to conduct tithing settlement, or if a bishop needed it to determine certain worthiness issues.

Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2009 1:34 pm
by crislapi
Enigma1 wrote:How hard would it be for the church to make online tithing available to members?
Not hard at all. In fact, it's been available for years. It's just not very well publicized. Follow the link in Alan_Brown's post, and note the limitation pointed out by RussellHltn.

Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2009 3:13 pm
by njpomeroy
I've been using BillPay for my tithing for almost a year now. It is the greatest, and has allowed me to get rid of checks in my life. yee-haw!

Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2009 7:01 pm
by jvoracek
Alan_Brown wrote:There are several options already available for this. See the wiki article Electronic donations.
Wow, I have never been aware of this. Perhaps it should be more publicized due to the fact that some people worldwide live quite a long distance from church buildings. Members in some communities throughout the world have to put in quite the effort to pay tithing as far as traveling to a church building, however this is less relevant with the North American continent.

Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2009 9:56 pm
by scion-p40
I've been paying tithing electronically for a year or so now. It would be nice to be able to indicate tithing, fast offering, and local (ward or specific missionary) donations, but that is not currently possible. I would also appreciate the opportunity to tell them to stop sending me mail. Email or a website to login where I can print my own annual letter would suffice for me.

Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2009 10:12 pm
by faazshift
scion wrote:I've been paying tithing electronically for a year or so now. It would be nice to be able to indicate tithing, fast offering, and local (ward or specific missionary) donations, but that is not currently possible. I would also appreciate the opportunity to tell them to stop sending me mail. Email or a website to login where I can print my own annual letter would suffice for me.
Yeah, that would be nice. And it doesn't seem like it would be too hard to implement such a thing.