Giving

How giving works

Giving shows each giver where their missions gifts went. It reads gifts from the giving platform your church already uses and the payments your church made to missionaries, then follows the money from one to the other. It's the Giving & My missions add-on: $10 a month on Starter and Growing, included on the Church plan, the trial and self-hosted galleries.

Three rules #

• Missionary Lane never holds money. Gifts go to your church through the giving platform you already use. Connections only read from it; they never move money.
• The church decides every payment. Givers give to your missions fund. They never choose a missionary, and the gallery never asks them to. Missionary Lane follows the money from gifts to the payments the church chose to make.
• Restricted families stay protected. Givers see a restricted missionary only by their public alias, never their name, photo or place.

Tracing by date #

Think of the missions fund as a queue. Gifts join it on the day they arrive. When the church pays a missionary, the payment is made from the oldest money in the queue.

• Gifts and payments are matched by date, oldest money first. A gift only funds payments made on or after the day it arrived.
• Gifts that arrive on the same day share each payment in proportion to their size.
• Gifts that arrive only as a monthly total, without dates (paper envelopes, for example), are shared evenly across that month's payments.
• Money that hasn't been paid out yet is waiting in the fund. It reaches missionaries with the church's next payments.
• A missionary is never shown receiving more than the church paid them, and every gift is accounted for: traced to payments, or waiting.
• Gifts to a general fund count at the missions share you set for that fund, such as 10%. Refunded gifts drop out.
• The figures are worked out again after every sync, import, fund change and confirmed month.

A worked example #

In March, three people give to the missions fund, and the church makes two support payments: $1,200 to the Okafors on March 15 and $1,000 to the Riveras on March 31.

1. On March 15 the Okafors' $1,200 is paid from the oldest money: all of Ann's $1,000 (March 1), then $200 of your $571 (March 5).
2. On March 31 the Riveras' $1,000 is paid from what's left, oldest first: the rest of your gift, $371, then $629 of Ben's $800 (March 20).
3. $171 of Ben's gift is still in the fund. In April, it's the oldest money, so it goes first into April's payments.

Your My missions page shows $200 to the Okafors and $371 to the Riveras, both Traced. Ann and Ben each see their own share, and nobody sees anyone else's.

Traced, Estimated and Pledge #

Every amount a giver sees carries one of these labels.

What appears in the gallery #

When an owner, or an admin with Finance, turns giving on in Giving → Settings:

• Each kiosk gets a Support button in its Support & contact section. It opens your church's own giving page in a new tab, beside a short note you write, for example: “Gifts go to our missions fund. The church decides how the fund supports each missionary.” Restricted kiosks never get one.
• The gallery's top bar gets My missions, where givers sign in to see their own picture. See My missions for givers.
• If you also switch on Show our missions picture, an Our missions page lists what the church sent each missionary and the total. Restricted missionaries are listed by alias without amounts, and their support is added together as Restricted fields.

Planned Built-in giving, where givers give right in the gallery, is a later phase. Gifts would still go straight to your church's own account.

Who can see what #

Next: set it up as a treasurer, or read the note on taxes.