Church Executive CHURCH EXECUTIVE NOV-DEC 2017 DIGITAL | Page 26

C3LA Senior Pastor Jake Sweetman
C3LA funds key initiatives after growing
digital giving by 372% in 3 years
C3LA is a young, vibrant multi-site church in the sprawling city of Los
Angeles whose vision is to help people know God personally, find
freedom from their past through the power of relationship, discover their
pu rpose through servanthood, and ultimately grow into leadership.
It’s no secret that in order to make a difference for Jesus by impacting a
city like L.A., resources are needed!
Senior Pastor Jake Sweetman recalls how mobile giving has continually
helped to fulfill the church’s vision.
Our church, C3LA, started using Tithe.ly at all three of our services
about three years ago. My team and I attribute much of our financial
growth to consistently teaching about generosity and the tithe, along with
making the giving process streamlined and easy to use on a mobile device
so that our church could give in the moment in a way that was familiar
to them.
The three areas where we’ve seen the most success are:
#1: Capital campaign fundraising
Each year, we have a Vision Builders fundraiser which raises money
above and beyond our weekly giving for building campaigns, various
types of marketing, local and overseas missions, and expanding our
church experience (i.e., — worship, kids church, guest experience, etc.).
We are always astonished by the generosity of our church and seeing the
fruit that comes from such generous givers. Ninety percent of “pledges”
towards our yearly capital campaign are set up as recurring gifts.
Because Tithe.ly makes this simple, we see more pledges fulfilled, and
that allows us to move resources much faster so we can react to the needs
of our community.
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CHURCH EXECUTIVE | NOV / DEC 2017
#2: Recurring giving
One area of unexpected growth was the increase we saw from receiving
”recurring gifts.” We have a lot of millennials in our congregation, so
using an app isn’t a big adjustment; but, the consistency of giving has been
a challenge. Life is busy, and people are busy.
Setting up recurring giving has helped people in our congregation to
“take themselves out of the equation” and automatically have their tithe
deducted from their account. Six percent of our church gives using the
recurring feature, which is amazing considering hardly no one in our
church was using recurring giving previously.
Our hope is the percentage will go even higher as our mobile giving app
becomes even more ingrained in our church culture.
#3: Admin time and resources
Before this mobile giving app, we were manually entering hundreds
of credit cards, which was a tedious and time-consuming process for the
admin team. Making it easy for people to give has saved us countless hours
of admin time and reduced the tedious work of data entry so our staff can
spend time on more important activities.
Over the course of three years, we’ve seen digital giving grow by 372%,
with nearly half our budget now coming in through mobile giving.
We’ve seen countless testimonies about the blessing that people have
seen due to selfless giving.
This type of giving, along with the proper church giving tools, has
empowered us be fully funded and prepared to support our community,
build the Kingdom, and ultimately see people saved and their lives
transformed by Jesus!