Giving from the app

Give is the fifth tab in churchHQ. What it does depends on one church-level setting: gifts either run through the church's own Stripe account inside Scout, or the tab becomes a doorway to the giving page the church already uses somewhere else.

Which version of Give your church has

Staff set the destination at Giving → Giving setup (the button sits in the page header on a desktop screen; the page is /giving/connect). Two cards live there:

• Connect Stripe runs giving through Scout. Members get the form described below, and Scout records every gift. See Set up Stripe Connect.
• Point to your current giving page takes a web address and the button Use this page for giving. The address has to start with https://. Members tap Give and land on that page in their browser.

Only one destination is live at a time, and changing it needs the manage_settings permission. Scout cannot read gifts back out of another provider, so in external mode a member's history stays empty apart from gifts staff enter by hand (Recording offline gifts).

Giving through Scout

If the church has connected Stripe but has not created a fund yet, the tab reads Giving not yet configured. Otherwise the form works top to bottom.

1. 1

   Pick One-time or Recurring

   The toggle at the top of the form. Switching it changes which fields appear below.

2. 2

   Set the amount

   Tap a chip ($25, $50, $100, $250) or type into the large field under Gift Amount. Tapping a chip writes that number into the field, so you can tap $50 and then edit it.

3. 3

   Choose a fund

   The Fund picker only appears when the church has more than one active fund. With a single fund there is nothing to pick and no picker is drawn. The church's default fund is preselected.

4. 4

   Choose how often, for a recurring gift

   How often offers Weekly, Bi-weekly, and Monthly. Those three are the only options a member can choose. Quarterly and annually exist in staff-side giving records, but nothing in the app can create them.

Bank transfer or card

The Payment method row appears only when the church's Stripe account has ACH bank transfers switched on. When it appears, Bank transfer is preselected, not Card, and the helper line reads "Bank transfer has the lowest fees, so more of your gift reaches the church." Churches whose account cannot take ACH see no picker and the gift goes on a card.

Covering the processing fee

Once there is an amount on screen, a checkbox reads Cover the $1.42 processing fee so the church receives your full $50.00. Ticking it raises what you are charged so the church nets the number you typed, and the submit button updates to the new total.

The figures are estimates built on Stripe's nonprofit rate: roughly 2.2% plus 30 cents on a card, and 0.8% capped at $5 on a bank transfer. A church that has not been approved for that rate pays closer to 2.9% plus 30 cents, so a covered card gift can land a few cents short for them (Get the 2.2% nonprofit rate).

Finishing on Stripe

The submit button reads Give $50.00, or Give $50.00 monthly for a recurring gift. Tapping it opens Stripe Checkout, where the card or bank details are entered. In the churchHQ app that page opens in the phone's browser rather than inside the app, which is what Apple requires for payments.

Stripe tells Scout the gift happened, so the gift is recorded whether or not you get cleanly back to the app. Coming back after a completed gift shows Thank you! / Your gift is on its way. with a Give Again button. Backing out of Stripe shows "Your gift was canceled. No charge was made."

History and the year-to-date figure

The History tab opens on a {year} Year-to-Date card that counts up to the total. That total is every completed gift on your record since January 1, including cash and check gifts the office entered, so it is not a sum of the rows underneath it.

Below it sit your last 20 gifts, newest first, each showing the fund, the date, the method (Card, ACH, Cash, Check, or Other), and the amount. A bank transfer that has not settled carries a Processing pill and does not count toward the year-to-date figure until it clears. With no gifts recorded, the tab reads No giving history yet.

The Recurring tab

Each gift shows the amount, the frequency and fund, a status pill of Active, Paused, or Didn't run, and either Next gift: Sep 1, 2026 or "Paused. No upcoming gift". Three controls sit under it: Change amount, Pause or Resume, and Cancel, which asks Cancel this gift? with Keep and Cancel gift.

Change amount opens a sheet with New Amount and the same fee checkbox. It confirms "No charge today. Your next gift will be $75.00 on Sep 1, 2026." and the button reads Update to $75.00 monthly. Nothing is charged or refunded that day; the new figure starts at the next cycle.

When a cycle fails, usually an expired card, the gift flips to Didn't run and Scout emails the giver once with the subject "Your recurring gift to {Church name} didn't go through", plus a push notification if they have the churchHQ app installed. The fix is the same cancel-and-restart, because the card cannot be replaced in place.

Receipts and statements

Nothing downloads as a PDF in the app. There is no receipt button, no statement, and no annual summary on the History tab.

A completed one-time gift triggers an email to the address on your record, from events@scout.church, with the subject Your gift to {Church name}. It lists the amount, the fund, and the date, and notes that the church provides the official year-end statement. Recurring cycles do not send that email, so a monthly giver's only in-app record is the History list.

Year-end statements come from the church office, not from Scout. Scout has no statement generator on either side, so what staff can do is export the year's gifts and produce the documents themselves. See Year-end giving records.