Church Planting
Setting up online giving for a church plant before launch day
You set up online giving for a church plant by getting your EIN and a church bank account first, then opening a Stripe Connect account through your giving platform, applying for the nonprofit rate, adding a give button to your launch page, and sending yourself a real $1 test gift before day one. With those four pieces in place, you can take your first gift the same week.
When we were getting our plant off the ground, the giving setup sat at the bottom of the list for weeks because it read like a finance chore. It turned out to be the first piece of infrastructure that touches an actual person. Build it right and every gift that comes in lands on a real name from the first Sunday instead of as an anonymous deposit you reconcile later.
What do I need ready before I can take my first online gift?
You need four things before a gift can land: an EIN from the IRS, a bank account in the church's legal name, a payment processor account, and somewhere to put the give link. With all four, you can accept a real gift the same day you finish, no 501(c)(3) determination letter required to get started.
Here's the order I'd run it in, because a couple of these have wait times you can't shortcut:
- Get your EIN. This is your church's federal tax ID, and it's free directly from the IRS. The online EIN application issues the number immediately when you finish, within the IRS tool's operating hours. You'll need it to open a bank account and to apply for the nonprofit processing rate.
- Open a church bank account. Use the EIN and your organizing documents. Gifts have to settle somewhere, and the account name should match the church's legal name so payouts don't get held.
- Open your payment processor account. Most giving tools run on Stripe Connect underneath. You'll enter your EIN, your bank details, and a responsible person, and you're live for card and ACH in a day or two.
- Apply for the nonprofit rate with your EIN or determination letter (more on this below).
- Place the give link on your launch page, your Linktree, your QR code on the welcome card, wherever a person will look for it.
- Send a real $1 test gift to yourself. Use a real card, watch it settle, then refund it. Do not skip this. The first time you find out giving is broken should not be a guest telling you on a Sunday.
Do you need a 501(c)(3) to accept online donations as a church plant?
No. You can legally accept and process online gifts with just an EIN and a bank account, and churches are treated as tax-exempt by default under federal law without filing for recognition. What formal 501(c)(3) status unlocks is the discounted processing rate and the cleanest possible answer for donors who want written assurance their gift is deductible.
This trips up a lot of planters, so here's the distinction. The IRS treats churches that meet the requirements of section 501(c)(3) as automatically tax exempt, with no requirement to apply for recognition. So you can take gifts on day one. Most planters still pursue the formal determination letter because Stripe asks for proof of 501(c)(3) status to grant the reduced nonprofit rate, and some donors and grant-makers want the letter on file. Apply for both: take gifts now on the standard rate, and switch to the nonprofit rate the moment your recognition clears.
What's the best payment processor for a church plant's online giving?
For most plants, the honest answer is whatever giving tool sits on top of Stripe Connect, because Stripe gives you card and ACH out of the box, a real nonprofit rate, and same-week setup. The processor underneath matters less than two things: that it doesn't take an extra cut of your offering, and that the gift lands on the giver's record instead of in a spreadsheet.
The table below is the plain version of what a $100 gift costs across the common starting points. Every figure is the processor's own published rate.
| Method | Typical fee | Church keeps on $100 |
|---|---|---|
| Card, Stripe standard | 2.9% + 30¢ | $96.80 |
| Card, Stripe nonprofit rate | 2.2% + 30¢ | $97.50 |
| ACH bank transfer, Stripe | 0.8%, capped at $5 | $99.20 |
| ACH, Planning Center Giving | 0% + 30¢ | $99.70 |
Card and ACH figures from Swipesum's Stripe fee guide and the Stripe nonprofit discount; Planning Center ACH from Planning Center Giving. Planning Center is a fair processor to consider here, and its flat ACH rate is strong. I went deeper on the full fee stack in what online giving actually costs a church if you want the worked math.
How much does online giving really cost a church plant?
Scout takes no cut of giving and makes no money on the offering, but you still pay the payment processor's standard fees. On Stripe that's 2.9% + 30¢ per card gift, dropping to 2.2% + 30¢ once your nonprofit rate clears, and ACH bank transfers run 0.8% capped at $5. The point of building it this way is to get as much of every gift into the church's hands.
For a plant, the single biggest lever you have is nudging recurring and large gifts toward ACH bank transfer instead of card. A $1,000 card gift costs you about $22 to $29; the same gift over ACH costs $5 or less. Early on, your handful of monthly supporters are often your largest givers, so setting their recurring gift up on bank transfer from the start protects real money you'll want for rent and signage. Make card the easy default for one-time guest gifts and steer the regulars to ACH.
How do I keep giving on the person record from the start?
You keep giving on the person record by choosing a tool where the gift posts against an actual person instead of an anonymous transaction, so from gift one you can see who gave, when they started, and when something changes. Set this up before launch and your giving history is clean from the beginning instead of a pile you try to match to names six months in.
This is the part most planters don't think about until it's expensive to fix. If your giving lives in one app and your people live in another, every report becomes a reconciliation project. A donation is a person doing something, and it belongs next to everything else you know about them: whether they've joined a group, signed up to serve, filled out a connection card. When someone who gave every month for two years goes three weeks quiet, that's a person to call instead of a line item that dipped. You can't see that if giving is a silo.
This is the one place I'll name what I'm building. In Scout, a gift posts straight onto that person's record alongside their serving, groups, and check-ins, the giving runs on Stripe Connect at the nonprofit rate with no cut going to Scout, and year-end statements come from the same data with no export-and-merge. If you're standing a plant up from zero, the manual version of this still works, you just have to be disciplined about matching every gift to a name. Either way, decide now that giving and people live in one place, because untangling them later is the costly version.
Frequently asked questions
How do I set up online giving for a church plant before launch? Get your EIN and a church bank account first, then open a Stripe Connect account through your giving platform, apply for the nonprofit rate, add a give button to your launch page, and test it with a real $1 gift to yourself before day one.
Do you need a 501(c)(3) to accept online donations as a church plant? No. You can legally accept and process gifts with just an EIN and a bank account, and churches are treated as tax-exempt by default. But you usually need formal 501(c)(3) recognition to qualify for Stripe's discounted nonprofit processing rate, so apply for both.
What does online giving cost a church plant? Scout takes no cut of giving, but you still pay the processor's standard fees. On Stripe that's 2.9% + 30¢ per card gift, dropping to 2.2% + 30¢ once you qualify for the nonprofit rate, and ACH bank transfers run 0.8% capped at $5, which is far cheaper on large gifts.
Should a church plant offer online giving on launch day? Yes. First-time guests and supporters who can't attend will look for a way to give online from day one, and a give button costs nothing to have ready. The bigger win is that every gift records against a real person from gift one, so your giving history starts clean instead of as an anonymous pile.
What do I need ready before I can take my first online gift? Four things: an EIN from the IRS, a bank account in the church's name, a payment processor account (Stripe Connect through your giving tool), and a place to put the give link. With those, you can take a real gift the same day you finish setup.
Nic Moore is a pastor and the founder of Scout, who set up giving for his own plant the week before launch and still remembers the relief of watching that first $1 test gift land.