Online Giving

Online Giving in Lightpost is a great way to help facilitate easy contributions for your congregation.

Lightpost currently has opted for a self-managed payment processor model for enabling online giving for your congregation. This means that payments go directly to your own Stripe.com payment processor account.

General Information

• Online giving is only available for logged-in members of your congregation (guest giving is on the roadmap).

• The Recurring giving feature is optional and not required. It currently allows giving automatically every Sunday.

• Giving is available for credit/debit cards and bank accounts (ACH). You can configure which of these options you want to enable for your congregation. The fee structure is different for each method.

Available Reports

• Contribution Report

  • A full report of who gave what and when.

• Payout (Deposit) Report

  • A full report of deposits to your bank account and what contributions make up that deposit.

• End of Year Contribution Letters

  • The ability to create and make contribution letters accessible to your congregation.

  • Note: If only Online Giving is enabled, this report will only consist of electronic contributions done through Lightpost. For a full accounting of checks/cash, the Financial Management feature is needed.

Finance Categories

You have the ability to add and enable/disable categories or "buckets" for members to select contributions to be directed to.

Stripe Account Notes

• You create and own your own Stripe.com payment processor account for your congregation.

• You are responsible for completing the entire verification process for your Stripe.com account.

  • Your payouts will be suspended unless you complete this process.

• Your first payout will take 5-7 business days from your first transaction.

• Payouts will happen on a rolling business day basis, unless you change this setting in Stripe.

• Stripe fees apply for failed payments.

• You are responsible for all fees from the payment processor.