Digital donation revolution: Churches in the Nürtingen area start a pilot project!

Digital donation revolution: Churches in the Nürtingen area start a pilot project!

The Protestant communities in the Nürtingen district are starting a pilot project to test digital donation options. Six communities, including the Nürtingen town church, Wendlingen, Neuffen, Aich-Neuenhaus, Altenriet and the Friedenskirche Oberensingen-Zizishausen-Hardt, are involved in this project. The aim of the project is to make it easier for church visitors to donate by using debit cards or smartphones. The test run of the digital offering box is scheduled to last two years and is intended to help increase the willingness to donate to social projects and modernize donation transactions.

The trend towards digital payments is continuously increasing in Germany, even though cash is still widely used, especially during major sporting events such as the European Football Championship. The Evangelical Reformed Church in Leer has already introduced an EC card reader to enable cashless donations. Thanks to this initiative, the volume of donations in the community increased by 10 to 20 percent. This development makes it clear that more and more people are using digital payment methods and can therefore increase their willingness to donate.

Experiences from other communities

The experience of Cologne Cathedral shows that the introduction of digital offering boxes can have a positive influence on donation practices. A total of around 62,000 euros were collected there in 2022, while 53,000 euros have already flowed into the coffers in the first half of 2023. The average donation amount was 4.50 euros. Despite the increasing acceptance of cashless donations, cash payments still account for 90 percent of revenue.

It turns out that Germany lags behind in the use of electronic payment methods compared to other European countries. In 2022, an average of 284 digital payments were made per year. In the last two years, the proportion of cashless purchases rose from 42 percent in 2021 to 49 percent in 2022. However, there are still areas, such as homeless assistance, where this development is hardly noticeable. In cities like Berlin and Frankfurt, where homeless people remain dependent on cash, society reacts differently to the lack of cash.

In some Scandinavian countries it is already common practice to donate digitally to the homeless. This could also become increasingly important in Germany as the digital infrastructure continues to expand and more and more people become familiar with electronic payment methods. While the Protestant communities in the Nürtingen district are taking a step in this direction with their new pilot project, it remains to be seen how social acceptance of cashless donations will develop overall.

The initiatives in Nürtingen and other places show that churches are ready to face the challenges of the modern world and expand traditional donation channels. The combination of digital and traditional payment methods could be the key to ensuring broad support for social projects and church activities in the future.

For further information about the pilot project of the Protestant communities in Nürtingen, see NTZ. The developments in the area of ​​digital donations are also monitored by the Evangelical newspaper well tracked.