In our local area, we’re grateful to have a congregation of around 300 individuals that attend our church regularly, and 120 individual members of the congregation or families (encompassing 185 people) give through PGS. We’re an incredibly vibrant church, with activities going on seven days a week including three services on a Sunday, playgroups and food kitchens. We registered with PGS in 2015 and there was lots of material that helped us launch the scheme in our church. It’s the modern way of giving and it certainly eases the strain on our finance team; it’s easy, safe and effective for our congregation. The finance team led the launch of PGS in our church and we announced it in our Sunday services, which we followed up with a letter to our givers to explain how to set up their accounts and their gifts. Ever since we launched, we’ve had really positive feedback from givers and an uptick in gifts. All of our regular gifts are processed through PGS. Between the ease of giving and the excellent customer service, I’d call it heroic work from the PGS team. We’d be lost without it!

Since we joined in 2017, the Parish Giving Scheme has become vital to our parish’s income stream and cash flow. We started with just two people giving through PGS, but uptake has been steady and continuous to date, and we now receive regular gifts from 79 givers. Continuous gentle campaigning has made an annual increase to the Planned Giving budget feasible, and to date, it has always been exceeded. The PGS has had the greatest effect on cash flow, as Gift Aid is recovered monthly instead of twice a year. The administrative load on myself and the Gift Aid secretary has been reduced by half, which has helped enormously, and the treasurer finds the monthly reporting invaluable. ‘If I was to offer one piece of advice to a church that is new to PGS, it would be to sign up now – you won’t regret it!’