Smart Contact: Require Names & Emails

GivingFlows are designed to provide the fastest, friendliest, and most modern giving experience that respects people's time and privacy from the donor's perspective. This also means that, by default, RebelGive does not require names and/or email addresses when someone gives through your GivingFlow. (For a more in-depth understanding of our philosophy on this, scroll down to the bottom.)

Should you feel the need to force donors to provide their name/email address when giving, you can turn on the Smart Contact option. Let's see how to do this!

Turn on the Smart Contact step

In your GivingFlow Panel, access the Design Tab.

Scroll down to the section entitled Smart Contact. Click the toggle switch to the on position.

Don't forget to save your changes by clicking the Save Changes button at the bottom of the screen.

Where does the Smart Contact step appear?

When activated, the Smart Contact step appears at the very end of the GivingFlow. (If you have the Memo Note step enabled, the Smart Contact step will appear after this.)

What if someone is already signed in?

If a giver is already signed in (or signs in mid-flow) and has already provided their name and email, they won't be asked to fill out those questions again so it's not annoying to your people who have already been using RebelGive for a while.

Why is the default set to off for the Smart Contact step?

• We believe in making the general congregation's experience with things like giving (or anything else through our platforms), the fastest, friendliest, and most modern experience that respects people's time and privacy, and reflects real-world experiences and constructs as much as possible. People already part of your church are the vast majority of those taking next steps and it seems wise to oftentimes prioritize their experience. We want the platforms and products we create to be something people enjoy and are happy to use. Far too often, heavy-handed data collection practices and the admin/staff experience in church products has been prioritized to an extreme, at the expense of providing the best experience for the majority of people in your church. We know for example, from studies on form design that the more fields there are, the more likely it is for people to just give up and not complete what they started out actually wanting to do! And the thing is, you'll never know how many bail on the process. So we were very careful to keep this in mind when designing GivingFlows, and only require the absolutely essential information required to successfully process a donation to your church.
• For RebelGive specifically, this philosophy and understanding led us to invent a brand new, incredibly friendly and modern way to give that we call GivingFlows. At its essence - we wanted the experience with GivingFlows to be as close to how effortless (and private) it feels to drop cash in the plate in church. So we made the decision to eliminate even more friction, by not requiring people to also type in their name and email simply to give money to your church. We felt strongly that this most closely mirrored real life. No usher (that we know of!) is forcing people to hand over their name and email before they can drop cash in the plate as it's passed down the aisle or when they drop it in the box at the back of the sanctuary. 🙈 Similarly with GivingFlows, you can easily tap your way through a flow and finish giving super quickly whenever you're moved to be generous! This is not only good for the majority of people in your church, it's also good for admins and healthy church budgets, as it leads to much higher completion rates for giving on RebelGive than on other platforms that prioritize data collection and an admin-first approach (some legacy giving platforms even force people to create an account before they can give!) 🙄. Our unique approach to the giving experience has been met with great success by countless churches - one of whom told us that in their first 6 months since switching to RebelGive from another legacy-style platform, their giving went up by 20% once they started using their GivingFlow. Additionally, now >50% of their givers give recurring when before RebelGive they had only 5% recurring! This is why we designed GivingFlows the way we did, and made controversial decisions like not requiring name and email. We firmly believe that when an experience is designed to align with what the average person in your church wants, expects, and enjoys, it has a huge positive impact on their behavior. And it leads to the results you as a church want to see anyways! Win-win.

So with that being said, we would still encourage most churches (especially if you've already been using RebelGive successfully for a while) to not use this feature. Maybe one of the only times we've ever encouraged people NOT to use one of our new features! 😆 We have great tools and ways for givers to add/claim unlinked gifts they may have given without their name or email attached (if they decide before tax time that they'd like to get a digital statement via RebelGive from your church).