Encourage and grow regular giving with the Parish Giving Scheme


The Parish Giving Scheme is an excellent way to encourage greater generosity within your church. PGS offers significant benefits compared to other forms of giving:

  • Givers can choose to automatically increase their giving by the rate of inflation every year if they wish. This tackles the problem of ‘static giving’, where people’s giving ordinarily remains the same year on year, while the costs of the church rise continually, due to inflation.
  • Gift aid is automatically processed every month, reducing admin for church volunteers and improving cash flow.
  • Givers can choose to give anonymously, if they would like to.
  • Adopting the scheme as part of a generous giving strategy often leads to an increase in giving.

As at March 2020, over 230 parishes in our diocese, from a cross-section of rural and urban backgrounds, have signed up to the scheme – more than any other diocese in the country!

To find out more about how the Parish Giving Scheme could help your church, watch the two films below – or scroll down to the Further Information section at the bottom of this page.

If you are an existing donor wanting to make changes to your direct debit, please contact the Parish Giving Scheme directly on 0333 002 1260 or by email on info@parishgiving.org.uk

Introducing the Scheme


Case study: implementing the Scheme


Telephone registrations


From  Monday 27th April PGS will be launching a telephone registration service. This will allow new donors to ring PGS directly to set up their Direct Debit over the phone instead of having to post a physical form (paper forms will remain an option).

The new number for this service is 0333 002 1271.

When someone rings to set up their donation they will need to make sure they have their bank details to hand. They will also need the name of their church and the church’s PGS registration number. This is the number which you would normally include on the paper forms and which starts with 2706…

Calls will usually last around fifteen minutes and donors will still be able to set up Gift Aid (if they want to) and will still have the option to increase their gift by the annual rate of inflation.

Read the full PGS press release here.

PDF Donations Forms


As well as the new telephone registration service PGS have also released a PDF version of the Direct Debit form. This new form can be uploaded to your website or emailed to your congregants, allowing them to print and fill-in the form at home without the need for you to get a physical form to them. The form will still need to be posted to PGS.

You can see an example of the form here. If you would like a copy please email generosity@oxford.anglican.org to request one.

Testimonials


Our experience of the Parish Giving Scheme has been very positive. As a volunteer Treasurer it is very helpful to have someone else do the admin and apply the gift aid to giving and the regular income is incredibly helpful for planning and budgeting. The online portal is very easy to use – an access problem early on was quickly rectified by the PGS team. It has been very useful to direct people to this scheme while services are suspended and is, in my opinion, preferable to using collection plate.

We launched the Parish Giving Scheme as part of a recent Stewardship Campaign across all four parishes of our rural Benefice. So far we have seen an amazing increase of over 50% on pledged giving for the coming year. PGS is simple and easy to set up, saves on administration within the Benefice and, with the additional advantage that donors can increase their giving by inflation automatically each year, safeguards against static giving. We are delighted with the scheme and commend it to other parishes.

The Parish Giving Scheme has revolutionised giving within our parish. We have been really pleased with the number of people who have adopted it – both existing regular givers and new supporters. With the automatic collection of gift aid it has made life easier for our Treasurer.

With so many bank branches closing, PGS has been especially useful for elderly members of the congregation who now find their local branch closed and can’t easily cope with telephoning their bank. Gift Aid rebates are received monthly, which benefits cash flow. And, with nearly 50% of current Stewardship donors moving over to PGS, there has been a considerable reduction in work for the Stewardship Recorder.

Further information