recently, at one of my youth ministry coaching program cohorts, we were having a general idea-sharing time. and in a brief section where we were sharing administrative ideas, i asked if any of them used online means for collecting fees or getting donations for missions trips. none who were there had that technology on their church websites, and all saw how it would be such a great benefit.

so i told them about razoo.com. josh griffin, doug fields, and others have blogged about this in the past. but razoo is a cool site made for non-profits to collect donations. it’s super easy to set up a page for your missions trip, customizing it with photos and other info. team members can even create their own pages. then the page becomes a place for support-raising, and it handles the receipting and other stuff that can be a major hassle for a small or mid-sized church’s accounting functions.

when i was leading missions trips (and the fundraising that comes with them), this was always one of our biggest hassles. it wasn’t that big of a deal if the donor was part of our church; but it was always awkward to have out-of-town friends and family write out checks to our church in support of a particular teenager going on the trip. this was particularly true if the donor was reluctant to give money to a church (even if they wanted to support the student). i can remember specific times when we had participants with donors who didn’t want to write a check to the church, but did want a receipt for tax purposes.

razoo merely charges a flat 2.9% fee (which you can either eat, or have the donor pay). they even have widgets you can embed on another page (a youth group website, a blog), and other tools that make it really simple, including an iphone app. check out this page to see how it compares to other services like this.

anyhow, with spring break missions trips upon us, and summer trips in the early stages of fundraising, this seemed a timely tip. i’d encourage you to check it out.