HOW TO GIVE
Cash or check: drop into Sunday morning offering, or bring to the church office in-person, or by mail. 718 Clay Street, Cedar Falls, Iowa, 50613.
Give Online: We use the Vanco Give Plus portal to allow online giving through this website. Vanco provides secure transaction services to thousands of churches in the USA. It’s safe and easy. Try it now.
GivePlus Mobile App: This is secure and easy! Want to be able to give to First UMC with four taps of your thumb? Download the GivePlus app onto your mobile devices. You’ll have options for one-time gifts, recurring gifts, general offerings and mission projects. Set up an account, or use your phone camera to scan your debit/credit card. GivePlus app is available for both androids and ipeople.
ACH (automatic contribution): We encourage you to set up an automatic monthly payment direct from your bank account. The set-up process is easy and it ensures that your contributions are made every month, whether you are able to attend or not. ACH contributions make the planning and budgeting process much easier. To start ACH payments, speak the Finance Office.
Mobile Giving: we are now able to accept financial contributions through the Venmo mobile app. It is available for Android and Apple devices. The app is free to download, and after you link your bank account, transactions are handled much like debit card payments. Don’t carry cash or a checkbook? No worries – just use your phone!
Get Venmo for Android here
Get Venmo for iOS here
In the Venmo app, send payments to contributions@aboutfirst.com.
THE COMMITMENT TO GIVE
The membership vows of the United Methodist Church have us pledge to support our church through our prayers, our presence, our gifts, our service and our witness. Each of those is important, and each can be an offering. On this page, we are speaking specifically of financial giving, which can be done to support our general budget, or our specialty funds.
General Budget:
Your gifts to the Sunday morning offering, or general contributions by other means are used to support the church operating budget: staff salaries, technical infrastructure, insurance, utilities, facility maintenance, programming, etc. These are the operational backbone which makes all of the missions, worship, outreach and learning possible. These dollars are managed by the Finance Committee, which is committed to being good stewards of your generosity.
Other Funds
Other giving opportunities include funds for non-budget items like special mission projects, end-of-life bequests, and endowment giving. These funds are managed by the Endowment Committee.
Did you know that our Church has an Endowment Committee that oversees, manages and approves distributions from funds it has received in the form of bequests from the estates of deceased members and other sources of funds, including gifts it has received from members who are currently living.
The Endowment Committee was formed in 1999 through action approved by the Charge Conference. The Committee was created and exists solely for charitable purposes with its primary objectives being the establishment, promotion and development of religious charitable and educational activities of The Church.
The Endowment Committee has become very active over the past several years and meets several times a year to monitor the investment activity, to determine annual distribution amounts, receive requests for distributions of the funds and to vote on these distribution requests.
The Committee is well aware of the need to make appropriate decisions on the distribution amounts and to balance its desire to continue to increase the value of the funds under its management authority. Our goal is to grow the investments in order to increase the annual distribution amounts we approve each year. We realize that in order to keep up with inflation and the ever-increasing financial needs of a vibrant church we need to increase the amount of the funds under our management.
Gifts to our Endowment Committee are gifts that keep on giving for many years into the future and help to secure our Church’s financial security.
You will be hearing more from the Endowment Committee in the upcoming year(s) as we communicate the importance of the funds we manage and how they benefit the Church in many ways.
If you have any questions on how your gift may be made to the various funds of the Church Endowment Committee or how the Endowment Committee operates, please contact one of the Committee members:
Mike Butler (Chairperson), Alan Bernard, Richard Congdon, Jim Kenyon, Pastor Kober, Harriet McMahill, Jim Noelting, Jean Richardson or Susan Whitson. We will be glad to answer any questions or concerns you have.