Case Study:

Parishpay

In today’s busy world, time and money are extra precious commodities. So to make it easier to fulfill your offertory commitment to your parish (or charity), Parishpay now offers the time and money saving convenience of automated giving.

Overview:

Parishpay is an online web application by which churches can accept donations and donor can donate the money online.

For donating and accepting the donations both (Recipients and donors) needs to be enrolled on this site. Recipients are the clients for Parishpay.

Recipients are of two types, one is parish and another is charity. Parishes are the churches and charities are the non-profit organizations.

Initial requirement:

The development of Parishpay was needed because in modern busy world time is very precious to every human, they wants to donate money but sometimes forgot to give offertory/donations. Due to this Parishpay developed with automated giving feature.  With automated giving, Donor put an end to writing and sending checks. The hassle of remembering to fulfill a monthly pledge (and falling behind on that pledge) disappears.

Features:

Parishpay assists churches, schools, charities and other religious entities in collecting automated recurring credit card and bank transactions.
Parishpay is efficient, secure and easy to enroll. By signing up with Parishpay Donor can be assured that donations are arriving on a regular basis to your parish (or charity). Donors make your donations go further by reducing administrative costs, and they speed up the time it takes to put your gift to work on behalf of them and their family.
Best of all it’s completely secure, Parishpay never share or sell its user’s personal or financial information to any outside organization.

Some of the main highlights are as follows:

• Donations arrive even when donors are unable to attend mass or forget to write a check to fulfill your pledge.

• Monthly statement of donations for both Recipients and Donors.

• Annual tax receipts issued in January to Recipients and Donors.

• Account access online.

• If a Donor does not want to go with web enrollment then he can demand the blank envelopes from church administrator for giving offerings to Parishpay Churches. Donor could be enrolled by telephone also.

MetaOption and Parishpay:

Metaoption developed Parishpay web application with keeping in mind the all requirements related to security, user friendliness, reliability, vulnerability and faster retrieval.

MetaOption implemented the User Interface for Parishpay through Microsoft Technology: ASP (Active Server Pages) and SQL Server 2005 for maintaining the Data/information. Business rules had been developed through COM, using Visual Basic 6 and register it for using it in Parishpay web application. COM maintains the data security and faster retrieval by using stored procedures in a very effective manner. For Validations use Java Script and VB Script Technologies.

Technical Features:

Technologies used:

• ASP (Active Server Pages)

• Visual Basic 6

• Using COM

• SQL SERVER 2005

• Windows services

• VB.Net

• Java Script

• VB Script

Security:

Parishpay’s electronic transfers utilize the same encryption and security measures that are  use by the Federal Government and are at least as strong as most U.S. banks.

Many Companies are satisfied with 56-bit encryption. Parishpay transactions always occur over 128-bit encrypted connections, the highest level of protection possible for internet communications.

Parishpay is extremely conscious of the sensitivity client’s (Parish, Charity, School, Donors) data because data is most important asset for customers trust.

Benefits: What it fulfills?

Every type of user (Recipients, Donors) receives alerts through email for different- different events like enrollment, credit card expire, giving donation, accepting donation, skipped donation, failed donations, modified donations, deleted donations etc.

Design:

Parishpay enables any parishioner the ability to deliver automated donations and payments in a secure, convenient and cost-effective method to a diocese, parish, charity, school or cemetery.

Parishpay’s network builds on the existing financial infrastructure of bank accounts and credit cards to create a simplified means of giving to its religious institution.

Design is very user friendly, used simple English terms with simple structure for easily grasping the logic/aim of Parishpay.

Three interfaces are there in the system. These are as follows:

1. Login for Administrator: Administrator can add/delete/modify the client’s information and donations also.
2. Login for Recipients (Parish/Charity): Recipients can edit their information and their donor’s information. They can delete the donor and modify the donation which is related with them.
3. Login for Donor: Donor can enroll him on site by submitting donation by himself on donor site and after that in future he can edit/delete/add donations and information also.

Following is the homepage of the website for donating voluntarily:

Within the upper screenshot for giving offerings, donor has to be clicked on top left link (start giving now) below Parishpay logo. Then following screenshot will display.

Steps for donating donations:
Account Enrollment:

Enrolling with Parishpay online is easy. There (within Upper screenshot) are three options to find out the church to which donor is interested to give offerings. The options are by zip code, by name and by diocese. After selecting any option and press the search key, the donation process sequence will be as follows:

1. System displays the list of churches.
2. Select desired church from that list.
3. Enter donation amount and select donation duration (for some time/life long), donation type (Regular, onetime, for specific months or for different-different funds) within the available options on the page.
4. Enter the information of Donor (if login first time) for enroll in the Parishpay.
5. Select the Payment Type (Checking Account/Saving Account/Credit Card) and enter the required information regarding that.
6. Before completing the process of donation the system displays confirmation page with complete information containing Donor Information, Donation Information and Payment Information.
7. Finally if Donor confirmed the donation, Thank you message will appear on the screen with full detail regarding Donor, Donation and Church.

Finally system display thank you message like as following screenshot: