To cope with people’s cash-averse sentiments in these days of credit cards, ATM’s and Teh Intarwebs, the Catholic Archdiocese of Cincinnati has launched an online collection plate to supplement its… um… offline one. “It’s a way to make things a little easier for people”, said Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk, “and for them to be a little more regular in their giving to the church”. There you go: honesty. Did that hurt? In case you were wondering, only 2.5-4 cents from every dollar are required to upkeep the secure collection site.
Cincinnati is not the first to put its fund-raising onto the net. Several churches in St Louis use online charities, and some in Georgia and California have actually put ATM’s inside the church itself.
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The ATM inside the church is a bit disturbing – what are they saying there? I wonder how much the upkeep fees on an automatic teller machine are these days?
2.5-4% online processing fees is pretty standard but when you think about it, it’s quite a lot .
They’ve had souvenir shops in cathedrals for ages, so why not ATM’s?