Mars Hill Church is a Reformed Christian mega-church based in Seattle, Washington with 14 locations in 4 U.S. states. With more locations than any other U. S. church, it continues its impressive growth as the 28th largest church, and 3rd fastest growing church in the country, according to Outreach magazine. By embracing technology to convey its message, it makes video and podcasts available with weekend services content, as well as conferences on the internet, generating more than 250,000 views every week.
Mars Hill Church came to FTNI looking for ways to streamline its check and cash donation processing. As its membership continues to grow, the manual process of posting contributions to its donation processing back office system was becoming increasingly labor intensive. By utilizing ETran’s unique MICR-matching tool, account information is associated with a specific donor on its first pass through ETran. On all subsequent donations, the matching occurs automatically. Similarly, in much the same way, cash donations that are accompanied with an envelope are also associated and matched to the donor. A secure image of each processed donation is stored within ETran’s integrated archiving system. Once the checks and cash are processed, ETran then passes a posting file, through a secure link, to Mars Hill Church’s back office system.
”We’re very pleased with the benefits that ETran has been able to bring to our donation processing,” said Jessica Pickett, Controller, Mars Hill Church. “By automating the imaging and posting of both cash and check donations, we are able to allocate more of our staff’s time to our core mission of making disciples and planting churches while ensuring accurate and timely gift matching in a secure environment.”
Mars Hill Church and FTNI are now looking at other possible ways ETran may provide further benefits, including managing recurring donations (ACH and credit card) as well as evaluating the benefits of web and mobile donation channels.
“Our non-profit clients are continually looking for ways to improve the donor receivables process through the faster scanning and posting of coupons and turnaround documents that accompany check donations. Whether multiple checks, multiple remittance advices or both, our ETran platform quickly recognizes the information and pulls the relevant data for back-end posting. ” says Kurt Matis, President and CEO of FTNI. Mr. Matis goes on to say “This not only reduces the need for keying of data, but also reduces the time for our clients to send thank you notes and tax information.
“The Mars Hill Church experience reinforces the fact that ETran’s flexibility is adaptable to an unlimited number of customer situations.” says Kurt Matis, President and CEO of FTNI.
About FTNI
Financial Transmission Network, Inc.’s (FTNI) ETran platform incorporates Remote Deposit Capture (check scanning), ACH, credit card processing and cash posting, on single, managed platform to help clients reduce costs, accelerate timelines and improve transaction processing quality. The Company’s cloud computing based software enables customers to setup recurring payments (ACH & credit card), message between users and provide custom integration into back offices systems, thereby reflecting the payment activity in the merchant’s receivables system. This technology offers merchants a turn-key, single-payment platform in a software-as-a-service (“SaaS”) environment that is fully PCI-compliant, thereby eliminating the hardware and software costs associated with traditional solutions. Due to its modular approach and easy deployment, the ETran platform can be deployed in a variety of verticals and customized easily to fit the end-users needs.
About Mars Hill Church
Founded in 1996 by Pastor Mark Driscoll, Mars Hill Church has been recognized as one of the largest, fastest-growing, and most innovative churches in America, serving about 14,000 people per week across 14 locations in four states. Pastor Mark’s sermons currently receive more than 10 million downloads per year and regularly rank #1 on iTunes charts. You can learn more at marshill.com.
Media Contact:
Lyle Knox
FTNI
VP Client Relations
402-502-8777 x107
lyle@ftni.com
Mars Hill Church Contact:
Justin Dean
Communications Director
213-537-8770
press@marshill.com
