Sponsorship
Your church pays nothing. The site is funded by sponsors instead. Here's exactly how that works.
Running a website — built once and kept current every week — costs £20 a month, whole site included. Your church never pays that. Sponsors cover it instead, so the figure your church sees is always the same: nothing.
Your church pays
Funded by sponsors — church members, local businesses and fundraisers — so there's nothing for your treasurer or PCC to approve.
Every sponsor pays into one shared pot, whatever they give and however often. Each week I check the pot and allocate it: every £20 a month of support in it funds one more church website, kept live and updated for as long as the sponsorship behind it continues.
Sponsors can be members of your own congregation who want to give something practical back, a local business after some goodwill and a mention, or money raised through a church fundraiser — a coffee morning, a fete stall, a retiring collection — put towards the website instead of a one-off cost. Some churches cover the full £20 a month through a fundraiser of their own. Others rely entirely on outside sponsors. Either way, the church itself is never billed.
Every sponsored site gets a weekly update round. Send through whatever's happened during the week — notices, events, news, photos — and it's built and published on a weekly cycle. See Keeping Your Site Current for how sending an update actually works.
Every sponsored site carries a simple "Supported by" credit for the businesses, fundraisers or individuals keeping it running (an individual sponsor can also stay anonymous). A sponsor doesn't get any say over what goes on your church's site — that's still between you and me, based on what your church wants. Sponsorship funds the site. It doesn't come with editorial control.
This isn't a donation to a charity, and JW Church Websites isn't a registered charity, so there's no Gift Aid attached to a sponsor's contribution.
A benefice or group of parishes sharing one site is still one website, not several, so it's funded the same way as a single church — one sponsored site, whatever the church count. See Groups & Benefices for the full detail.
If the sponsorship funding a particular site drops away, the site stays live for a period while new sponsors are found or the church looks at other options. I'll always talk it through with you directly.
If you run a local business, you're part of a church congregation, or you'd like to help keep a church's website going, get in touch. I'll explain exactly where your contribution would go and which churches are waiting on support.
Free for your church, every time — sponsors cover the cost, weekly updates included.
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