Dear St. Mary Star of the Sea Parishioner,

 

When the pandemic hit over one year ago, many unexpected worries entered all of our lives. One of those at the parish, with a temporary closure of churches, was the fear of a lack of contributions to support ongoing ministry. Electronic giving, quite honestly, became a lifeline for our parish. We are moving now, to a much more user-friendly platform for online giving. Is this the moment for those of you who haven't chosen electronic giving to do so? We hope many of you will seriously consider becoming one of our regular contributors through online giving.
- Fr. Tony Wroblewski 

As Fr. Tony mentioned, we are happy to announce that our parish is implementing a new online giving platform, Engage, by Suran Systems and Stewardship Technology. Based on the recommendations from many other parishes in the Diocese of Duluth, we chose to utilize Engage because it is intuitive, convenient, and secure. It also seamlessly ties into our existing accounting and parishioner database to maximize efficiency and accuracy.

I have been using Engage for a month now and I love it and I am sure you will too.
If you would like to sign up for online giving, please follow the simple steps below. If you are already one of our online donors, you should have received an email from me (Lauren McCracken) last Wednesday regarding the steps needed to take to switch from our old platform, WeShare to our new platform, Engage. Please refer to that email for an additional step in the process and be sure to transfer to Engage by Sunday, April 25th.  

Step 1: Enroll in Engage Online Giving 

Go to: https://engage.suran.com/starofthesea Click Create Account.

Enter your email address.

If your name populates, please click your name.

If the system did not find a matching email address in the database, that means we do not have that email address on file for you. Please notify Lauren McCracken to provide the office with the email address you wish to use for online giving. Create a username.

Check the email address that you entered to confirm your email address and create a password for your account by clicking reset password in the email.

Return to the Engage log-in screen, enter your user name and password. Click sign in.

For more detailed, written instructions with screenshots, click here. For a video tutorial, click here.

Step 2: Set up Donations in Engage
After you are logged in to Engage, click your name on the top right of the screen. Click Giving.

The New Gift page will appear.

Next, you will add or select a funding source. New funding sources may be added by selecting “Create new account.”  The funding source details are displayed. All stored funding sources are available to select with the last used one defaulted. Click continue.

You will see a confirmation screen containing the information entered – payment information and the details of the gift.  A gift memo box is offered to make any special notation for this gift.

Click Submit Gift.

A final confirmation screen appears, click OK or cancel. At this point, the gift is being processed.  While it processes, three dots appear and move, indicating the process is working.

Once the gift has completed processing, the SUCCESS! Window appears.

Clicking OK displays a gift summary window, again providing the details of the gift and offering a “Print Receipt” button at the bottom.

You will receive a receipt to your email address.

If you would rather have assistance in this transition process or have any questions, please give me a call and I can walk you through the steps or even complete them with you through my computer. I can be reached at 218.623.5012.

Thank you for your continued generosity to St. Mary Star of the Sea and the important role you play in our faith community.

God Bless,

Lauren McCracken

Business Manager

218.623.5012

lauren.mccracken@duluthcatholic.org