The basket was never really empty.
- Woven
- Apr 28
- 3 min read
When a 168-year-old Jesuit parish in the Heart of New Orleans introduced Woven's digital offertory basket, parishioners didn't suddenly become more generous. They finally had a way to give in a way that matched how they live.
Parish Pilot Pastor
Immaculate Conception Jesuit, New Orleans Dec 2025 - Present Fr. Anthony McGinn, S.J.
For generations, the offertory at Immaculate Conception followed the same rhythm: the basket passed down the pew, the scrounge for cash or coins, the procession to the altar. But somewhere along the way, the cash in people's pockets stopped showing up. Visitors slipped past the basket apologetically. Regulars meant to give online later and forgot. The basket wasn't empty of intention, but it was empty of a way to receive it.
That gap is what brought Woven to the pews of the French Quarter parish. Over a five-month pilot beginning in Advent 2025, parishioners and visitors were invited to give the way they already pay for almost everything else: a tap of a card or phone on a small wooden basket, passed alongside the traditional one. The result wasn't a replacement. It was a restoration.
A genuine question, an honest answer
Before launch, the parish administrator asked the questions any good steward would. Would processing fees eat up the benefit? Would a credit card basket slow the offertory procession to a crawl? And the crucial one: does this technology really belong in a sacred space? Five months of data answered each in turn. Fees came in at an industry-low 2.95% plus thirty cents, far outweighed by gifts that simply would not have happened. Each tap took four to six seconds, rendering it indistinguishable from a traditional pass. And the sacred rhythm of the offertory wasn't disrupted. If anything, more people were drawn into it.
"When the idea of a credit card basket came to me, I wondered if it belonged in the Mass. But watching the faithful give with a simple tap as a heartfelt offering, I realized that Woven provided a solution. This reimagined basket doesn't extend Mass or interrupt the flow of our offertory. It restores it." Fr. Anthony McGinn, S.J. Pastor, Immaculate Conception Jesuit Church
By the numbers
Total Digital Giving
Tap-to-Give Gifts
Raised Per Mass Weekend
All figures represent gifts captured above the parish's regular collection. These are funds that, by the parish's own accounting, would not otherwise have come in.
The liturgical calendar came alive
What surprised the parish wasn't the totals but the shape of them. The basket moved with the seasons. Christmas Eve became the single largest giving day of the pilot, including a $500 gift from someone who likely had no envelope in hand. Ash Wednesday weekend nearly doubled the volume of earlier winter Sundays as Lenten almsgiving deepened. Easter Sunday produced the most gifts of any single Sunday across the entire pilot. The faithful, and a remarkable number of visitors, were giving when the moment moved them.
38 gifts in one Mass
24 gifts - season of almsgiving
49 gifts - most of any Sunday
An ordinary offering, finally captured
Look closely at the gift sizes and another picture emerges. Nearly three-quarters of all tap-to-give gifts were $10 or $20 — the ordinary Sunday offering many parishioners always meant to make. The basket didn't change what the faithful intended to give. It simply gave that intention somewhere to land.
That, in the end, is the story of the pilot. The generosity at Immaculate Conception was never absent. It was waiting on a basket that could meet it where it lives.
Comments