How Valley Rise Church Grew Online Giving 58.5% with Overflow

Pastor Christian and Alex Aranza planted Valley Rise Church in Houston, Texas in 2018, out of what he calls a "God idea," not exactly a safe bet, but a calling he couldn't ignore. Eight years later, that calling has translated into real, measurable growth.

In the last 12 months:

• Giving at Valley Rise is up 58.5%
• One-time gifts are up 61%
• Recurring gifts are up 48%
• The average gift size has climbed 28.5%.

Behind those numbers is a story that's less about software and more about partnership: a relationship between a growing church and a platform for online giving for churches built specifically to solve the problems pastors like Aranza actually face.

A Calling, Not Just a Good Idea

Through prayer and counsel, Pastor Christian and Alex felt called to plant a new church in Houston, founding Valley Rise in January of 2018. The name came from Isaiah 40:4: "Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain." For Aranza, that passage was a picture of what he wanted Valley Rise to do in people's lives: take what's difficult and make it simple. Their tagline followed naturally: helping people change their perspective on life.

That mission-first posture matters, because it's the lens through which every operational decision at Valley Rise, including how they handle generosity, gets made.

Finding Overflow: A Relationship Before a Transaction

Aranza first heard about Overflow the way many meaningful partnerships start: not through an ad, but through a conversation. At a round table with fellow pastors, he met Vance Roush, who shared his vision for a giving platform built specifically to remove the friction between a donor's desire to give and their ability to give.

Pastor Christian recalls, "[Vance] began to tell me about the dream God put in his heart to build a platform to make that easier for churches."

"It honestly was incredibly exciting because if you're somebody who has vision and is creative, you hear those ideas and realize, 'Man, not only are these going to be great for them, but I think these could be helpful for the church.'”

Valley Rise became one of Overflow's earliest church partners, a decision Aranza doesn't separate from the platform's growth.

"I think it's impossible to separate the growth of Valley Rise from the growth of Overflow,"

That early-adopter relationship meant Valley Rise wasn't just using a product; they were helping shape it.

Solving the #1 Fear: Platform Migration

Ask any pastor about switching giving platforms, and you'll hear the same hesitation: migration is scary. Losing donor history, disrupting recurring gifts, retraining a congregation: it's enough to keep churches locked into tools that no longer serve them.

For any church weighing which of the best church giving platforms to switch to, this is the model: reduce risk, support the transition hands-on with a dedicated migration team, and let momentum do the rest.

How to Accept Stock Donations: A New Category of Generosity

One of the most significant shifts for Valley Rise came from a capability they hadn't even known to ask for. Many pastors don't realize how a nonprofit can accept stock donations, let alone how their own church could offer the same option to its congregation, until a platform makes it simple. Once Overflow enabled stock and crypto giving, Aranza watched a new pattern emerge: donors who had never been large cash givers began asking how to give stock to their church, simply because the option now existed.

"Most of the world's wealth is held in non-cash assets," Aranza notes, referring to stocks, crypto, and other investments that donors often want to give but don't know how to route through a traditional platform. Valley Rise's experience shows what's possible once a church makes stock giving simple: legacy-season generosity changed dramatically, driven largely by established and longtime members finally able to give from appreciated assets without a tax hit.

Giving through Overflow Tap

Perhaps the most telling story from Valley Rise's partnership with Overflow is also the simplest. During a conversation with Vance, Aranza described his own behavior as a consumer: if a purchase prompt leads straight to Apple Pay, he buys. If it asks for any manual input, he abandons it. He realized the same psychology applied to giving.

Two months later, Overflow had shipped the feature: tap-to-give with direct Apple Pay integration, no manual entry required. Valley Rise was among the first churches to use Overflow Tap, a church tap (NFC) giving technology, well before it became more common across the industry.

The impact was immediate.

"We saw our small to mid-cap gifts go up significantly,"

Instant, frictionless giving turned a fleeting moment of generosity into a completed gift in under 30 seconds.

Giving Before Asking: Financial Stewardship Through GenU

Overflow's support for Valley Rise extends beyond payment processing. Through Generosity University (also lovingly referenced as GenU), Overflow's financial stewardship curriculum, Valley Rise runs small groups that help members manage their personal finances, before ever asking for a gift. "One of the things that I love that Overflow offers is the ability for us to give to people before we ask from people," Aranza says.

As he puts it, borrowing a line from his own mentor: "I don't think people are stingy. I think they're strapped." That's the thinking behind GenU: "It's not just, hey, let us show you how you can give more," Aranza explains. "It's let us give to you first, and let us show you how you can actually organize your life in a way where generosity becomes a joy and not a burden."

A Partnership Measured in Response Time, Not Just Revenue

Ask Aranza what keeps Valley Rise with Overflow after six years, and the answer isn't just features. It's people. He describes being able to call or email the Overflow team directly and hearing back, typically within 24 hours, whenever a question comes up. That kind of responsiveness, he says, is "more important than anything else that I could find in any other company."

It's a detail worth highlighting for any church evaluating church stewardship software: the platform is only as good as the team standing behind it.

The Results

Six years into the partnership, the numbers tell a clear story:

• Giving up 58.5% in the last 12 months
• One-time gifts up 61%
• Recurring gifts up 48%
• Average gift size up 28.5%

These aren't the result of a single feature or campaign. They're the compounding effect of removing friction, unlocking new giving categories, and building trust over years, not months.

Full-Circle Generosity

For Pastor Christian, the mission behind all of this remains unchanged. "We give for those who are yet to come," he says, a reminder that every dollar given at Valley Rise creates room for someone who hasn't walked through the doors yet. Overflow, in his words, has become "the engine and the foundation of the generosity for what God has done at Valley Rise Church."