About Us
Welcome to Holy Gift Baskets. The concept of the website is simple. Buy a gift basket for someone else. A donation is sent to your church of choice. The "Holy" part of the website is not necessarily the contents of the basket. Charity towards churches is the inspiration for the name. We do make a concientious effort to keep pork products out of the baskets. Kashrut Law doesn't necessarily propagate through the religious denominations found on our website, but we try not to anger anyone - God nor man.
The History of HolyGiftBaskets.com
HolyGiftBaskets.com was founded in 2011. On a cold winter day in January I was inspired to build a website when I came home from church. I asked myself "what if I built a website for churches to have a sincere, tasteful online fundraiser option"? I checked if the domain name HolyGiftBaskets.com to see if it was available. To my amazement it was not taken. I purchased it immediately. I didn't start working on HolyGiftBaskets.com right away. I was the Director of Marketing for a major online coupon website. That was my day job. Everything was fantastic at work. It wasn't three weeks later that my job fell apart practically overnight. I started working heavily on this website. At one point I believe I coded 120 hours straight (not counting sleep). This isn't the first time I have tried to start a dot com. I have failed at succeeding with others. Those failed attempts laid the ground work for what not to do. I did my best to build what churches would want. I hope what you want in an online fundraiser is what you find here. We are just getting started!
So what is HolyGiftBaskets.com?
It is a Directory
HolyGiftBaskets is a directory of Christian churches. It exists to help customers find churches that they wish to donate to. You must choose a church to receive the benefit of a donation in order to purchase something here. The directory is extensive and it includes many denominations. It includes many churches who are not verified with us yet. The directory is for customers searching for a church to donate. We are obligated to show them as many options as possible (even if churches are not verified). I want customers to take initiative when their church is not verified yet. I want them to tell their church about us. For a church to be included, it must be Christian. As of right now it must be in the continental United States. Those are the house rules. The directory is organized by state, then by city, then by church name. When you click on the church name, you will be directed to that churches' page on HolyGiftBaskets.com. Most of the pages are preview pages. Churches must verify contact information with us for their page to "go live". The directory is a great tool in itself. I found a local church within 2 miles of me that I never knew existed! We are missing a bunch of churches. In time we will have many more!
It is a Fundraiser
There are many churches with websites. There are many without. With HolyGiftBaskets.com, any Christian church can have a beneficial, essentially automated online fundraiser. That is this website's purpose. Holy Gift Baskets is unique because most fundraisers require you to handle the physical inventory. You do not have to handle the inventory with us! You don't have to worry about anything. We handle inventory, order processing and shipping. All a church has to do is verify with us and let your congregation know about us. That is it. The church then has a convenient fundraiser option at their fingertips whenever they need it. You will find 70,000+ churches in our directory. Out of respect for the integrity of the donation process, churches must confirm donation contact information before their page becomes eligible to generate donations. Once your church provides this information to us, your church has a page on HolyGiftBaskets.com offering sincere, tasteful product with generous fundraising built in. It is built to be ultra simple for all involved. If you click on any product on HolyGiftBaskets.com, you can see the donation amount contributed. The donation is calculated algorithmically. Thrifty baskets contribute less. Expensive baskets contribute more. You can promote your HolyGiftBaskets page however you like. It's yours to do as you will. Please see our FAQ page for more information.
It is a Business
When I started this website as a fundraising option, I thought the prices would be astronomically high. There is much cost to factor in. Inventory, donations, shipping, taxes, transaction fees, operating costs, some profit, etc. I thought about how the fundraising candy bars at the gas station down the street charges $3 a pop. We are dealing with gift baskets. Gift baskets are much more expensive then candy bars! That scared me. God bless our gift basket suppliers. The baskets are not the cheapest but the prices are very competitive. As the founder, that is a small miracle to me. Remember, default shipping, taxes, and the donation are already calculated into the price! So do we profit? We do. But we don't get to kick back and relax. There is a lot of work to process orders, verify churches, edit the website, upload new baskets, remove old baskets, etc. HolyGiftBaskets.com makes about 3% of the basket price. I designed HolyGiftBaskets.com to run as an extremely fair and just business. I believe in being straightforward with the operations, the business model, etc.
