The problem we kept seeing
A volunteer finance administrator enters Sunday's offering by hand — 45 minutes for what should take 8, because the software is slower than a spreadsheet.
A church treasurer generates CRA contribution statements by exporting to Excel and reformatting the columns manually. Every January.
A church paying $280+/month across multiple platforms — for a congregation of 200 people.
A church that records giving on handwritten "pink sheets," then ships an Excel file to the main office — where someone manually computes totals. Come tax season, it takes until April to issue receipts for 20+ campuses.
"Every major church platform was built for megachurches. The spreadsheet was always faster than the software."
— Sanctuary research, 2025
We started with one question: what would it look like to build a church management platform as if real church administrators were the primary customer — not an afterthought?
How we got here
The Problem
2025Our church uses Excel to record giving and sends the file to the Main Office, which keeps the master record. Reconciliation means manually computing from handwritten "pink sheets." Tax receipting for 20+ campuses across Canada West doesn't finish until April.
The Research
Late 2025A deep study of the biggest Church Management platforms — Planning Center, Tithe.ly, Church Builder, PushPay — to understand what exists, what's missing, and why churches keep falling back to spreadsheets.
Architecture Locked
Early 2026The full platform architecture is locked. Six modules. CRA-compliant from the schema level. Deposit reconciliation built in from day one.
Active Development
2026Phase 1 (Steward core) is in active development. Demo environment live. Targeting launch for early waitlist members.
What we believe
These aren't marketing statements. They're architecture decisions.
Speed at the point of entry
Every second a volunteer spends fighting a slow interface is a second stolen from ministry. Giving entry should be as fast or faster than Excel. We built around that constraint.
Compliance-native
CRA compliance, multi-currency support, and regional address formatting are native. Not bolt-ons. Not workarounds. First-class features from day one.
Intelligence over reporting
Don't just show what happened. Tell the church what it means. Donor Journey Intelligence, anomaly detection, and Monday Morning Mode are how we think about dashboards.
Configuration over customization
Every church is different. Sanctuary adapts to them — not the other way around. System dictionaries, custom fields, and flexible workflows let churches configure without calling us.
Integration-first
Churches already use a patchwork of giving tools, member databases, and spreadsheets. Sanctuary connects to all of them — making migration gradual, not a cliff edge.
Zero-fee commitment
We will never charge per-donation fees. Church generosity is sacred. We will not take a cut of it. Flat monthly pricing is a founding principle, not a promotional offer.
What "built from the ground up" actually means
It's in the schema. Real church workflows are the design constraint every architectural decision is measured against.
Built by your brother in Christ.
Sanctuary's founder is a faithful servant in a non-denominational Christian organization. He doesn't just understand church administration from research — he's lived it. Sunday mornings, envelope counting, CRA receipts, year-end reports. The frustrations that led to Sanctuary aren't hypothetical. They're personal.
We're building this for you
Sanctuary is in active development. If you're a church administrator who's tired of the workarounds — try the demo, then join the waitlist. Your feedback is shaping what we build.
or join the waitlist to lock in your price: