Urban Skye

In 2004 Urban Skye was founded by Dave Meserve. After many years of pastoring at a large suburban church in south Denver, Dave decided to pursue a dream that he felt God was leading him to do. With the encouragement of his family, help from family and friends and the support of his church Dave started Urban Skye. Catering to young city professionals with the love of books and art Dave has created a fantastic ministry that helps bridge a wide gap between the art and Christian community. Below is an exert taken from their website describing what Urban Skye is all about.

Urban Skye is a network of small communities joined in a common quest for friendship, for personal meaning, and for spiritual exploration.

We seek to help revitalize the urban soul by:

Pursuing Beauty: through film discussions, book salons, expressive writing groups, art and design gatherings, and other cultural opportunities, Urban Skye seeks to activate and nourish imagination among friends.

Learning Grace: by exploring ancient spiritual practices, Urban Skye provides room for fellow travelers to seek, ask questions, discuss and ponder practical applications of wisdom in our everyday lives.

Sharing Burdens: by serving the city of Denver by participating in a wide variety of service projects, Urban Skye offers opportunities to experience the delight of giving to others in meaningful ways.

In January of 2008 Urban Skye decided to expand their donation capabilities and offer both credit card and ach(electronic check) processing to their donors. This included the ability to take donations from their website in addition to phone and mailed in payments. We provided Urban Skye what is called a Virtual Terminal, which is an Internet based transaction software that you login to via our Payments Gateway product. The Virtual Terminal has very extensive transaction capabilities for taking both single and recurring payments and lots of reporting features. The Virtual Terminal also allowed Urban Skye to easily create a donation page that links to their website with the look and feel of their website. This page already comes with a SSL(Secure Socket Layer) so there wasn't any need to purchase a separate SSL.

Please visit Urban Skye's website at www.urbanskye.org to see what the donation page looks like. Just look for a button on the bottom left of the home page that says..."Donate to Urban Sky Now!". Click this and it will bring you to the donation page. If you feel led please give them a donation. They are a great organization.

Growing a new ministry has many challenges the biggest, of course, being fund-raising. Up until our relationship with Access Payment Systems, I always thought that accepting donations from a website or other means was reserved for the BIG ministries or non-profits; I’m so glad to know this was not the case. It was really quite easy and our options seem endless. Accepting donations electronically for both credit cards and electronic checks has opened up our donation options dramatically (and we’ve found that our younger donors demand it). We are a small but complicated organization with several different programs. Through APS we can designate where each donation belongs and the reporting makes it very simple. We’ve certainly been impressed with the product, but most impressive has been the personal attention we’ve received. For any issue – even my own need for explanation - I’ve felt the freedom to write or call and have had things resolved personally and professionally. They take customer service to a whole new level and I happily endorse them.

Dave Meserve - President

Urban Skye