For deacons, elders and those they serve
The deacon’s desk, online. Asking, discernment, limits, sign-off, the gift itself and the receipts that follow — held in one confidential record that belongs to the church rather than to whoever happens to be serving this year.
Free while we are getting started, and we will tell you long before that changes.
Asked your church for help? Find your request.
Case BEN-2026-014
Rent arrears · a household of four
One case, from a hard Thursday evening to a gift accounted for. Nine rows, three weeks, and not one word of what was actually said.
Confidentiality that holds
A church that hides its benevolence from its elders has a problem. A church whose elders can read every word a family said in a crisis has a different one. Bene refuses to choose between them: your pastors and elders always see that a case exists, who is carrying it and how far it has got, so nothing can be buried from the people answerable for the flock — and the contents of a restricted case stay with the deacon who was trusted with them.
When an elder judges they must read further, they can. It takes a written reason, it tells the caseworker the same minute, and it is in the audit log permanently. Oversight, with no master key and nothing done quietly. And no money leaves without the sign-off your church decided it should require.
Standard
The ordinary case. Visible to those who carry cases.
Restricted
Contents to the caseworker and the approvers. Everyone else sees only that it exists.
Sensitive
The caseworker alone, until somebody says in writing why not.
Six stages, and a church can be through the first three in an evening. Nothing below is a workflow anybody has to learn — it is what your deacons already do, written down as they do it.
One link, shared however you like. The form remembers itself if they have to stop halfway, and it never asks for a password.
Email and a bell the same minute. Household, connection to the church, the need, the finances, what they asked prayer for — the whole picture, at once.
Ask for more, log the visit, record what was prayed over. Or approve on the spot when the need is plain and the amount is small.
Within their limit, it is done. Above it, to whoever your church has named. Larger still, to the body that weighs those together — your elders, your board, your benevolence committee, whatever you call it.
Against a fund, with a payee and a reference. The elder above is told whether or not their signature was needed.
Receipts come in from the requester's own page, the case closes, and it stays in the church's memory rather than in one deacon's inbox.
Bene is not a form and a spreadsheet behind it. It is the whole of the work — who asked, who is carrying it, what your church decided, what went out, what came back, and what it all cost this year.
An invitation gets someone an account, not access. They answer your church’s own questions — faith, character, money, availability, references — sign your service agreement, and wait. Not one case is visible to them until a named person approves them. Write, edit and reorder those questions yourself. They are yours, not ours.
Every gift is recorded against a fund, with a payee, a method and a reference — so the line in the bank statement and the line in the case are the same line. The fund carries a real balance rather than a remembered one, top-ups and transfers are entries like any other, and the year comes out by month, by category and by fund whenever somebody asks for it.
And it is separable from the pastoral side. A treasurer can reconcile every gift the church has made without reading a single case.
Then keep the parts that work. What paper cannot do is tell an elder that a case exists without showing them what is in it, produce the year's giving by category on a Tuesday evening, or survive the deacon who carried it moving to another emirate. Those three are most of why churches move.
They cannot. A restricted or sensitive case shows them that it exists, who holds it and how far it has got — never its contents. Reading further takes a written reason, tells the caseworker at once, and is recorded permanently. Oversight without a master key.
They need a phone with a browser and nothing else — no account, no password, no download. A deacon can also fill the form in with them, sitting together, which is often the better pastoral answer anyway.
Whoever your church says. Money and confidence are separate questions here: a treasurer can reconcile every gift without reading a single case, and a caseworker can carry a case without seeing the fund's balance.
Their access ends and their work stays. Cases, notes, decisions and receipts belong to the church, not to whoever happened to be serving that year — which is the whole reason to keep a record at all.
A church can close its whole account, and that destroys everything thirty days later. Individual cases are not deletable by design: a benevolence record that can be quietly edited afterwards is not a record, and the first time it matters will be the time somebody wishes it had not been.
“Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the Lord, and He will repay him for his deed.”
Proverbs 19:17