Why we built Gathrd as a faith-only directory

The problem nobody was naming

When we started MRVL, we set out to build tools for communities that felt forgotten by big tech. Churches and ministry organisations were heavy users of generic events platforms, but those platforms weren't built for them. A worship conference shared a category with a rave. A prayer meeting could appear next to a singles night. The algorithm didn't care about context or values.

More frustrating: churches were paying 6.95% plus 59p per ticket on platforms designed for anyone selling anything. When Gift Aid came up (a uniquely British tool for charitable giving), most platforms either didn't support it or buried it three layers deep in settings. We kept hearing the same refrain from church leaders: "We're using the wrong tool, but there's nothing else."

That's when we made the decision. Gathrd wouldn't be another event listing site with a Christian section bolted on. It would be purpose-built for faith communities from the ground up.

What a faith-only directory actually means

Faith-only sounds like a small thing. It's not. It means every event on Gathrd has been submitted by or is directly related to a faith community. You won't find nightclubs, comedy nights, or secular conferences. When someone opens the app to find a worship night, they're searching within a curated space, not wading through thousands of unrelated results.

This isn't about being exclusive in a gatekeeping sense. It's about being useful. A Catholic looking for a parish event can filter by denomination. A Baptist searching for conferences finds Baptist conferences. Someone new to a city can discover prayer meetings, community volunteering, retreats, and Sunday services all in one place. The algorithm works for them, not against them.

We built the denomination filtering early because we knew that the charismatic church down the road isn't the same as the Anglican one ten minutes away. That's not a flaw to hide; it's a feature that matters. When you limit your directory to faith, you can actually understand the distinctions within faith and make them visible.

The economics of building for churches

The pricing model came from listening to church treasurers. Most churches run on thin margins. They're already raising money for missions, buildings, and staff. Every percentage point they lose to fees is money that doesn't reach their work.

Eventbrite's model is 6.95% plus 59p per ticket. For a church running a £3,000 conference with 200 tickets, that's £208 gone. We set ours at 3% flat. For the same event, that's £90. Real money.

Gift Aid split-checkout was non-negotiable. In the UK, churches claim tax relief on donations. Most event platforms don't let you separate what's a ticket price (no Gift Aid) from what's a donation (eligible for Gift Aid). So churches either miss out on relief or manually wrangle the data afterwards. We built it into the checkout itself. One button. Done.

The church plan at £19.99 a month covers unlimited events, unlimited attendees, and offline check-in via QR codes. We added NFC integration through TapTrust because some churches wanted tap-to-check-in at the door. It's not flashy, but it works.

Why we didn't build it like Eventbrite

There's a moment in every startup where someone says, "Why not just use Eventbrite?" We heard it in early conversations with church leaders. The answer was always the same: Eventbrite isn't built for this.

A generic platform is optimised for volume and broad appeal. Ours is optimised for trust and clarity. When a church submits an event, they're not competing with every other event in the world. They're visible to people actively looking for faith events. That changes everything about how discovery works.

We also knew that church staff aren't event-industry professionals. Many run events in addition to other roles. The admin should be simple. Offline check-in matters because Wi-Fi in church halls isn't guaranteed. Multi-language support and Stripe Connect payouts in 37 countries matter because faith communities are global. These details aren't nice-to-haves; they're essential for the people actually using the platform.

The faith-only directory isn't a limitation. It's the whole point.

What we learned from launch

When we launched, the first wave of events came from churches already frustrated with alternatives. They uploaded their worship nights, prayer meetings, retreats, and conferences. Within weeks, something shifted. Attendees started discovering events they wouldn't have found otherwise. Small churches got the same visibility as large ones. A mid-week prayer gathering could reach someone new to the area.

The most surprising moment came from a church treasurer in Scotland. She'd run a music conference for years and used Eventbrite because there was nothing else. After switching to Gathrd, she told us it was the first time she'd seen the Gift Aid process actually work without manual spreadsheet work. It sounds mundane, but it freed her to focus on the actual conference.

We're still building. Features like community event listings (for free) and the church, ministry, and conference plans all exist because we listened to what churches actually need. The 3% fee applies across every tier because we didn't want to create a system where bigger churches pay less. We wanted consistency.