“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”

A well known business principle is that you need accurate information in order to make strategic decisions, and it is good decisions that determine your effectiveness. Why should a Church organization be any different? In order to pursue a vision and attain your goals as an organization you need to be plan effectively, and this should be done on the basis of accurate information.

For example, a demographic chart showing the distribution of ages of your membership may reveal an age group that you are not catering for, or would enable you to adjust the age ranges of your children’s work to reduce class sizes.

Using ChurchInsight means a wealth of information is collected about your church. There is no need to perform time-consuming audits or a periodic census, as you now have a single source of continually updated data.

Reports are presented in the Web Office in clear, informative charts that enable you to drill-down from summary information to explore your data. Report information can also be produced in PDF format for easy printing, or exported to a spreadsheet if you want to perform further processing.

Church Management and Group Analysis

- Understanding the make-up of your organization can be critical for a number of reasons…

Attendance reports

- The progress of your growth groups can often be difficult to measure – which is your fastest growing group? …

Web site reports

- As with any web site, you will want to know how successful you have been in reaching both your members and your visitors…

Click http://churchinsight.com/group/group.aspx?id=7741 to see more information on this.

You don’t have to be a control freak to appreciate the value of accurate information. Attendance reports give facts that can be used to improve the effectiveness of groups and meetings.

As your organization gets larger, it can get harder to keep in touch with what is going on at the grass roots. General feedback from your small group leaders saying “things are going well” does not give accurate enough information for you to plan strategically.

Monitoring attendance is one way of getting accurate information about the level of involvement and commitment in different areas. For example you can track the growth of different groups over time or view the consistency of attendance at a Children’s Ministry class.

Attendance is monitored on a per group basis, this makes it easy for leaders to print a copy of a register – for example for use with a children’s group. Group leaders can then record the attendance information for their group in the Web Office, along with any notes about the meeting or individuals.

Leaders can access a comprehensive set of cross-referenced reports and charts that allow easy interpretation of the information.

This week’s subject of our Weekly Ramp Up is “Forums and Chatter.” I have been sending these articles to prepare us as a team for the launch of the new website. This topic will be the defining aspect of our new online community, I believe. We all have need to communicate about our lives in God. He is always working and we’re always joining Him in His work throughout the week. Because of this, we have an opportunity to share those encounters in a safe environment through the new website. How is it safe? Because the forums will be available only those logged into the site. Not everyone in the world will have access to our discussions. As a matter of fact, each growth group, worship team and leadership team will have their own forums allowing them to share information with one another. The goal is not to replace personal interaction but to take sharing with one another to a whole new level allowing our times of discussion to be a deeper experience together in God.

Forums and Chatter

Community (n.): A group of people having common interests; Sharing, participation, and fellowship.

Stimulate conversation and debate on-line by providing topic related discussion forums. Advertise community needs, debate theological issues, or just chat about the football! Forums are an ideal way to build a stronger church community by connecting people throughout the week.

Friends talk to each other, and this is encouraged through forums: areas of the site where people can leave messages to each other. Forums are the number one way of encouraging contributions and ownership of the church web site as it becomes interactive for users. Forums can be used to share opinions on a published article, advertise for a babysitter, or just chat about the football.

The message boards help to keep people connected throughout the week: building a real community, not a virtual one.

As with everything else in ChurchInsight, forums are located within the church structure, so each area from the Youth group to the Worship band has its own relevant space. Each forum can have its own security access level – for example you may want to have a guestbook that visitors to your site can ‘sign’, and also a private discussion area for a particular team. All the messages in a forum can be moderated through the Web Office, and there is an efficient way of removing potentially inappropriate messages to keep you in total control over all your web site content.

For those who like communication to be instant, you can use Chatter that allows you to have conversations in real time. It’s great for catching up during the week or for getting to know others in the community. Because Chatter is only available to logged in members of your site, you know that is completely safe for all your family to use.

You can reduce Sunday morning announcements to “check the web site for details” by making the church calendar available 24 hours a day online.

Keep everyone informed of events taking place in the church with a central calendar, providing contact details, times and maps. Each member can personalize their display to show only the events that are relevant to them, and organizers will benefit from easier planning and publicity.

Events in the calendar provide details, times and maps to help keep everyone organized, and it’s so easy for anyone to add new items using the Web Office. Every event is associated with a group – this makes it easy to associate connected activities together.

To reduce information overload the calendar can be personalized to show only the relevant information. For instance the meetings of your growth group could be automatically highlighted for instant identification, whilst meetings of other groups could be hidden.

Editors are able to create banner adverts that feature on the home page of the church web site, and link directly to events. This enables you to feature important events clearly to site visitors. Your church calendar can also be made available to other churches using the ChurchInsight system, making it easier for other churches to support your activities.

The calendar even shows upcoming birthdays in the church, so there are no excuses for forgetting!

Do you have difficulty keeping track of who is using what, where and when? ChurchInsight enables bookings to be made and administered for any resource through the web site.

Using the Web Office (see WRU #3) you can define a set of resources that are available for use, such as rooms or pieces of equipment. You can also record information about the resource (e.g. seating capacity and floorplan for a room or attaching a picture for an item of PA equipment) and assign who is responsible for managing that resource.

Effectively each resource is then given its own calendar which is shared through the web site. A booking can be made by an individual or a group to use one or more resources, and it is easy to check whether or not the requested resources are available.

Once a booking has been requested a resource manager can be notified in order to confirm the booking, and if clashes occur the system is able to alert this and suggest possible alternative resources. Bookings can be attached to events in the web site calendar, so for example if a meeting is moved to a different time, the attached booking for a room is also updated.

The ChurchInsight system is even able to generate reports summarizing who has used which resource when – really useful if you hire out rooms or equipment to other groups.

Integrated Mailing

The ChurchInsight system uses the information stored in the address book to make integrated mailing easy.
Imagine you want to invite everyone who helps with the Children’s Ministry to an upcoming training day. Such a task is simple using the mailing facilities of the Web Office. Using the Mailing section of the Web Office you can select the Children’s Ministry group, which will give you a list of all the people involved (the system will also check if you have permission to send a mailing to this group). You can then use additional criteria (such as selecting only adult members) to refine your selection, and add or remove individuals by name.

The ChurchInsight system will then generate an addressee list that uses the individuals’ preferences to know whether to send a message by email or by post (for example, if they do not use a computer). You are then able to compose your message in an email which is sent to all the email users, and save a list of addresses to perform a mail merge in a word processor for the postal recipients (or you can even print off address labels directly in standard Avery formats). Finally you save a record of this mailing to the system, so that other administrators can see what was sent to whom.

Consider the advantages of this tool:

* Each mailing you send will be to an accurate list of people, based on group memberships.
* Every mailing will automatically uses the address information which is given by the individual through their web site profile.
* Everyone will receive information by the method they prefer, whether they are online or not. Mailings are combined automatically to family members – so you only ever send one letter per household.
* You can drastically reduce printing and postage costs by being able to rely on email distribution to those who prefer it.
* Administrators retain a record of who was sent each mailing message, this can also be queried by individual to show which mailings were sent to them.

Using this contact management system will save the church organization time and money.

Rotas

Matching people to tasks and events can be a time consuming chore for stretched-to-the-max church administrators. Anyone relate to that? Once a rota is drawn up, dealing with the inevitable changes can be even harder.

ChurchInsight provides a powerful means for making the most of your resources by allowing you to create rota tasks for any number of church activities, even emailing those involved with their dates and reminding them nearer the time!

ChurchInsight provides a centralized system for coordinating schedules for all of the church activities. Administrators can create rotas through the Web Office, linking together multiple tasks, people and events.

When complete every participant can be emailed or posted a personalized copy of the rota – depending on their preferences, and of course the rota is visible via the church web site, in traditional tabular form and also fully integrated with the church calendar. Busy users on multiple rotas can even see a combined view of all the events and tasks they (or their family) have been assigned too, helping you to avoid those times when you need to be in two places at once.
    
The ChurchInsight system can even send reminder emails a few days before an event to remind people that they are on duty. Each user can configure these reminders as part of their personal profile.

If you do need to make a change to a rota, it is simple to let the rota organiser know, and a new version can be distributed to everyone instantly. A printable version means everyone can be included – even if they do not use a computer.

Rotas are another great way of connecting and organizing people through the ChurchInsight system. 

Web Office

At the heart of ChurchInsight is a powerful administration system called the Web Office (see below for a snapshot image).

Every aspect of your church web site, including publishing articles, creating rotas (more on this next week) and organizing the calendar can be controlled using a simple on-line interface. This means that responsibility for publishing new information in a particular area can be delegated to an individual member. The result is a greater flow of information, more efficient communication with your membership and an increased sense of ownership.

Using a web site to edit your church web site means that no special software is required for site administrators and therefore getting everyone up and running requires no major roll-out of new technology. Anyone with a web browser and an internet connection is ready to become involved.

Of course, being a web application means that administrators can change items or perform updates from anywhere with an internet connection; the church office, home, internet café. The ChurchInsight security model means that multiple administrators can be responsible for different aspects or areas of the site. This reduces the time it takes for changes to be made and helps to build the online community and sense of ownership.

The Web Office also has powerful church management features, such as producing mailing lists from group membership information or lists of contacts, viewing many different reports on your membership information – even recording attendance at events if required. ChurchInsight is able to significantly improve the way you manage your church’s information.

Address Book

How much time is wasted keeping track of phone numbers, email addresses and contact details? How many different lists of people’s contact information do you have? – and which are up to date?

Save hours of administration time updating your directory of church members by allowing the members to update their own details and then display them in an on-line address book. Access to the address book is restricted to members only via a secure authentication system.

Having a church address book online is one of the most popular and useful features of the ChurchInsight system. Every church member is able to maintain their own information to keep their details correct, and everybody has a single reference point to look up other people’s details.

How does it work?

The web site builds and maintains community by allowing church members to log in with a username and password. Once authenticated, users can maintain a profile of their own personal information, which is used to construct the church address book.

The address book can be viewed in a variety of ways, for example you may want a list of telephone numbers for members of your cell or home group; a printable version to distribute to those without internet access; or even a copy of the information in electronic form which you can download into your email program. You can get all this information directly from the online address book.

The address book groups together family members, allowing families to share a common address and home telephone record, but giving each member of the family a separate web site login, email addresses, mobile number etc. The address book is searchable, to help you find information quickly and easily, and everyone can upload a photo of themselves so you can match names to faces. (see attached)

Security and Privacy

The church address book is password protected, so that personal information is not made freely available on the internet. By default, only other members of your church are able to view your details. In addition, every user can control their own privacy settings, by selecting which details they want to make available.

The benefits to the Church

Church administrative staff no longer have to spend time keeping contact details correct, as church members can update their family’s information, any time and from anywhere! The value of having a single source of correct information, accessible from anywhere, is huge. The time and money saved compared to producing printed church directories is considerable.