A recent survey of nearly 2000 websites of non-profits (including some churches) found that 2/3rd of them were accepting online donations:
16% have a white-label solution that lets the non-profit take credit card donations directly on their website. And more than half link to a 3rd party payment gateway to take their online donations.
Among the 3rd party tools, here was the breakdown:
More non-profits are using paypal to accept donations than any other tool. Paypal is followed by Network for Good, which seems to be some sort of non-profit aggregator that initially accepts payments and then redistributes them to the donor's specified non-profit.
Does your church have a paypal account to accept online donations? What has your experience been with any of these services?
Had a great conversation this morning with Jason Powell, the IT Director at Granger Community Church. He also coordinates the voluntary efforts of the Church IT Roundtable at citrt.org . IT stands for Information Technology, and it covers areas like hardware, software, operating system, databases, network infrastructure, and a lot of that behind-the-scene stuff.
Church IT Roundtable is a very valuable resource and network for discussing the issues related to churches and IT. And it's useful for churches of all sizes too -- you don't have to be an IT professional to have computing needs. Watch this video to hear Jason Powell talk about it:
As you heard in the video interview, the Church IT Podcast is a live call-in show (think of it like a conference call combined with a chat room) that's held twice a month to give church IT staff and volunteers a place to talk about tools, tips, and best practices relates to technology in the church.
You can join the conversation live on the Church IT Podcast this Friday, August 21st, starting 11:00AM Eastern / 8:00AM Pacific. To join, go to www.talkshoe.com/tc/6983 or call in at (724)444-7444 and enter ID 6983.
Got a note today that Fellowship One has released an API to let 3rd party developers create applications that integrate into and access their F1 Database.
It will be interesting to see how this strategy plays out for Fellowship One. Is there already a developer community that will invest in launching web applications around church management software? Can an enterprise application like church management software (which is really meant to be used by church staff) find viral adoption in a consumer platform like Facebook?
Regardless, I think its noteworthy that a ChMS product is opening up its database via API's. And it's one of the flexible advantages that Fellowship One has as a software-as-a-service provider.
Just before I left for Innovation3, I was contacted by my friend, Drew Goodmanson of Monk Development (and elder/pastor at Kaleo Church
in San Diego). Drew is someone I really respect, both as a Christian
leader and as a savvy business person. He was one of the first people
I discovered who was using the Internet (and SEO) to reach people for
Christ. You can read his story elsewhere online but I'm inviting you
to help him & those who are studying social media and the Church by
taking this simple 5 minute survey. Here's an overview....
Are churches using the internet to gather, disciple and build community?
In the last couple years a number of new private church community
networks have been launched in addition to numerous social networking
sites. We are still very early on in understanding what churches are
doing effectively online.
We invite you to participate in this first survey of several that examine the State of the Church Online.
This survey in particular begins by examining what churches are doing
with social and community networks. How pervasive are the use of these
web applications?
Future surveys will expand to examine what Christians are doing with
social networks, how churches are using their websites and other online
strategies. Our prayer is that these studies help bring clarity and
guidance for churches to pursue excellence online to the glory of God.
This survey is being led by Kevin Ring. Kevin brings years of experience from Bainbridge Consulting
leading qualitative research projects - designing and executing
customer/competitive research and analysis across multiple industries,
focused on Fortune 500 companies including Google, Yahoo!, Citibank,
Hewitt Associates, Gallup, Bank of America and others.
The survey is free and takes very little time to complete. Feel
free to leave your name here (below in the comments) if you participate.
Churches have to track a lot of people information to better facilitate ministry. And of course, as the church gets larger, there's going to be more data. This implies that sometimes a church would outgrow one ChMS for another over time.
There've been a handful of softwares that have been around for years in the category called "church management software" (ChMS) These track not only addresses and financial donations in some kind of a database (or databases), but some track ministry involvement, correspondence log, and more.
According to this comparison chart compiled by Christian Computing Magazine, there are 27 church management softwares. (implying at least 27 exist.) The chart is very handy in that you can get a side-by-side comparison between various ChMS features. [cache]
Which church management software does your church use, and what works well? Please describe your church context so we can better understand how a specific software works for your church.
(please don't let this comment thread degenerate into a shouting match of one-ups-manship, ok?)
The annual Internet Ministry Conference is well underway. Calvin College
is hosting this year's event and our sessions are designed to give us a
chance to absorb all there is to learn about ministry online. The
speakers are hand-picked experts in the field of internet ministry and
literally I wish I could hear them all.
TodayDr. Quentin Schultze
(who I recommend here often) will present the morning devotional.
Following devotions we'll head into 3 days of internet-related ministry
tools, skills and best practices.
I'll speak on Thursday about Your Spiritual Gift Mix Online (how to
successfully be yourself online!) so make sure and let me know if
you'll be here and we can connect. If you're anywhere near Grand
Rapids swing by.
If you use Twitter, don't use #IMC08 (that's a marketing conference), instead use #IMC2008 to follow status updates.
In thinking about this week's Church IT Roundtable,
I started to list all the various resources many of us church IT folks are
using to stay informed and connected ... and wow the list kept going
and going! This is both great and challenging :-)
It's great in
that our grassroots movement is growing rapidly and jumping on any
technology that could benefit the greater good. The challenge is that
these resources are scattered ALL over the place making them often hard
to find and easy to forget about. So I'm making this list mainly for
myself at this point, but assume it will be helpful for some of you as
well.
AND I've recommitted myself to help lead the charge in
creating an easy to use one-stop-shop portal for all our resources. So
far google apps and ning.com would be great possible tools to make this
happen. Let me know if you're interested in helping.
So here's the list I've compiled so far in the order they popped into my head ... what have I forgotten?
CITRT.org - We're planning to continue to make this THE FUNNEL for all things Church IT related (see CITRT Summary and Vision).
A place to capture everything from events to resources to prayer
requests to stuff to buy/sell. As mentioned above, an extreme site
makeover is coming in the near future. [site hosted/maintained by Jeffrey Thompson]
Church IT Podcast - www.churchITpodcast.com
Twice a month CITRT folks "meet" online and via phone to discuss all
manner of IT topics. The call is recorded and then made available as a
podcast. We even have transcriptions of each call to aid in searching
for something in particular. [maintained by Jason Powell]
Twitter
- There are a number of Church IT peeps on Twitter. I've not yet found
a good way to "group" us together, but you can search for CITRT to find some. During the roundtable this week I'm sure #CITRT will be hoppin'
Facebook
- We have over 200 people in our CITRT group on facebook. It's a place
to find other facebook CITRT peeps and get occasional CITRT news
updates. [maintained by Jason Powell]
Linkedin
- We have almost 200 people in our Linkedin CITRT group. Recommend you
join it to find other CITRT peeps. Linkedin now has discussion threads
which could be useful to gather feedback. [Created by Ian Beyer]
Blog Aggregator - We have aggregated a number of church IT related blogs. Here's how to add yours to the list. [maintained by Jeffrey Thompson?]
Blog Search Engine - Andrew Mitry made a handy google search
that searches through the blogs listed in the above blog aggregator.
It's found at the top of the CITRT.org main page or hit Andrew's link
above to use the code on your own site.
Blogroll - Clif Guy maintains a large blogroll of church technology related blogs
Roundtable Guidelines
- Thinking about starting your own local roundtable meetings? You
should! Here's the basic guidelines we work from for each roundtable.
Discussion Topics - Here's a large list of all the different topics that have been discussed at our prior events.
IT Discuss Forum - Ministry IT focused forum that's been around several years. [site hosted/maintained by Jeffrey Thompson]
IT Discuss Email List - Ministry IT focused email list that's been around several years with fully searchable archives. [site hosted/maintained by Jeffrey Thompson]
Church IT Survey
- Ever wonder what churches similar to you are doing IT wise? How many
computers do they support? What's their IT staff size? Do they support
multi-site, etc? Or what about those churches several steps ahead of
you - what's their IT makeup look like? How should you plan now to be
at that size in the future? What about trying to find churches around
you with experience in VoIP, Virtualization, etc? Wouldn't it be sweet
to have a resource that helped shed some light on these questions?
That's what this is for. (note to self to get more current data into
the survey and find a better way to manage end user updates) [created/maintained by Jason Powell]
Church IT Survey Google Map - Derek Berg
made a nice mashup between the above survey data and google maps. See
where other churches that have survey data are in relationship to you.
(Derek's working on a newer mashup version)
ChMS Google Group - Discussion of needs and ideas for Church Management Systems. [maintained by Tony Dye]
Flickr Group - We even have a group on Flickr where you can browse Church IT related photos and pics from our actual Roundtable events. [created/maintained by Justin Moore]
IRC / Chat Room - If you hadn't heard ... we have a 24/7 Church IT chat room
you're invited to join. You'll find IT geeks hangin' out in there
all hours of the day and into the midnight hours. It's a place to ask
questions, blow off some steam, and get to know other IT peers [created by Jeffrey Thompson]
Instant IRC / Chat Room - This link takes you directly into the Church IT chat room ... nothing but a web browser required.
Webcam Aggregator - Every so often some of us will fire up our webcams for your voyeuristic pleasure :-) [created/maintained by Justin Moore]
MinistryIT Yahoo Group - Another Church IT discussion group that's relatively new. [created/maintained by Nick Nicholaou]
Texas Ministry Tech
- From the site: Texas Ministry Tech is dedicated to creating and
growing relationships and cooperation between ministry-minded IT folks
in Texas. [created by Scott Miller]
Ministry Tech
- From the site: MinistryTECH is a new national conference dedicated to
church information technology professionals. Come join some of the
leading church tech professionals to learn how they are using
technology in their ministries.
I'm sure there's more ... as you think of other church IT related resources please leave a comment and I'll add it to the list.
Fellowship Technologies is hosting it's 2nd annual Dynamic Church Conference in about a month. If you are a church leader who wants to know more about ChMS, learn more about leveraging the power of the internet, networking with partners, etc., please join us in Dallas, May 15 - 17.
Because there are twoLeadership NetworkDigital contributors on the speaker list, I thought you'd like to know we'll be at the Frisco Convention Center. We'd love to meet you. Here's more of what's offered:
An optional pre-conference called 'Power Start' with six different, personalized training classes
60% more sessions across six different tracks, both Beginner & Advanced user levels
Imagine a scenario where: 1) Your entire church is on a social network like Facebook 2) The Facebook API is two-way, such that any app can push or pull data
Let me try to explain #2 with examples.
Say the Facebook event application lets your Facebook church members RSVP to a marriage seminar at your church. And that RSVP data can get pulled into your own database. Or say there's a Facebook app that lets your church members input private data about themselves that only the pastors could see (ex. mailing address, family information, baptismal records). Or even better, the pastor can launch a demographic survey for his congregation through the social network.
What about an app that lets church members sign up for volunteer and serving opportunities - again with a data exchange to your database. Or how about online tithing through a social network app - integrated with the donation management system that the church runs.
As I educate myself on what Church Management Software is, I'm thinking that self-service tools on social networks might contain useful data and application for the church administration. Of course, a lot is left to be proven. But the potential and promise is there for social network applications to integrate with ChMS.
I think the key is convenience and member participation/engagement. Church members won't log into a church management database. They may not even log into their own church website. But they will log into Facebook and Myspace - at least the younger ones.
Thoughts? (Church IT gurus will have to grant me some grace on my lack of deep understanding of CMS)
The March issue of Christian Computing Magazine just came out. Good reminder for me that both CCMag, as well as it's sister publication Christian Audio/Visual, are great resources for those of us who enjoy whole publications dedicated to our favorite topic - the use of technology by the Church.
Christian Computing Magazine, published
since 1989, is now available exclusively through digital distribution. I get it via monthly email so all
of the articles are provided in PDF format and are ready to read online or print out for hard copy archiving. The articles cover everything from ChMS evaluations to social bookmarking services, from podcasting to congregational messaging systems.
Most importantly, the magazines are FREE thanks to many sponsors including:
Leadership Network fosters church innovation and growth through strategies, programs, tools and resources consistent with our far-reaching mission: to identify, connect and help high-capacity Christian leaders multiply their impact.
