Another huge benefit of the Roundtables that we've been doing the past couple of months has been the amazing ideas for upgrades and tweaks we've gotten as we interact with our most engaged users.

Many of the upgrades in this post came from that environment.  Some came directly through support.  All of them are a picture of our commitment to build the best software for churches in the context of community.

Back in January I announced that we were going to start a weekly Roundtable for clients to discuss topics of interest.  The idea was to create a collaborative learning environment for clients and our staff.  We admitted up front that it would be an experiment and that we would be learning as we go.  I thought you might want an update.

The Roundtable this Thursday starts our discussion on workflows.  We'll have different users share some of their favorites and brainstorm possibilities for using this powerful feature.  But, with Easter coming soon, I thought it would be good to consider how workflows might help with Easter communication.  

Yes!  Another great reason to consider Churchteams online giving.  Yesterday we released a new option to allow your givers the choice to cover the transaction fees for their online contribution. To be honest when I first heard of the idea of "No fees online giving," I was skeptical.

First of all, there is no such thing as "no fees" online transactions.  Banks and credit card issuing companies all charge for their services.  So, while "no fees" is technically true from the church administrative perspective, it feels misleading in that the fees are just passed on to the giver.  It seemed to me that "no fees" was marketing hype to get people's attention.

It's great to see how the vaccinations and our new habits seem to have turned the tide on Covid-19.  But, as you're planning for Easter, 2021; do you wish there was a way to do a better job of managing the numbers of people attending services.  Maybe our Covid lessons from last year can help.  Here's a slight reworking of the blog post from May, 2020 on how to use Churchteams to set up a worship reservation system.

Because it was the week before Christmas and because of the craziness of Covid, you might have missed the biggest release of 2020.  I introduced it as our Digital Assistant - Scheduled Reports.  That was just over two months ago.  There wasn't a lot of fanfare, we just offered it quietly as a gift. 

The ways churches are meeting at this point in the pandemic are as diverse as the church itself.  I know great churches that haven't met live on Sundays since March of last year.  And I know great churches that have been meeting live since July and now don't even require masks or social distance.  This is the beauty of God's design and the difference in the communities our churches serve. 

The story of 2020 will always be the global pandemic of Covid-19.  All of us are different.  It's worth the time to log what we've lost and grieve it well.  It's also worth the time to examine what we've gained and how to build on it. I hope you're doing that personally and as a church. 

The upgrades we've released the past few months reflect insights gained from working closely with clients in 2020.  Some of these are really minute, but the first one in particular positions us well for the post-Covid expectations of performance at the peak time of Sunday mornings.

We all know that trust is foundational to successful relationships.  It is also foundational to a successful relationship with your database.  If you don't trust the data, you don't trust what the data tells you.  That's a problem.

As you closed out your books for the year, did you notice your online giving line item?  Did it give you sticker shock?  

Maybe your administrative oversight team even commented on it as they reviewed last year's financials.

We recently ran a report across a broad cross section of our churches with contributions in 2020. In it we discovered that Churchteams clients brought in 102%of the income in 2020 that they had in 2019.  

"Great things in business are never done by one person; they're done by a team of people."

Steve Jobs

Last fall we automated the Academy training webinars that I had done almost every week for years.  They are now available on-demand 24/7. 

Workflow - noun - a series of emails, texts, personal notifications, or data or group changes scheduled to occur over a selected time period.  Used to track a follow-up process.

Reports - noun - Information gathered or actions to take related to families or individuals based on their group involvement, member attributes, or giving data.