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Keeping track of phone numbers and emails is almost impossible for a
church. Keeping track of all of the events, birthdays, programs and
groups in the church
is
exhausting. Having to constantly pass this information on to everyone
can be
frustrating, and keeping it up to date with your computer, the church
computer, other
ministry leaders and your cell phone seems like the impossible dream.
Until now.
Whether you are a small
church with no offices (like ours) or a large church with many offices,
keeping everyone up to date can be a challenge. Our need was for people
who lived in different towns to be able to help us enter information and also
access that information for groups and ministries that they lead. We
also have both mac and pc users on our leadership team and needed a
application that both could access. The only solution we could
find was to look for a program that was web-based.
The journey into
frustration.
Three years and more
than three dozen applications later we have finally found a web
based church management system with the ability to wow us enough to
warrant writing up this
recommendation to other church. To help you understand part of our
journey I will try to share with you some of our frustrations
with software programs we tried:
Clunky.
To put it kindly, most of the programs we looked at were horrible to get
around in. One program we used was so bad that the other leaders and
helpers got so frustrated they refused to use it. If a program is going
to be useful it has to be
intuitive, uncluttered
and very simple to use.
Expensive.
We did find a few programs that we liked, but the price was more per
year than we budgeted for our whole education ministries. yikes! For us
to be able to
use a program it must have a reasonable price.
Isolated.
Most of the programs would let us enter information in to the software
but
trying to use it anywhere else was a nightmare at best. We would enter
current
address information into the database but then had not good way (or any
way in come
cases) to use that same information on our computers, or our cell
phones. So we would enter the information three times each: program,
email, phone. Then the fateful day
would come when you would edit one of them and forget to edit the rest
of them, and the trouble
begins. For a program to work for us it has to integrate into our
address books, email and phones. It should eliminate steps, not create
more of them.
Rigid.
Most of the programs has one way of doing things. Period. One program
required us to enter a city, state and zip with every person we added to
the system.
So when we had someone visit and only received their name and email or
phone we
had to either add bogus info or keep them out of the program until we
had more
details. We needed a program that was flexible.
The
search for us has been a three year long quest with many trials and
trial
applications under our belt. We even subscribed to another software
package for 2
years - basically buying time until a program emerged that would meet
our needs. We have been frustrated and discouraged by the amount of technology we have
and how little we were able to
use it to enhance ministry as well as how much time we needed to
spend to use it in ministry.
An oasis in a
desert of dissatisfaction.
Our dissatisfaction
kept us looking around, and early this year we came across a fresh
face in the web-based church management arena. Stafftool is an application
in it’s infancy that shows
greater maturity than some of the seasoned programs on the
market. As soon as we started using it were found ourselves excited
about the future of our church management journey.
Let me take you back through that prior
list of frustrations and show you just a few of the
ways stafftool has
freed us from frustration and released us for more effective ministry:
Simple.
The first thing you notice and appreciate is the simplicity of the
interface. I have sent dozens of different people with different levels
of computer literacy to our site and
every one of them has been able to use it! We have one person taking
pictures and adding them to the
directory, another person is entering in events for
their small group, some one else is
updating the address information - and all of
them have commented on how easy the
program is to use. I never experienced this before.
Simple is not only interface, it is also how information is used. When
you enter
someone’s birthday it automatically shows up in the calendar. When you
click on a
person’s name you se all of their details, like phone and address. Click
on their
address and immediately you are taken to their location on google maps.
Click on
their email address and immediately your mail program opens with their
address already
loaded. It really is that simple.
Affordable. Stafftool has tiered pricing, allowing you to expand the
program as your church expands.
However, they also have a limited time offer for the first 200
churches to take advantage of it. For
$299 you will have a lifetime subscription and never pay again. It
allows you to have up to 1,000 individuals in your church! We
jumped on this.
Integrated.
The gray cloud hanging over us was how to get the information into
stafftool and
then how will it work with our other applications. In less than 2 days
we had all of our information converted over because stafftool imports
data so easily. It uses vcard and CSV files for import. Most of our time
was spent adding extra stuff to the database that our other program did
not have, or was not easy to do.
Next we found out that the vCard export feature worked perfectly with
both Outlook
for
Windows and Address Book for Mac. So now we can update our computers in
less than 2 minutes whenever we need to. It transfered the addresses,
emails,
phones and even the pictures flawlessly.
Finally, with a mac and the sync tool (or an outlook sync tool) our
phones were
updated. Actually, I am a geek, and I bought an iPhone. So not only does
all of this sync with my phone through iTunes, but stafftool is the ONLY church
management application that
has an iPhone interface! I have all of the church events, people and
messages all available
instantly and even have the ability to search that data for
anything. Think about it... always
current information with zero effort. It’s a no
brainer!
Flexible.
With feature like smart groups our data can be viewed and sorted in an
endless number of ways. For instance, we can generate a report of all
people in the
church who are members, male, ages 20-35 and instantly it a list
appears. You can even enter “tags” that help you locate people in more ways. We have tags
for people who are soldiers, students, visitors... the
possibilities are endless.
We made the switch to stafftool.
After years of searching and playing we
have committed to using stafftool because it
works. It is simple, flexible, easy, integrated and
affordable.
What I have shared with
you is just the tip of the iceberg of what stafftool has to offer. If
you want to see for yourself you can
view screen shots, watch a demo video or sign up for a free trial
account at
www.stafftool.com. I
am also willing to answer any questions you have if you want to
email me
at
pastor@ncfchurch.org.
Blessings! Michael Biolsi |
