Breeze, Wild Apricot, Toucan Tech and Infoodle are examples of the names chosen by the developers of Church Management Systems or ChMS. This type of software is enjoying a revival as similar programmes have been around for about as long as programmers have been involved in churches. However, the current ChMS solutions are leveraging the commercial sector success of CMS solutions – Customer (or Client or Constituent) Management Systems

Consequently, the underlying technology is very robust. Frustratingly, CMS is also used for Content Management System, a website solution component. Some providers get around this by using CRM for Customer Relationship Management.

The underlying premise behind all CMS systems (including ChMS) is that all the data about one’s customers (or congregants) can be accessed by all authorised parties in the organisation. This leads to a number of benefits:

• There is ‘one source of truth’ – if Jane Dow tells the door greeter that she has a new phone number, then (in theory – humans can still break the system) everybody else using the CMS can access that number as well. 
• A centralised solution is also easier to keep backed up - because it is a centralised solution, it is critical to make sure it is backed up.
• A benefit for larger organisations is that if the ChMS records details of all interactions, if a contact makes a call to the office, it doesn’t matter who answers. Any responder is able to bring themselves up to date with the context and requirements for that contact. In a church context, privacy and confidentiality requirements need to be observed but the principle still applies, especially for administrative matters.
• ChMS solutions usually support managed communications and automation. Sending out a reminder for that special Sunday School event or emailing the pew bulletin to non-attendees. These types of communications have the potential to make people feel wanted and included but are typically not done because they are too time intensive. CRMs can make this type of communication happen with a few hours of upfront set-up and some regular procedures to ensure details are captured and kept up to date.
• ChMS solutions can keep track of skills, qualifications and expertise held by members and staff. If a job comes up that needs specific skills or qualifications, you can quickly find out who has those skills. If a qualification needs to be renewed from time to time, you can have reminders sent to relevant people when renewal action is required. You can organise all your contacts into groups so that sending an email to the Parish Council, to the entire congregation, or to Home group members are all just a couple of clicks. Most ChMS will take care of privacy issues for you by hiding everyone else’s email address.
• Safeguarding and protecting the vulnerable – these features have become particularly important during the pandemic. Most ChMS provide some level of ‘check-in’ capability to allow you to know exactly who was at a given event, track attendee numbers against a limit and allow follow-up to attendees – whether to say, “Thank you for coming” or, “We’re sorry to advise that one of the attendees has tested positive”, as the case may be. We live in a society that is increasingly paranoid about the safety of children. Civil requirements for managing children’s groups are becoming increasingly complex and are likely to become mandatory in time. Most ChMS can offer at least minimal solutions to assist managing these requirements, ranging from check-in/check-out capability, recording who dropped off or picked up a child, restricting who is allowed to pick up a child, to recording allergies or medical conditions and specific first-aid protocols for individuals. To my mind, it is these types of features that make the most compelling case for churches to adopt ChMS at the moment.
• Overall, the benefits of ChMS can be summed up as releasing time spent on administrative tasks for missional and relational activities. Churches have a large volunteer work component but it is decreasing over time so if there is a way we can shift our volunteer resources from administration to strategically focused activity, there should be a significant benefit.

CONSIDERATIONS

Modules, modules and more modules! 

ChMS vendors love modules. The typical product structure is a core module with at least the CRM functions and a number of optional add-on modules (usually at additional cost) providing additional features such as accounting functions, donor management, service planning, attendance tracking, online giving etc. Ensure you get all the features you need and that you understand exactly what that costs.

International Law. 

If you are looking at accounting or donor management or similar features, make sure that the solution you are thinking of complies with NZ requirements rather than US or EU requirements.

Buy a system with room to grow. 

Church management systems can help you grow your ministry so be sure to buy a system that can handle more than your current needs.

Think twice about building your own system. 

It may seem tempting to build your own church management software to save a little money but in the long run you will end up spending more. You will likely not be able to migrate easily to another solution or share data with others if you take this path. Leave the software to the experts and focus on what you do best: building your congregation.

Peter Lane is Principal Consultant at System Design & Communication Services and has over 30 years’ experience with technology systems. We invite your questions, suggestions and ideas for articles. These can be submitted either through the editor or by email to dct@dct.org.nz. We also operate a website focused on building a community of people interested in improving how we can use technology in churches, located at www.dct.org.nz