Tag Archive for: events

7 Church Management Software Features for a Successful VBS

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With summer upon us, you’re likely knee-deep in planning VBS and your summer programs for both kids and adults! Or you may already be looking ahead to the plan for next year’s vacation bible school.

VBS is a great way to serve your city and minister to children and families, but we also know this encompasses a lot of staff, resources, and volunteers to pull off effectively.

That’s why One Church Software has tons of features to make sure your calendar is up-to-date, tables and chairs are where they need to be, and you have a volunteer team to help every step of the way. We’ve worked hard to implement every feature in our software that you need to have a successful VBS!

Kid’s Check-In

One of the first things on any parents’ mind is safety, which is why we have made it a top priority to make secure pick-up and drop-off standard practice. We even have space to highlight medical needs or allergies directly on check-in labels.

Kids Check-In is an important feature, whether you utilize it for your regular Sunday kids ministry and for all children’s summer activities!

Volunteer Organization & Communication

It takes a whole host of volunteers and staff to run a successful VBS. But managing those volunteers and making sure they are all on the same page can be a difficult task.

Just like the volunteer scheduling process in our software for Sunday services, you can organize volunteer efforts for events like VBS as well, assigning roles and communicating the flow of each day of VBS so volunteers can prepare as necessary.

Sending out volunteer-wide communication is a breeze with One Church Software as well. Instead of sending multiple texts and emails, you can communicate with everyone at one click of a button. You also have the ability to easily view the scheduled times and availability of all your volunteers to identify where you need to get extra help.

Online Calendar Coordination

Every event gets synced to the church calendar and can be displayed online with One Church Software. This means even if they couldn’t attend a Sunday service, parents and regular attendees can be aware of VBS, summer camp, and other church events.

And if an event is cancelled, delayed because of the weather, or changes location, alerts can go out to everyone that has registered or you can send a church-wide alert, so there is no confusion.

Room Reservation

Make sure you never double-book a room again! With room reservation, you can not only communicate how you need the room set up and ensure it is equipped with what you need, but you can automatically notify facility managers regarding new reservation requests.

When you reserve a room, it automatically syncs up with the church calendar to keep communication clear. Imagine arriving at a fully-equipped room with chairs and tables set-up exactly how you need them!

Resource Allocation

Need extra equipment or special tools? No problem. When you submit a room reservation request, you can see a complete list of all the resources your church has to offer. Simply add those resources when setting up your event or room reservation. Everything from chairs, tables, whiteboards, media carts, and more can be requested. Your set-up time just got cut in half now that you don’t have to spend time trying to find what you need the day of.

Safe Volunteers

In today’s day and age, running background checks on your volunteers is a necessity when it comes to working with children. We’ve made the process easy through our integration with Protect My Ministry. This fully-integrated service lets you order and manage background checks directly within our software.

With background requests typically completed within 48 hours, you can make sure you are doing your due diligence and protecting your members and children.

With thousands of ministries trusting Protect My Ministry, it’s the go-to option for churches in screening volunteers, staff, or your employees, and it’s all at your fingertips from within One Church Software.

Multiple Registrations in One Form

Registering multiple people in one submission makes the user experience much more seamless when registering children for VBS, summer camps, or children’s activities. This is a real timesaver, which is why we’ve added this feature to our forms! Not only will it allow you to process multiple entries at one time, but One Church Software forms can also have individual questions or fields for each person.

This means that you can do things like make suggestions on additional children to register, collect t-shirt sizes for each child, and automatically tally-up any necessary payments. (Learn more about this feature here.)

If you aren’t already using One Church Software, this is the perfect time to try out our FREE 14-day trial to see how these features make this year’s VBS a breeze! Get started today >>

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Pro Tips for Using Forms in One Church Software

One of our favorite parts of working with church leaders is helping them discover new ways to use every part of One Church Software. Whether you have made the decision to update your church management system (ChMS) or are still considering it, today we are sharing some advanced ways you can use the form feature within One Church Software to support your ministry most effectively.

Read More: 7 Signs You’re Ready for a Church Management System

How are forms used?

Forms can be used for a number of purposes, including registration for an event, sign-ups, purchasing tickets for a special event, joining your church newsletter, requesting a resource, and the list could go on.

You can share a form in a variety of ways as well through One Church Software. For example, you can send your congregation a direct link to a registration form, you can provide easy registration for groups (or anything else) in the mobile app, or you could even create a custom QR code that sends people to a survey.

With all this is mind, you can take your forms to the next level by utilizing the following features you may not know about:

1) Uploading files through forms.

Did you know that you can collect practically any type of file using One Church Software forms?

This could mean that you can collect a signed waiver at the time of registration for an event.

Or you might be trying to get pictures and stories from a community outreach initiative that your church sponsored. Create a form with a field to upload files and you’ll be able to not only get details and stories from the ministry event, but also photos all in one form.

The options here are vast!

2) Collecting payments.

Gone are the days of paper lists to keep track of who has and hasn’t paid for an event. You can add payments to a form to collect the fee for an event, Awana registration, etc. You could even use the payment option for a t-shirt or Bible study purchase.

If you have One Church Giving, you can utilize the payment option in forms. With this feature, you can also set-up a promotion or coupon code for an item and allow people to cover the processing fees as part of their total payment amount.

3) Creating conditional fields on a form.

The conditional fields feature allows you to create an experience that is relevant to everyone. Conditional fields are submission fields that will only appear if someone answers a question a certain way. For instance, when collecting registration for an event, you don’t have to ask every single person how many children they need childcare for. You can make that question depend on if they answer “Do you require childcare?” with an affirmative answer.

Perhaps if Awana registration requires a waiver for a special activity for a specific age group, you can create a follow-up question only for people with children who are in that age group.

Conditional fields can be a great tool to help streamline the experience for each person!

4) Automating emails and task assignments.

We do a deep dive into some processes you should automate here, but it’s important to consider that your forms can be a trigger to kick-off any automation you create.

For example, if you are looking for volunteers, you could create an automated task assignment for your worship leader when someone checks the box for “Worship” under the areas they are interested in serving in.

For special events, you can have form responses go to each team leader rather than one person trying to send each response manually.

You can even set-up an automated email to send after someone completes the form to thank them or give them some important follow-up information.

As you can see, there are many different ways you can utilize forms in One Church Software to benefit your church. By considering how you might use these form features to make your systems more seamless, know that the sky is the limit! This is just one of the many features we have worked hard on in order to provide an effective church management system for you to utilize.

Need additional help setting up a specific form for your church? Reach out to our team anytime!

If you don’t have a church management system or are considering switching, you can also try One Church Software FREE for 14 days to see all the ways it can help you care for your members, empower your volunteers, and serve your community.

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5 Ways to Use Texting in Your Church

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You’ve likely noticed that fewer and fewer people in your church bring a hard copy of the Bible, opting to use a Bible app on their smartphones instead. We have the power in our pocket to do any number of things from reading the Bible, taking notes, surfing the web, and responding in the moment to a message.

With the ability to do all this at your member’s fingertips (in church and outside of church!), it’s important that you consider all the ways that church text services can actually help your ministry.

Why?

Well, according to Nonprofits Source, it takes 90 seconds on average to respond to a text while it takes 90 minutes on average to respond to an email. That is a staggering statistic that points to how texting can help make your church more effective at communicating with your current members and new guests.

Here are the top five ways a church text messaging feature in your church management software can benefit you:

1) Ministry to Others

Ministry doesn’t happen just in our Sunday services. In today’s world, we have the opportunity to more easily minister to people as they navigate their day-to-day lives. Did you know that you can use texting to do that?

For example, you could send a link to an encouraging devotional or a Bible verse. You could share an encouraging word or reminder throughout the week. You could send a question to ponder. Texting allows you and other church leaders to easily step into people’s lives during the week and minister to them as they go through their routines.

2) Sign-ups

Have you ever tried getting people to sign-up for an event or to get more information? It can be a chore to verbally tell them all the information in a conversation or from the pulpit.

With church text services, however, you can have people text a word like “BAPTISM” to sign-up for the next baptism or get more information. The text response they automatically get back can have a link to all the details they need. So when you talk about an event or getting more information, you can keep it short and sweet and let your text send the extra details.

3) Reminders

Got an event coming up or perhaps you need to communicate a last-minute change? Texting can be a great option to notify people of changed locations, an important detail, or just a reminder not to forget that the event is happening. Nonprofits Source reported that 90% of text message reminders are read within three minutes, which means that you can make sure vital information is being read by most people!

4) Giving

Regardless of if your members are giving their regular tithe or if they want to give generously to a special area of ministry, online options for giving are more popular than ever and text-to-give options are one of the easiest ways to give today. When it comes to special giving or spur-of-the-moment gifts, the easiest way for people to be generous is by providing a simple way to meet the calling to give.

5) Guest Follow-Up

Visitors and first-time guests can feel awkward about being contacted with a phone call or even via email at times. Texting is a great way to casually and personally say hello and let them know how grateful you are they visited your church. You can even provide some links to next steps they can take if they’d like to learn more!

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Texting is a great tool that can help inform and encourage your church’s members and guests. If you are interested in using texting in your church to do any of the things we mentioned here or if you’ve been on the lookout for a texting service that connects to your church management software, check out a demo of One Church Software to see how texting alongside our other features can support your ministry.

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