KevMcCord

Raking Data

Yesterday I raked a lot of leaves.

Raking leaves and analyzing data share a number of similarities.

You don't rake leaves unless there are enough leaves to make it worth your while.  You don't analyze data unless you have enough of it to make it worth your while.

If you don't rake often you'll get blisters and you probably won't have the best tools.  You may even avoid the job.  If you don't analyze your data regularly you may find it hard to begin and painful to accomplish.

Gathering the data is hard work, but it isn't quite half the work.  You still have to do something with it.  Getting leaves in piles is not the end of the job.

If you have a lawn mower that bags debris you can cut your grass and get the leaves up at the same time.  If your information management systems are well designed analysis is built right in.

No one rakes leaves efficiently the first time.  There are tricks you learn from trail and error and from watching others.  Someone who rakes leaves for a living expends less energy and gets more done.  Analysis tools like Google Analytics are designed for websites with millions of hits a day.  You can leverage a tool like that even if you have a little church website.

There is a beautiful yard under there (you think).  You may find out the grass is dead when you pick up the dead leaves.  You always begin data analysis with an assumption.  Some people don't want to rake the data and find out the assumption is wrong.

In the end the analogy breaks down since data is useful stuff and dead leaves aren't very useful.  In both cases though you can get a sense of accomplishment when you look at the finished product and you bring order to chaos.

I have a lot of data to rake this next few weeks.  I need to know what I'm going to do with the data before I get it all piled up.  I need to list the questions that need answers, confront my assumptions, determine my goals, and mock up the final product before I start raking it together.

ChurchTeams Article

I'm very interested in ChurchTeams because many of my clients are interested in ChurchTeams.  The company has demonstrated a solid understanding of small group ministry and they have developed what several users tell me is a very usefull tool to connect people to groups and then manage those groups.

When my Google Alert on Church Databases surfaced this article today I read it with interest.  It deals with a topic that I deal with daily.  The question that is the title of the article is "The Problem of Two Church Databases R U Sure?"  Here's a quote from the article...

It seems to me the shepherding and discipling you can do with Churchteams is worth the inconvenience of updating databases. For whom is simplicity a higher value - paid support staff or front line volunteer leaders?

I posted my comment on the article, but it is still awaiting moderation.  So I thought I would share my comment here.

Boyd,

I can appreciate your thinking. People are surprised when they hear me tell them to go with what works even if it means separating their data. I believe we have been over-sold by some major ChMS vendors on the promise of what they can do.

What I hope will happen is that companies like yours with tools like ChurchTeams will dilligently pursue a full featured Church Management System with which they can truly integrate.

The problem isn’t that we have just two databases it is that we have 5 or 6 (check in, contributions, small groups, worship teams, events, etc).

At some point those of us in the back office become servants of the tools instead of servants of the ministry.

Blessings,

Kevin

Getting People Into Groups & Teams

It shouldn't be any harder than...

1. Setup groups/teams and describe them.
2. Setup people and describe them.

Then you can run a report that...

1. Selects a person and show the best group/team matches.
2. Selects a group/team and show the best people matches.

Today I wrote two reports in about 4 hours that do exactly that.  However, the reports themselves are not the big deal, the two stored procedures behind the reports are the big deal.  They can be referenced by a web application.  Imagine that you are the small group leader and you log in and see people who are candidates for your group.  On the other hand you might be a person who logs in and sees the groups that are the best candidates for you!

For this to work you have to have the following ingredients:

1. A database that handles the data properly.
2. A system for managing the data and user interactions with the data.
3. People who will enter the data diligently.
4. A way to deploy the information to the target audience.
5. A target audience who will engage the information and then connect with one another.

We've got 1, 2, & 3 covered, but we need #4 before we can engage with #5.  #4 is where our old tools failed to deliver.  Good thing we are working on fixing that.

Anatomy of a Contribution Statement

Near as I can tell the elements of a basic contribution statement are:

1. The church's name, logo, and contact information
2. The donor name and identifying information
3. The list of gifts in the statement period (date, amount, designation, item #)
4. A total somewhere of the qualifying gifts in the statement period
5. Some IRS language to the effect that you got nothing tangible for your gifts and we look forward to "continued support".   This last has to do with bulk mail requirements.

So, how come it can be so stinking hard to get acurate statements out the door quickly?

1. You don't want two statements going to one person
2. Some couples want a joint statement and you split the gifts
3. Some couples want split statements and you joined the gifts
4. You want to send them email, they bounce
5. You want to send them bulk mail, they have to be the same # sheets
6. You want to include Capital Campaign pledge status, this is beyond confusing most of the time
7. You want to include a personalized note from the pastor, but there is no space plus it is an ugly statement

In the past 8 years I am sure I have spent over 100 hours tweaking various contribution statements for various churches.  I can add wrinkle upon wrinkle to the list of complications above.

I finally got fed up at my church and made a single-click statement that worked great.  It had all my rules built-in.  Worked well for several years, but it had some real draw-backs.  The biggest problem was it nearly exceeded the capacity of the report designer I was using. 

This week I put in some more time to build the killer contribution statement I wanted in SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services.  I'm very pleased with the result.  We won't deal with email statements in this iteration, but we do have all other issues above solved.

Here are some fast facts about our mid-year statements newly re-formatted:

1. The statement is front-and-back allowing the front to be about the message from the Pastor.
2. 114 gifts can be listed on the back of the statement before a second page is needed.
3. Two-page statements can easily be printed separately.
4. The pastor has a full page to write a letter to the church.
5. We aren't in a Capital Campaign, but we have a nifty "Pledge Recap" section that is optional.
6. The statement can be printed in color if we want.

Here are some ideas that are partially implemented at this point:

1. A plan to dynamically switch wording from English to Spanish.
2. Make it print on legal paper if we want to get more than 114 gifts listed on a page (12 people exceeded that threshold last year).
3. 1720 Statements became 1620 when we did some creative "family" statements.  These honor the election by some people to get separate statements while assuming that if such an election is not made we can combine gifts onto one statement even when they are listed on a different family member's record.  Debating the age, but gifts by kids under 12 or 18 will be automatically included in the parent's statements.

I'll try to upload a sample later.

Effective Churches & Data

A client has given me simple request.  They want me to help them to understand how effective churches use their data and database systems.  I had two immediate thoughts.

• What a great open-ended question!
• What a scary thing to try and answer all by myself!

You don't get paid for wimping out.  So, I'm going to tackle this question.

So, on to topic of the effective church and its use of data.

Here are some of the principles that come to mind immediately. 

In regards to data, effective churches...

1. Understand what motivates people to give them data.
2. Get the right data to the right people.
3. Keep the data fresh.
4. Ask good questions about the data.
5. Understand the real world well enough to interpret the data.

In regards to database systems, effective churches...

1. Work hard with the systems they have even while looking for better tools.
2. Understand the true cost of ownership of the systems.
3. Copy proven strategies in similar churches when implementing new systems.
4. Document their approach and work towards organizational consistency
5. Prove something works and is needed before automating it.

In regards to data-related personnel, effective churches have...

1. Executive awareness of data
2. Ministry Leaders who examine and value the data
3. Central administration of data
4. De-centralized entry of data when appropriate (at the ministry level).
5. Outside perspective on their data

The Back Door-What is it?

Leaders in very large churches love to talk about closing the back door.  Problem is, I think they mean different things.  I'm pretty sure they don't mean the normal situation when a family has to move out of the area.

Here's what I think they mean by the back door.

1. People who visit some and don't stick (retention failure)
2. People who stick for a while then fall away (atrophy).
3. People who become disillusioned or dissatisfied or are attracted elsewhere (transfer)

Some people I talk to seem to be completely focused on 1 and 2.  Some people are thinking mainly of 3.  Recently I read a discussion on a blog where I think there was a disconnect at exactly this point.

Let me give you some examples.

Retention Failure:

• A great family visited our church and didn't like the music, couldn't find a place to park, weren't greeted, or ________________________ (fill in the blank).
• A guy came with a girl he was trying to date.  He didn't succeed.  He never came back.
• A lady visited our church one Sunday and found one of our pastors and asked if we were a "black church".  The pastor said we are very diverse.  She ask if "those people" didn't have their own church.  She never came back.  We never went looking.

Atrophy:

• I met a family at our Discover Oasis (orientation).  They were incredibly cool.  They had been attending several nights each week.  They had a catholic background.  After a few weeks I don't know what happened.  They were just gone.
• An excited new believer loves to attend our church and has been coming for a few weeks.  She has a friend that goes to a Bible study at another church.  She asks me if it is ok for her to start going to that church and I tell her to go where God has given her relationships.
• A lady accepted Christ and started greeting at our church.  She was an enthusiastic new believer.  At some point soon after she started greeting she disclosed she was an exotic dancer.  Furthermore her image was about to be plastered on busses promoting the club where she worked  She had a big decision about whether to change her profession.  We counseled and encouraged her, and said we'd help transition.  At some point she jost stopped attending.  Don't know how that one worked out.  Maybe I'll visit the club to check (not).

Transfer:

• A single guy loves our church, but doesn't feel connected.  Our church is really not a place with other people at his stage in life.  He has been driving 30 minutes to attend each Sunday.  He tells the pastor he is going to go to another church.
• A family wants an AWANA program and our church isn't willing to let them start one.  Even though they are involved in many ways they tell the pastor they are going elsewhere.
• A couple commits to a ministry area that becomes too taxing.  They are embarassed that they can't continue so they disappear.
• A man who is committed to abortion rights for women hears our pastor speak about the sanctity of human life and the tragedy of abortion.  He leaves angrily.

Here are some questions that come to mind:

1. How does it change things in the case of retention and atrophy if we're talking Christians versus Non-Christians?
2. Do most people come to church because they are personally invited or do those who stick tend to be the ones who were personally invited?
3. Can we really discuss people leaving out the back door in such broad terms when it can have so many different expressions.
4. Are we really clued in on who is currently "in the church" well enough to have a meaningful discussion about who just went out the back door?
5. Do we know people well enough to personally ask them why they ducked out?
6. What does it mean to focus on the back door?  Does it mean to better understand the back door so we can decide if something can or should be done?  Does it mean to do things to stop people from leaving?

I realize Retention Failure, Atrophy, and Transfer make R.A.T.  That's just a coincidence.  I don't mean to make you think...

People who go out the back door are "R.A.T's"

I could have made it worse and ordered them "T.A.R" and you might have said...

We should T.A.R. and feather people who go out the back door.

I could have swaped the order and been far sweeter and made "A.R.T" which might be cool...

The A.R.T of understanding people who go out the back door.

At the end of the day I left it in the order I wrote it. 

I am going to write a few posts with reports that illustrate how you can see who might be at the back door or already out.  However, I think you should start by knowing who is currently IN THE CHURCH.  I'm going to begin with the assumption that even though we might decide to ignore the back door in many cases, we should at least understand what we are ignoring.

The Database Dilemma

How do we track the information we need for ministry when...

• The church isn't what it used to be.
• The family isn't what it used to be.

What thoughts popped into your head when I said the church isn't what it used to be?  Was it positive or negative?  How about with the family?

From the standpoint of our Church Management Systems (ChMS) it doesn't matter whether the changes are positive or negative.  The only question from the database's perspective is whether we are capturing the information we need to do the ministry we are called to do.

1. The church might be in many locations.
2. Ministry leaders now want direct access to information technology tools.
3. The nuclear family is now just a loose "household" (pun not intended, but intentionally left in)
4. People and churches both may have rejected the membership concept.

Ask yourself how your Church Management is making assumptions that are out of sync with your culture.

1. Does it present an ideal of what a famiy is rather than a reality?
2. Does it assume we meet once on Sunday morning for Bible Study then for Worship in just one location?
3. Does it make us call people members when we don't have membership?
4. Does it assume users will need 2 days of training?
5. Does it work best if the pastor just asks their secretary for information
6. Does it give you an infinte number of options for mailing, two options for emailing, and none for text messaging?

Let's face it.  There is probably a big disconnect between how you think about your ministry and how the folks who designed your software were thinking when they created it.

Your software may have an old perspective and your church may have more flavors of families than Baskin Robins.  Your ministries may refuse to get aligned around a single way to do things.  You may need a new ChMS, but I promise you the journey to that day and the switch to a new system will be easier if you simplify things in the ChMS you have now.

Let me make a few examples:

1. Store just one address per person/family.
2. Store just one email per person.
3. Don't let anyone create any types of phone numbers other than home, cell, work, fax, pager.
4. Implement new functionality on the basis of a proven approach in use by a real church, not on the basis of a sales demo or a vague mandate from leadership.  Get comfortable pushing back for clarity!
5. Don't worry about the odd person in the family who isn't really realted to them, but attends with them.
6. Leave 18-year-olds in the household until someone says they need to be moved.
7. Don't purge people unless you have crazy performance issues.
8. Don't try to track the results of a church-wide survey your pastor threw together on a whim.
9. Don't try to manually inventory every aspect of a person's life then spit out three jobs (sorry ministry positions) they might like.  It won't work nearly as well as just calling the person and emailing them a few jobs you actually need people to do this week.
10. Inactivate and ignore ALL records that show no signs of activity in a long time.  If they show activity not so long ago, print off their names and tell the pastors you will have to inactivate them if you don't hear back from someone they are still involved.  Do this monthly for 3 years and I bet something might eventually happen.
11. Focus on the acuracy and consistency of the records of people who are ACTUALLY attending.
12. Come up with just one simple way to define participation in ministry.
13. Let one ministry create a single group for EVERYONE they serve and don't sweat the fact that in real life they are breaking into small groups or teams.
14. Sit people down and ask them to look at the data with you.  Ask them to tell you what has meaning for them and how they use it now.  Focus on what has meaning to them.

Sometimes we spend our time working on the exceptions or causing people to follow complex procedures that just don't have that much added value.  It isn't that our goal is bad. It's just that it is nearly impossible to accomplish the goal given the assumptions of the tool and the reality of our changing ministry environment.

Sometimes we can push for a comprehensive and uniform process, other times we just need to push for adoption of basic standards.  Don't let the exceptions frustrate the bigger picture of getting things done.  Don't let the exception that rules your thinking scare the user away from the tool.

I'm not saying anything goes, I'm saying that we ask for the least amount of compliance possible and focus our efforts on oversight, auditing, and documentation.  Let the issues and exceptions surface.  Champion consistency and simplicity in your database.

This is worth repeating...

Give up some of the nuances you think might be important when you believe they may diminish the acceptance you need to succeed.  You may need a new ChMS, but I promise you the switch will be easier if you simplify things in the ChMS you have now.

Integration Between Financials & People

Many churches use specialized software systems the assist the church in organizing financial data and people data.  These Church Management Systems (ChMS) have been around for many years.  New ones come along regularly, but only a few take hold. 

The more traditional systems handle tasks in both the "back office" and in the "front lines" of ministry.  However, they primarily do this through surrogates (the church secretary gets information for the pastor).  Both back-office and ministry task are handled by the suite of applications that make up the system.  They store both types of data in the same database. 

My church uses Shelby v5 for both Financials and People at this time.  The reasons are simple.  The data is stored in an Microsoft SQL Server and the price is right.

This week I was asked once again for my thoughts in regard to a choice churches face when looking at new Church Management Systems (ChMS).  Their question is about divorcing the financial and people data.  Letting the back office do it's thing in one system and the ministry team do their thing in another.

This question presupposes they are in some way unhappy with their current system.  They are probably MORE unhappy with one side over the other.  Alternatively, they may simply have found a "killer tool" they like for managing one side and it doesn't do the other side.

When I answer this question I begin from the premise that if one tool did everything really well that would certainly be best since it would mean:

1. One vendor to work with
2. One system to train on
3. One set of software requirements and issues
4. Some level of interactivity between Finances and People data and tasks
5. One user model with only one account per team member

However, the next thing I always say is:

How good is the integration between Finances and People in your current system?

1. Usually I see some synergy at the point of contacts (people) and user accounts that are needed in both financial areas like payroll and accounts payable.  Those same people are needed in the ministry side as they attend the church.
2. Usually I see some synergy between Contributions and General Ledger as it becomes easier to transmit data as a journal entry to the GL.  The same might be said of event payments.

I would argue that as important as these two things are, I don't think they are enough reason to limp along in one area or the other if your needs aren't being met.

In particular, I feel strongly that your financial data needs to be in a tool that can handle your size and complexity.  Very large, mega-churches may find that the financial side is cumbersome if they have more than 7 or 8 people working at a time.  They may find the reporting tools unacceptable.  They may also find that the tools needed to manage a high volume of transactions are simply not there.  Smaller churches may find something simple like Quickbooks is much more affordable, easily maintained.  They may have several lay people familiar with Quickbooks whereas another system may represent a higher learning curve.

On the people side, I believe the software you use should be something a trusted lay person can safely engage without much training.  I feel it should transparently reflect your ministry structure.  This would include campuses, ministries, programs, groups, and events.  More importantly, the people side of things should have a very strong focus on communications.

At the end of the day, the people side of information management in a church often boils down to being able to track what you need to track, communicate well, check people into events, and process contributions.  It also needs to promote collaboration between paid and unpaid members of the church's ministry teams.

There are many other things that matter, but those things are fundamental.  As a church grows, it may find that it is struggling in several of these key areas. The bottom line, split the two if you must to grow and include more people in the process!

It would be harder for me to take this position if anyone had acheived proper integration between these two areas.  Integration between financial and people data should extend beyond shared addresses and names.  It should go farther than transmission of journal entries. 

Our churches are organized into ministries.  Multi-site churches are organized further into campuses. The integration between financial data and people data should happen at this point.  The ministry structure of the church should be reflected once.  All information of both types should be related to that structure directly or indirectly.  This sort of integration would have a huge value and it would make the proposition of splitting the two areas of information management much more complex.  The value we might lose would be far more evident to me if I could look at one place and answer the questions:

1. How are my ministries doing?
2. How are my campuses (sites) doing?
3. And by extension, how is my church doing?

Traditional Church Management Systems fall short at the fundamental point of properly reflecting our ministry structure in a single, central location.

It would be nice to find a commercially available system that did finances, facilities, events, people, and communications so well that nothing else would be needed.  Until then, the belief that we simply must keep our finances and our people software in the same place has to take a back seat to getting ministry done with the ministers we have engaged as much as possible.