If you are not part of the discussion over at the ChMS Google group (Church Management System), then you are missing out. Tony and I have discussed lately ways to increase awareness of various discussions on that list and I am going to probably be more involved in that discussion and try to bring some of the info here.
For starters, I asked the question about any low cost or no cost(open source) ChMS and the question I posed was as follows:
Is it possible for a mainstream ChMS, such as ACS or F1, to offer a
barebones product, maybe just a child checkin product, for minimal
cost? This is, as opposed to the full package. I know that there is
some tiered pricing out there, but I’m talking about extremely bare
bones and extemely low cost.
Maybe there would be limits on functionality, but the idea is to establish the relationship with the church and build on that. As the church grows, they are aware of the fact that their costs for this service/application will increase, but the bottom line is, thru this process, the church has more than likely entered in most of their families, due to child check in. Obviously, the church could export their data and go to a competitor, but it’s the ChMS provider’s job to maintain the relationship and support throughout this introductory period.
There are low cost, entry level type ChMS’s, but the idea would be a scalable solution that would provide a seamless solution for the church. In reply to my question, Kevin pointed out the he has heard talk of Fellowship offering a low cost, entry level solution and also that ACS offers a free solution to church plants, which is not advertised.
Dave Stone added his thoughts:
So, if we’re going to talk low- or no-budget ChMS, I’d be interested in a “top ten” list of functions that would generate the greatest value. Here’s my stab:
1. email address list
2. a tool to send out well-formatted email messages to those in above list
3. mailing address list
4. phone number list
5. mail merge connection between above lists and MS Office or Open Office
6. contribution tracking and reporting system
7. grouping capability in above lists (music team, attenders,
ushers/roadies, etc.)
8. basic 1-page well-designed website offering contact information
9.
10.
That’s a pretty good list, even though it’s not quite 10. He goes on to suggest maybe accounts payable/receivable functionality.
In conversations with my own church and with others, the over-riding priority is secure child check-in and through that, an email address list could be established, among other kinds of lists. To somewhat borrow from Dave’s list, here’s mine:
- secure child check-in
- contact management, including email, telephone and mailing list
- bonus: volunteer management/Spiritual gift mapping
I’m pretty sure you can browse the ChMS discussion without joining, so go check it out. You might as well join, while you’re at it and contribute your $0.02. There are other points that I will bring out in the near future.
What’s on your short list for an entry level ChMS?
A basic one to two page website with email lists would work for a ton of the smaller churches out there, and even for the many churches that are a simple planted church that just need to get a face out there.
I would think though that it would be hosted (to minimize costs) and then have an easy enough interface and work both with MS Office and Open Office products so that every budget level of the smaller churches could be met.
A place for people to submit comments/questions/volunteer request/tithes & offerings would also be a good aspect of this, but would probably be better served as an add on module that could then be added if the budget is there from the respective assembly.
Hi Jim,
There are multiple good quality ChMS’s in the open-source arena. I would look at Sourceforge.net to find them.
Personally I represent Open Source Church (OSC) on sourceforge at http://sourceforge.net/projects/osc. The commercial offering for this is at http://www.churchledger.com. ChurchLedger also offers a Church Website/Portal hosting solution called Ecclasia.
I think there are already a great number of Open Source Solutions. If I was a proprietary church software solution, I’d be shaking in my boots.
I do agree with the poster above, basic email lists can work wonders.
Hey all! Great discussion going on! Open Source is the way to go for churches!
If you’re looking for a low-cost, highly secure, feature rich child check in system, please feel free to check out our product, Digital Guardian, at http://www.dgcheckin.com. It is entirely web-based and will grow as your church does. It was specifically design to do one thing well: child check in. The monthy fee is lower than any other system out there, but it doesn’t skimp on the features. Not only that, the monthly cost doesn’t increase as your church does. We want small, mid-sized churches to be able to use the system without breaking their pocket book.
The system is completely PHP/MySQL. Does barcode scanning the thermal printing. Our company thrives on relationships with other churches. It’s the only way to make a system better. Please contact me if you would like more information.
Jason Matteson
President/Developer
Digital Guardian Check In, LLC
jason@dgcheckin.com
If you are looking for church software you also might want to look at N-Spire. http://www.nspiresoftware.com or look at their blog at http://www.insidenspire.com
For over a year I have been observing the trend – convergence of Church Management Software (CMS) and web content management services. Because the CMS programs are moving online as solutions. Church Management Software have gone beyond the boundaries as a customer relationship management system and include website building, mail merge, volunteer management, event scheduling, discussion boards, online help system, contribution and batch tracking.