I know there's a lot of software out there for managing a database of members/visitors information - some web-based, some not.
What do you guys suggest to look for in such a system?
I know there's a lot of software out there for managing a database of members/visitors information - some web-based, some not.
What do you guys suggest to look for in such a system?
Funny You Should Ask
Funny you should ask this....MF and I are going thru this as we speak for our church. They're using an old, terrible, management system and we're in the process of searching for a replacement.
So far, the leader on our list is Fellowship Technologies (www.fellowshiptechnologies.com). They seem to be the industry leaders and offer very scalable packages.
MF, care to chime in on this one when you get a chance and share some criteria that you've had in mind as we've looked for a new solution?
Anyone out there have good recommendations of thier own? Please share your experiences about Church Management Systems here...
-Rob Feature
Geeks and God Co-Host
www.bobchristenson.com
Voodoo Mind Reading Skills
that's great news! we are undergoing the same process.
a friend of mine is using Logos II at his church and he really likes it.
--
Frankie
Digital Media Coordinator
Living Hope Church
Owner/Web Designer
Artisan Gate Web Solutions
Another Member/Contribution management option
A more modest package that seems to work well networked for small-mid sized churches is Church Windows.
http://churchwindows.com
It looks somewhat dated compared to some of the other
offerings, but for our church:
Mark
Free OSS solution
ChurchInfo is still early in its development, but it's a pretty solid basic system, and it's an architecture any Drupal fan will appreciate: it runs on Apache with PHP middleware and MySQL back end. Michael Wilt, the developer, built in interfaces for schema modification and customization without having to know a lot of SQL.
It's a bit tricky to implement, but help is available.
http://www.churchdb.org
Rob in Memphis
the interface
Rob,
This looks promising. I have looked at it and like where it's going. I see some of the common church use cases which is very good. The interface is not overly cluttered yet it has the info I think is often sought after in churches.
A thought though. What about updating the interface? The interface, to me, seems very web 1.0ish and the direction of the web is 2.0ish. You might want to tweak the interface for that extra X factor.
There is, also, having an easy to get to file backup. I see that there is a database backup (I like that); but, what about a files backup of things like a persons picture? If you use PHP 5 you can take advantage of zip functions and make the download a compressed file.
There there is financial tracking. Every week churches record who donates how much and provide and end of year record for tax recording reasons.
Oh, and what if javascript is turned off or not available? It should gracefully degrade.
This is definitely a good start. I hope to see it become a killer app.
Matt Farina
Geeks and God Co-Host
www.mattfarina.com
Church Windows
This is an excellent full-service program. It looks dated because they want it to be able to run on older computer equipment if needed, as many churches rely on donated computers.
Ekklesia 360
I recently ran across Ekklesia 360. It appears to be a very Web 2.0 solution for member management & content management.
I know Rob & Matt really love what Drupal offers for church CMS's, as do I, but does anyone have first-hand experience with this system? It seems to be a pretty advanced all-in-one solution, but also with a hefty price tag.
--
Frankie
Digital Media Coordinator
Living Hope Church
see it
I've seen Ekklesia 360 in action and there are some pretty slick sites out there using it. But, it's not free to just go download. And, the options aren't there to develop add ons for it.
So, in my world as a developer who likes to (and sometimes needs to) do custom work this isn't flexible enough. Oh, and it's not free.
Though, I'll admit... for what it does it looks slick. Though, I think a lot of that is that they have good designers do the sites. That makes a huge difference.
Matt Farina
Geeks and God Co-Host
www.mattfarina.com
Fcchurch
I am curenly working on a new church mangment program that is based with in Firstclass. Firstclass is a email, colaberate system that works on window linux and mac
If you got any questions just ask
Jordann
Another Resource on ChMS
There are a couple of good resources with information on Church Management Systems (ChMS).
A great place to start is with Tony Dye's blog. Tony is the Church IT guy at Perimeter Church in Atlanta. He has written several posts about ChMS issues and products.
I think that he also is the moderator of the ChMS Discussion Google Group. This group has a lot of discussion about best practices, new products, how to choose a ChMS product, etc.
Last week, two open source products were mentioned:
3CMS" and Kool - the church tool. 3CMS is a system that runs on Windows Server. Kool - the church tool runs on PHP and MySQL, and has hooks to be connected to the TYPO3 CMS if you want to integrate your ChMS with your CMS.
I am not aware of any ChMS that is designed to connect to Drupal out of the box.
F1 2 thumbs up
We've been using Fellowship One for 2 years now ... I'm a big fan of software-as-a-service (SaaS).
The 2 other big players are Shelby and ACS. All 3 of these vendors have products that scale from small to large churches.
Ditto on finding great ChMS stuff on Tony's blog.
If you like the open source route check out web empowered church ... runs on typo3 and is being developed by churches for churches.
Jason
I'll defer
I need to defer to Jason and Matt on the quality of these projects. I have never worked with any of them.
Plus, I find that Jason and Matt are great resources for information. If you have not checked out Jason's blog, it is worth a gander. Just seeing his church's set up for baptisms is pretty amazing.
John
Free Ones Need Work
I've looked at a bunch of the free open sourced ChMS and I'm not impressed. They are a work in progress and may work for some of the tech savvy people but they are not a good all around solution for your average church leader. I'm thinking that systems like Fellowship One are a much more cost and time effective way to go at this point.
Matt Farina
Geeks and God Co-Host
www.mattfarina.com