Have our recent blog articles inspired you to look for a complete church management system that fits your congregation’s needs and will enable you to manage your church effectively without taking too much of your time?
We hope you consider infoodle church management software – the perfect cloud-based software solution for churches of all sizes and denominations. infoodle can help you support your congregation, track finances, plan services, conduct events, roster volunteers, and so much more! Our mission is to empower churches around the world to grow, develop more committed members, and serve their communities in the best possible way.
Last week we discussed some of the most important features to look for when you decide to invest in church management software. Today we’d like to revisit them to show how you can use these tools within infoodle, as well as give you examples of how they help our existing clients.
Managing people
Even if you only have the basic infoodle CRM package, you can can already do so much! Our centralised database system allows you to store contact details of members & attenders. Many of our clients, including St. Peter’s in the City, use infoodle primarily to capture and maintain the details of their congregation. In addition to having an accurate picture of every member or visitor, they can also see their involvement with the church, add pastoral care notes & task reminders (in case a follow up is needed). Golden Sands Baptist use the Notes adding feature as well, so there’s no need to rely on remembering all the details of conversations. Whangarei Anglican Church also use infoodle to create various types of groups (ministry related, such as Flower Arrangers, Servers and other volunteers, or those united by common interests). When people are added, a group leader is notified about the new participants and can arrange a welcome for them. In this post from a while ago, you can find more tips on maximising the use of your infoodle database!
Communicating with members
infoodle CRM enables you to communicate effectively via emails and text messages. It is easy to send out your newsletters, invitations to events, or any other information because all your contacts are stored in one place. If you want to communicate with just one segment of your congregation, select a group and send private emails to everyone. Apart from sending regular newsletters, you can also share attachments, video or audio files, and even send rosters to your volunteers. Thus, you members are always provided with accurate and timely information. Besides, infoodle keeps a history of all the communication that has gone out to individuals on their profile page (including their replies). All of this allows you to save time and increase productivity.
Managing Finances
In addition to providing you with access to clerical information, infoodle offers several add-on packages, such as Finance. You can easily manage tithes and offerings, accept online donations, issue statements or tax receipts, and generate financial reports for board meeting or AGM. infoodle also provides a fully automated integration with Xero accounting software.
For faith-based organisation located in the United Kingdom, there’s an option to add our Gift Aid Plus package to make claiming funds from HMRC fast and easy. In the words of our our client Through Faith Missions,
“Managing donations and donor records [in infoodle] saves a huge amount of time, allowing us to concentrate on the actual charity rather than admin – a great benefit as staff time is always precious.”
Managing events
Another fantastic add-on package that churches appreciate is our Events package that allows you to plan your services, coordinate your events, capture registrations, check room bookings, check in children and visitors, track attendance, roster volunteers, print name tags and so much more. Check out this article on managing events with infoodle for a more detailed walkthrough of all the features our Events package has to offer: from creating a Calendar with all the important dates to displaying your event information via Activity Boards. Finally, you are even able to manage events in real time with Live Event Manager, make changes to the schedule and easily communicate them to your volunteers.
Managing items and resources
Many of our prospective clients are in need of a secure cloud-based system where they can safely keep documentation. For this, use the Libraries package designed to help you manage digital and physical items! Attach files to profile pages, store documents, create resource libraries, and set up the kiosk to check out and check items on loan (such as books, DVDs or toys). Bayside Community Church, for example, use this module to store and make available key church documents like policies and procedures, Working With Children check registrations, attendance at training courses, archived newsletters and such.
To conclude, infoodle is currently supporting over 500 churches, faith-based organisations and charities in New Zealand and beyond. It’s highly customisable and accessible anywhere from any device. infoodle helps you save time with only one system to maintain, just like in the case of the Roman Catholic Metropolitan Cathedral of the Sacred Heart using the system for a variety of needs, including:
- Maintain their membership database
- Keeping records of visits to the sick and housebound
- Special messages to younger volunteers on their birthday
- Planned giving and special collection donations (using envelope numbers)
- Significant fundraising project
- Volunteer Group involvements and communicating on a group by group basis where necessary.
- Donations by credit card (via Stripe) and the associated website donation scripts.
How can infoodle help your church?
Watch the demo or book a call with our team to learn more!
