Monthly Archive for September, 2009

On Layby Reporting

Of late, I’ve been developing a system for managing the reporting of layby for our members.

The Layby Package [i'm just going to go with that name] is a really a set of database and merge document that allows a congregation to deliver to its members an overview of their giving, either quarterly, bi-annually, or annually.

The key to the whole package is the record keeping. At The Park [The Magnolia Park Church of Christ], the leadership was planning on implementing a giving campaign to coincide with the already existing building fund plan. The result was a system that was first implemented at the Hallandale Beach Church of Christ – the Victory Campaign. Their plan included a campaign brochure, a presentation, and a pledge card. For The Park, I designed a campaign folio, a presentation, a pledge card, a reminder card, as well as the quarterly statement which outlined each individuals giving for the quarter as well as where they stood in relation to their initial pledge.

Now, the Quarterly statement really began in December, 2007, as we were trying to roll out the official yearly statements for members. We decided that in addition to giving them the official statement with the church seal and everything, it would be nice to let each member see exactly what they gave each week. This, in turn, was well received, as many people were surprised to see the peaks and valleys in their giving throughout various times of the year. At the start of 2008 a decision was made that the initial statement would be developed further to include many elements that would be useful to the member. The Following were added for the first quarter statement:

  1. My Statement Summary – The statement summary includes an overall synopsis for the quarter, letting the member see their Total given, the congregations giving total, Their total given shown as a percentage of overall congregation total, their Weekly Average, their ranking amongst all givers, and finally, The Forecast of their giving for the remaining three quarters, based on current weekly average.
  2. My 13-Week Report – A charted representation of the quarter with the date and corresponding amount given.
  3. My Total Amount Given – Pretty much self explanatory.
  4. My Average Per Week Giving – The average given as a funtion of overall total divided by the 13 week quarter.
  5. My Personal Rank – We show a ranking that allows the member to see exactly where they stand numerically. We based the number on qualifying givers.
  6. My 52 Week Forecast – The 52 Week forecast is a total number for the year based on their current weekly average spun forward for the rest of the year.
  7. My 13-Week High – The 13-week High shows the Largest amount given in any one week. No provision is given for same high given in multiple weeks.
  8. My 13-Week Low – The 13-week Low shows the Lowest amount given in any one week. As with the 13-week high, no provision is given for same low given in multiple weeks.
  9. Congregation Total – The congregation total is a whole sum of givings for the quarter by all members for all collections.
  10. My Percentage – The percentage function is a showing of the members impact on the overall total given for the quarter.
  11. The Top 10 Givers – The Top 10 Givers for the quarter shows just that – The Top 10 Givers; No totals, just names.
  12. Graphical Overview – Lastly, we give a graphical overview of the quarter in terms of congregational giving, the overall average per Sunday, and the Per Sunday total. In the future we plan to make use of the Google Charts API to build individual graphical representations for each member, as well as an internet application for congregations.

In the Future, we look to build an internet application that shows the same information for each member.

What do you think? Is this something that you think your congregation could use? What, if any, layby reporting mechanisms do you use?

Published 2 years, 4 months ago in Ministry Tools. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Quick Notes on the Brotherhood

I’m beginning to work on the Reach Analysis for the 2010 Christian Acappella Music Awards, and, while doing so I’ve found some very interesting statistics concerning the congregations that are predominately black in the Southern and Northeastern regions of the United States of America.

  1. Of the 13,700 total congregations of the Church of Christ located stateside, there are only 91 predominately black congregations with 300 members or more.
  2. There are 103,358 members attending 998 congregations in the southern and northeastern regions of the United States.
  3. In the southern and Northeastern regions of the US, there are four states which have no predominately black congregations of the Church of Christ (Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont).
  4. There are 3 states with at least 100 congregations in the 2 regions studied – Alabama (118), Tennessee (141), & Texas (231).
  5. There are 7 states which have fewer than 10 congregations statewide – Connecticut (2), Massachusetts (3), New Jersey (9), Pennsylvania (6), Delaware (2), Virginia (7), and West Virginia (1).

Good Times

Published 2 years, 5 months ago in Ministry Tools. 0 Comments Tags: , .

CAMA Planning – Week 6

We’ve reached a general milestone in the planning of the 2010 show – our 6 week planning progress stop. Quite a lot has happened in the last 6 weeks as far as the planning for CAMA is concerned. In addition, we’ve made some great strides when it comes to the overall strategic push we look forward to readying for next month.

In terms of task planning, there have been quite a few stops along the way for us when looking a what exactly we are going to undergo first.

In terms of developing a true operations strategy, we’ve decided to develop a few RFP’s to deliver in the next month or so. When completed, we looked to try to contract for a show producer, a vendor relations manager, as well as a printer.

In the short term, there is the Power of One concert that we should be attending on the 26th of this month, as well as the Southeastern Lectureship that should have representation.

Until then, Good Times!

Published 2 years, 5 months ago in CAMA 2010. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Developing with Prototypes

In the short term, I am working on a couple of ministry tools for download on this site. This has given me a lot of needed practice in the idea of Prototyping, the art of building a working rough draft.

Interesting to me is the idea of needing to develop a prototype of what is essentially paper crafts, but I’ve chosen to use the process to have what I feel is a dry run or personal pre-release. Each document carries a different purpose, and so, there are inherently different uses for prototyping.

For example, I, of course, am not a performing artist, and therefore the Gig set list and Artist Sales Tracker are really just documents I’m using in a simulated fashion, imaging that I am in either situation. For other documents, like the Bible Study Module, I am actually using this in a practice and am actively revising certain elements by the minute. Just recently, I’ve realized that I would like to have an element that allowed me to track the time I’ve spent studying, and so that is a piece that I’ll be including.

Another piece that is important to me is building something that is accessible and would not require any other modifications from the end-user. This, to me, means that I’ll probably be releasing soft-versions of all of my documents and also continuously updating documents.

Finally, I have an extreme interest in developing online counterparts to each of these pieces, so I’ll also be looking at the software side of prototyping.

Good Times

Published 2 years, 5 months ago in Ministry Tools. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

A Ministry Framework

I’ve been looking forward to writing on this topic for some time now, but have only now gotten around to actually sitting down and taking the time to organize my thoughts for this particular post.

The Idea of ministry management has become a major sticking point for me as I’ve come to believe that ministry can and should work a whole lot better in the engagement of the members of any particular congregation. Congregations, for the most part, have come to take on the idea that individuality saves the day. However, what I really wanted to do was simply create a working model that could be used as a possible framework for training and development purposes.

So, A Framework?

Well, I continue to feel like the best way to understand anything is to actually learn by doing, and since I couldn’t go out and become minister of an actually congregation, or lead a brotherhood, I figure the next best thing has to be trying to work on building a systematic model of what a brotherhood would look like, with congregations of various backgrounds and standings. I wanted to build something that was both easily understandable, yet at the same time was built with a sense of reality, that a user could imagine being at any particular congregation within the brotherhood.

Schematics

In developing my faux brotherhood, I took into consideration a few things that I felt were necessary elements in building something that was feasibly understandable. Looking for ways to make this whole project manageable in the long run, I set in place some parameters for my brotherhood.

  1. The local brotherhood could have no more than 15 congregations – I actually came in under the allocation of 15 congregations (13), leaving two out for future purposes. I chose the number 15 as a limit because I didn’t want the entire process to become so expansive as to limit functionality. In a very large local brotherhood with every congregation having fully developed, active ministries, I just felt that planning, even fake planning, would become a task too major to handle effectively.
  2. I would stick to realistic numbers for the brotherhood – You aren’t going to typically find a brotherhood with massive attendance numbers, so I really wanted to stick to the reality of the actual brotherhood numbers. In writing The Music Ministry Guide, I did a lot of research on the brotherhood-at-large and realized that the total brotherhood is not as large as I thought, and so, my planning reflects that.
  3. Financial Numbers should reflect actual trends – I built my own scale using financial data that I found at various congregations. Basically, I looked at membership numbers and total giving, and built a simple formula for individual member giving per week and then simply expanded it forward for an entire year.

Now, all of this really is extensive when you understand the actually scope and focus of this research and modeling, and that is simply to develop a single congregation model. I wanted to develop a single congregation for training and development purposes, but when I began building the framework for Griffin Lake church of Christ, I quickly realized that a congregation can’t stand alone, and must therefore be a part of a larger brotherhood. The more I thought about it, the more the reality of an entire brotherhood being built looked feasible.

Now that I have a simple framework to build the rest of my model on, I’ve looked to start planning out the rest of the project. I figure to begin working on the rest of the project immediately.

Griffin Lake Ministry Module 1

Published 2 years, 5 months ago in Ministry Tools. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

5 Things every Music Ministry Should Do

If you have a music ministry, then it’s time for you and your group to get out there and start making things happen. With all of the resources out there, there is no excuse for your group to lag in these particular areas.

This particular list is simple a starting point, as I intend to continue to push forward with ways in which every ministry can thrive and become what they envision themselves being.

This list can be found as a part of the ministry marketing resource guide that I introduced in the Week 2 CAMA Planning summary. You can download it there and read up on other ideas for your music ministry.

On to the List…

1. Start tracking your sales

This is probably going to be the easiest of all the things to do this year, but it is also the most essential to your particular ministry. Sales tracking is important to ministry management because, when done correctly, it can provide a snapshot of the ministry at any given point. Tracking can be as simple as writing on a sheet of the paper the following:

  1. Date
  2. Location
  3. Name of Product (in the case of multiple products)
  4. Number of Products sold.
  5. Price of Products
  6. Net Profit

Now, the key to keeping good records is to take the data as it is collected and input it into a spreadsheet that can keep track of various sets of information. The Type of information collected will determine the scope of the research you can do in the future.

2. Build an Identification System

One of the great things about your music ministry is individuality. I’ve personally gone to concerts where two groups can sing the same song but sound totally different. Individuality is what makes your ministry what it is, and there is nothing more impor-tant to the cause of being seen as an individual than to have an identity system.

For the local group, an identity system is essential as its components are basically the first things that people will see when looking at your brand. A standard identity system consists of a coordinated letterhead, envelope and business card. In expanding upon this idea, you could go ahead and develop a logo to really bring home the nature of your brand.

3. Develop an Internet Presence

Now, there was a time not too long ago when having a web presence meant just having a website. These days, with the emergence of social networking sites, it is not that necessary to have a top-level domain site of your own [i.e. nacama.com], in-stead, there are a number of options available so that you can have a genuine presence on the internet. Sites like myspace© and facebook™ are perfectly alright when used properly, but, with a little more research, you can find plenty of niche sites that offer ample space to host photos and other things. The Key is to put together an internet strategy for your group beforehand and don’t be quick to just post a profile on every site you see. A simple plan to follow to get started is this:

  • E-Mail Address – This can be as simple as yourgroupname@host.com, or for a little money, management@yourgroupname.com. The second can be achieved by purchasing a domain name and utilizing free services like google apps to host your dedicated mail. The Best thing about having your own domain name is that every member of the group can have their own personal email address pointing to your-groupname.com. Gmail.com is probably the best for groups to use. They’re free and offer basically limitless space to save your email.
  • Personal Website – Blogs are really big these days, and actually, for groups, this is probably the best way to go. You can keep fans informed by posting photos from concerts as well as info on future concert dates, and ticket information. With a little help, you can also setup a shop to sell your products online directly from your site.

    Perhaps the best thing about a blog is that most are free to host and simple to maintain. Sites like wordpress.com and blogspot.com offer free websites and for a little extra, you can have the blog point to yourgroupname.com. For those who are a little more advanced, there’s wordpress.org and joomla that offer DIY solutions for groups that want to produce their own site. Whatever you choose, look at what best fits in to your overall strategy.

  • Photo Sharing – These days, it’s not good enough to just be heard, people want to see the action also. You can host all of your photos online for fans too see and comment on at various site. Flickr is a site that offers the ability to group photos and connect with other users. They offer a free service that allows you to post up to 200 photos, or a premium service for $24.99 annually that allows for unlimited uploads and also the posting of short videos. Other sites for sharing photos include:

    SmugMug – fee-based photo sharing site [smugmug.com]

    Flickr – Offers free and Premium photo sharing solutions [flickr.com]

    Snapfish – offers free image hosting and sharing [snapfish.com]

  • Video Hosting – Pretty much everyone knows of Youtube™, the site that allows for posting and sharing videos, but there are many others out there that are infinitely better.

    Youtube – Offers video hosting and broadcasting. Strong emphasis on video channels. [youtube.com]

    Vimeo – Offers hosting of HD quality videos. [vimeo.com]

4. Start A Fan Club

This Is the Year to start a fan club for all your fans. Now, it’s fairly easy to dismiss the idea of having a fan club if you only think in terms of young pop star fan societies. But, the reality is that a ‘fan’ club is an intriguing marketing opportunity that will allow you to engage fans on a more intimate basis. Another thing to consider is that this doesn’t have to be a paid fan club, no, you’re simply trying to stay connected and relevant in the mind of those who follow you.

One good place to get started is at the community portal site, ning.com. At ning.com, you can start your very own social network, allowing members of your particular network to have their very own profile page that ties directly into your network. The good thing is that this will allow you to disseminate information across a more broad cross-section of followers.

Now, you’re probably asking how this is different from just having a website. Well, while a website is a great promotional tool, they tend to be static in nature, that is to say, they don’t tend to be updated as often as maybe even a conventional blog would. This creates a problem in that sites that don’t generate content as often are generally unable to continue to draw fans back in after the initial visit. A social net-working site, on the other hand, has the built-in feature of allowing interactivity through the creation of fans individual profiles. So, while your content may not change for a few days or weeks, or even months, the fans investment into the network will continue to bring them back to the site. Add to this the ability to host the network at a top-level domain, say, club-mygroup.com, or some other neat name, and you have the continuous stream of people who, every time they visit your site, pay to you the name recognition that you’ve built. That’s equity!

5. Start Planning A Tour

Note: Since the publication of the Music Ministry Guide back in March, I’ve decided to rename this “Start Planning a Tour”, instead of Plan a Tour. The Start planning change is reflective upon the fact that it is tough work attempting to travel the road, much more difficult than I gave credit to initially. As Such, I plan to devote an entire article to tour planning as well as introduce some tools that will hopefully assist in the execution of the tour. Ok, as you were…

The Last thing you should be doing this year is planning to go on tour. Touring is a time honored tradition that dates back to, well… I have no idea, and yet still, touring is something that every group should aspire to do at some point.

Now, planning a tour involves a number of factors, not the least of which is building a budget for your excursion. A lot of your planning will deal with the aspects that you can control;

  • Housing Expense
  • Food Expense
  • Travel Expenses – Including Gas and vehicle rental if necessary.
  • Outlay for Promotional Materials – Written in the previous section was the idea of producing your own promotional materials.

Well then, I hope this was informative and that someone was enlightened by these simple nuggets of info. I am currently planning to expand on each one of these areas in a future post, providing links to even more resources and ideas for your ministry.

Agree? Disagree? Let me know; leave a comment.

Good Times

Published 2 years, 5 months ago in Ministry Tools. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Quick Poll – CAMA

Just a quick Poll, nothing special.

Published 2 years, 5 months ago in CAMA 2010. 0 Comments Tags: .

CAMA Planning – Week 4

And so, the dog days of summer are nearing a close, and that means that we’ll be in full-scale working mode in the next few weeks. Until then, however, we’ve begun looking at various projects to take on while we are planning our Fall/Winter marketing rollout.

A couple of drafted Ads were submitted this week to the Southeastern Lectureship, happening next month in Valdosta, Georgia. Plans are also being finalized for the printing of simple promotional pieces. I’m beginning to work on developing our color scheme and possibly a logo set for the CAMA 10 show that will coincide with the website. But, we’ll see. In the mean time, I am planning to continue to develop the master list of committees and projects that need to begin coming together.

Published 2 years, 5 months ago in CAMA 2010. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

CAMA Planning – Week 3

Week three has been all about trying to organize the processes that will hopefully allow the Christian Acappella Music Awards planning committee to run smoothly in the coming months.

The only major update of actual note is that of the website @ nacama.com that has undergone a simple redesign as we continue to develop the website that will be released in November, 2009. At the site we’ve begun uploading various music clips to see where we want to go with the process. It is our hope that the new release of the website will house our entire library of media and allow users to access all of this media in various formats, be it streaming or even downloading in some cases.

In the coming week, it is our plan to begin filling out the marketing plan and developing the gameplan for our campaigns for the first of the new year. Hopefully in the coming weeks we’ll have an entirely revamped website and a strong CAMA 2010 Marketing strategy to go along with it.

Published 2 years, 5 months ago in CAMA and Design. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .