Ten Church Database feature/function wishes

What are your big complaints about Church Database products?  What things do you most wish the vendors would change?  Here's my list of 10 "reasonable" things I'd like to see changed.  The good news: at least a few of the vendors have good solutions, or partial solutions, to at least some of these.

1. No more "modules" - one simple interface with menus/tabs for the different functions
The whole concept of loading and exiting the different parts of the system, over and over in the course of normal operations, is archaic.  Maybe that's what needs to happen under the covers, but the user shouldn't have to deal with it.

2. Screen layout based on user functions, not underlying database tables
The user interface should group fields based on the function, regardless of how the data is stored.  As with #1 above, don't make the user switch modules to perform a normal function.

3. CRM capabilities - documenting contacts, activity
Bring note-taking functionality to the top; make it so easy to track "touches" with a member that it becomes automatic.

4. CRM capabilities - database as core of "communications center"
Closely related to #3 focus on communication between the staff and the congregation.  Sending letters, emails, or initiating phone calls, should be functionality initiated directly from the Church Management System without any need (or thought) of extracting to some other system.  Take away one more excuse to have a copy of parts of the database.

5. Roles-based access; don't show what a role doesn't allow; simple roles have simple views
Map the user security function into the user interface such that staff members easily/automatically see *only* the data and functions that apply to the role they serve. 

6. Hyperlinks from people to groups to people
Maybe this would be better stated as "link everything that can be linked."  If you're displaying information about a person, show all the connections to any sort of group that person is in, and make those connections hyperlinks.  Click on a group and see everybody else in that group.  And, of course, have hyperlinks to each of those people so you can quickly jump around from a person, to a group that person is in, to other people in that group, to other groups those other people are in.

7. User-friendly Query builder
We have a church database because we want to be able to store data about our congregation.  AND we want to be able to retrieve it in a variety of different ways that don't fit the model of a few pre-defined reports.  Provide a tool that lets a *typical* user pull out the data they need without having to manage the relationships or worry about data type conversions, and without having to deal with the typical user confusion of AND and OR.  (Select and Filter are much friendlier words that most users can follow)  *Build* the query with representative data as you go.

8. Administrator friendly: Painless upgrades
How many vendors work to make life easy for the IT staff?  Easy implementation tools, easy administration and updates.  No surprises.  No downtime.  No 2AM updates because that's the only time the staff isn't using the system.

9. Eliminate the phrase "get everybody out of the database"
With a large church staff and the ability for the congregation to access selective parts of the data, downtime is unacceptable.  Maintenance functions (which should be few) must be performed on the live database.  Eliminating vendor support calls entirely would be a good goal too!

10. Super Searching
How about "Super-searching?"  Expose considerable parts of the database to a great search tool like the Google Mini.  Do a search on any reference to "leader" or "computer."  From a Google-style interface, see how many hits you get on "Christian" in your database.  Or "servant."  Or "volunteer," or "web design."  As long as you have great security and can control privacy, go ahead and allow searching across almost all fields in the database.  Then you can figure out things like how many members of your church have had lunch meetings with Joe or who might be a good candidate for IT support work.

That may not be the "best" 10 features, but they all seem achievable.  What would you add?

Comments

[Marcus Monroe]

Tony,

I'm compiling programmers to make an opensource ChCMS, that's a church and content management system. It will be php/mysql/ajax. The ten things you listed is exactly what I and the other few of us have had in mind for the longest time. I can't believe someone hasn't made something like this yet, but we are going to do it. We're only college students, but hey, who can work a 9-5 then be up all night coding... college students.

[Allen Madding]

I'd have to expand on the "Administrator friendly: Painless upgrades" topic by adding: No requiring the IT Admin to walk around to every desktop system to install updates. Easy, managed deployment of all upgrades.

[Shelley Hildebrand]

Marcus,

I am interested in how you have gone about researching the needs of all types of churches and designing the system you are developing before you start. Do you know that other churches are currently in the process of developing an open source church management solution and would enjoy additional programming help? You may want to talk with Clif Guy from Church of the Resurrection in Kansas City. They actually have a full time person dedicated to programming/development and they would welcome the help of others. You may want to check out their website at www.webempoweredchurch.com. They are working in conjunction with a company called iModules. Their website is www.imodules.com. I hope this information is helpful. I think it is wonderful that the churches are wanting to develop their own systems, but I know if we can unite together the workload would be less and we would end up with a much better system.

[Marcus Monroe]

Shelley, we've been watching some of the needs of local area churches that range from a church plant to a mega church with several campuses as well as looking at our own needs and brainstorming ideas and subject matters as to ease the tracking of people who pass through their doors and when it comes down to it, the relationships within a church. I've known of some open source projects that have been around, but we don't exactly feel that they follow in with the idea we are trying to place from mind to code. I myself am not a programmer but a graphic designer. If you have any further questions please contact me by email at mmonroe AT gmail DOT com.