Tony Dye: Comments from the ChMS Familiarity/Interest Survey

The Church Management Familiarity/Interest Survey had multiple places for free-form comments. And I received some! I think I'll let them speak for themselves. I've edited these slightly in hopes of keeping these reasonably anonymous. Three major sections of responses, comments from the Familiarity section, comments from the Interest section, and then the big catch-all "info" section.

Familiarity:

Where did you get this list? Would be great if there was a page where all of these were listed.

Is church keeper a rename of servant keeper?

Our church uses F1 but our district offices use ACS to manage all credentialed ministers and churches

Some of these are duplicates, like CAA to Roll Call...

Web Empowered church is a free site template, not a product

Don't know if I'd really count WEC as a ChMS. I like it, but it doesn't do most of the functions tied to a ChMS - attendance, giving, etc.

I actually happen to have written Sheepology

didn't know WEC was a Chms. Just thought they did websites

Interest:

Only Would NOT consider because I don't know them. Wish there was a 4th option: Might consider if I knew what it did.

I use ACS and am seriously considering BVCMS

we would consider fully web-based only

Never CCB - meh.

Some of these are no because I've used them or am familiar enough to know they don't fit

Our ChMS has to be web based.

We recently conducted a market survey and replaced our ChMS. The "Likely Consider" list are the finalists in our search.

I would consider a comparison chart like the one the Christian Computing Magazine has online. Full eval is not practical because of the size of the list.

We currently use Shelby and it was a great package for its time. The accounting is well done but the membership and other out facing functions needed a complete redo which is why Shelby introduced Arena.

Info:

Might also consider Blackbaud

Simple fact for me, YOU MUST BE A WEB BASED system to even be on the short list. If I put "would consider" or "might consider" it is simply because of my thinking the ChMS has a web based system. In today's day and age, a browser based system is a must for us!

We have app. 6000 members 3800 for attendance and operate on a next to nothing budget. There are about 70 staff and about half are using using our CMS, Shelby.

Our church has not found a suitable CMS that meets the needs for a small church like ours. The features desired by our church, specifically child check-in, come at too high a cost for our budget. We are continuing to look at available systems (because there are so many), but are also now developing a solution internally.

I am an administrative pastor and lead IT person at my church. ACS was in place when I took the job, and I've been searching for a way out since. We are considering BVCMS, have evaluated CCB and F1. Many of these ChMS options I was not familiar with. Web access to data is a must, along with customizable reports.

Primary requirement was reporting capability, ease of use, groups focus, deployment options (Macs, web-accessible). Just purchased PeopleDrivenSoftware.

began a quest for a web-based ChMS that would support Chinese characters in Fall 2008. Was surprised at how many didn't support Chinese characters. Finally, settled on Ascribe or Stafftool; we went with Stafftool and are in the final stages of importing all our data into Stafftool.

Children's pastor. I dream of a ChMS that would suit us. I once enjoyed the customizeable nature of Microsoft Access. It recuired no code. It worked for our church records, but was not online. If only I were a programer, or could benefit from an open source community. These products all seem like cars with the hood nailed down. Cars we either can't afford, or wouldn't want to. This is the kingdom of God here, not wall street. How about we work towards efficiency in community like the family of God, rather than treating each other like customers?

I am the technical director for my church. We are currently using NSpire and actively looking for a new ChMS.

Work with church software for over 15 years. For usage and growth ACS has them all beat.

What about iChurch (www.smartdox.com)? I know someone who uses it, and I would consider it

Had acs, have f1 now, looking again! :-). Avg weekly attendance is 1000

we have too many silos of dara- eg. We use f1 but we use constant contact for email, phone tree for calls, jabarcy for SMS/texting, dean Evans for event management and room scheduling, serviceu for ticketing, online giving and event registration. NONE OF THESE SYSTEMS TALK TO EACH OTHER!!! We even have other platforms/products we use that I did not list. Connection power seems to want to intergrate existing functionality (constant contact) whereas Shelby, f1 and acs do not. We need best of class in all areas to include a kiosk solution that does more then just giving.

Endured this only because I know you....Survey Monkey could use a pick for this that is "Check all" then change choices for the few that mean anything on one page.

Made me think that I should do a better search for church management systems. And, some companies need to do a better job promoting their products. Or, you spent way to much time making up names of ChMS systems.

IT Manager - F1 Customer = Tony Dye Fan - but I don't do a very good job of calling him when I am supposed to :(

I work in the ChMS industry so know a little more about some of these products than others. For my church's use, I'd consider some of these systems more than others because I know they're more widely used or supported outside of the company making the software. I'm not familiar with a large number of the ChMS solutions listed, but I'd at least look at them before ruling them out completely in favor of a more popular choice.

I am a problem for IT departments. I run the data-heavy childrens ministry, use a Mac, and I'm very opinionated about design. I tend to ask inconvenient questions & harp on end user experience. Only people as patient as Tony Dye can put up with me.

What's the goal here?

I've used ACS for over 7 years, the church has used it for I think 20 years. Our attendance is 1500 with 12,000 database records

Volunteer IT manager at my church. Have run a ChMS solution for the past three-four years. The product works but is buggy and has not been updated by the vendor in the last several years. Would like a 100% web hosted SAAS solution.

IT Director - Single Site Church running 2500+ AWA

Obviously I'm skewed ;-) and my knowledge of the market is minimal, so you might want to toss out my answers :-)

In the midst of switching from RDS to Logos. We considered some of the "big ones" but found them too expensive. Logos seems to offer us a very good value. We are especially looking forward to using the 360 web piece. So far, the software is looking user friendly and easy to learn.

I would not recommend RDS. We were promised many things when we initially switched to them about 3 years ago. We were told there were web pieces coming soon that never materialized. The software was hard to learn and not user friendly.

We have around 2300 weekend attendance average.

I am a former IT Director for a large Church in {} and they use F1. It is extremely pricey and requires a lot of man power to maintain.

I handle IT for my church on all-volunteer basis. We run about 700-800 on a weekend and desperately need something to help us out. We have Shelby v5 and heavily use it for financials, but hardly anything else (although we own attendance module). We are severely limited in support staff, so volunteers run almost all ministries. We need something that will let church office 'control' data, but let volunteers access (and possibly update) data. Would love something that would tie-in with our website so members could update own data securely. We use ChurchPost for communications, but members are wanting more group discussions. Looking at shadetree as a potential solution for that. Would really prefer an all-in-one solution for all aspects rather than multiple pieces tied together since we have no staff for IT, so support needs to be as hands-off as possible. Cost obviously an issue, but biggest problem right now is getting staff to buy-in and see benefits of true Chms. No truly technical people on staff.

I'm the FellowshipOne administrator, I took over this job after the software had been purchased, and wasn't a part of that process so I've been slowly learning more about other ChMS offerings through #CITRT friends.

We have been an ACS shop for 8+ years, primarily using it for financials and contributions. Over the last 8 months we have attempted to use the AccessACS product for public-facing services and to make ACS People the "core" database of our org, and have come to the conclusion that it is not flexible enough to meet our needs, and likely never will be. We are also not happy with the "ancient" desktop db architecture of the core ACS products and they show no signs of moving to a more modern architecture. We have had two F1 demos and were impressed, but were MORE impressed with our two Arena demos... it just seems to "do more" (it's feature set is much deeper), it is much more customizable, fits our style of ministry better, and all that at 1/3 the price of F1. Love the idea of fully hosted solution like F1, but not at 3x the cost. We didn't consider anyone beyond F1 and Arena as our research (mainly other blogs and word of mouth) indicated that it was a waste of time to look at other products for a church of our size. Some newer stuff looks promising, but we couldn't risk getting in bed with a startup that might not exist next year. Is that enough detail? :-)

We are a Shelby user that just completed an evaluation that included as finalist Arena, F1, CCB and ConnectionPower. For a large church we felt that only F1 and Arena were true candidates. We felt better over the flexibility of Arena and the enthusiasm of their client base so we will begin implementation of Arena this summer.