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Executive Pastor: Your Software Setup Guide

Executive Pastor: Your Software Setup Guidedesignccb.s3.amazonaws.com/helpdesk/files/official_docs/... · 2015-07-27 · To assist you with the onboarding process, we’re providing

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Page 1: Executive Pastor: Your Software Setup Guidedesignccb.s3.amazonaws.com/helpdesk/files/official_docs/... · 2015-07-27 · To assist you with the onboarding process, we’re providing

Executive Pastor: Your Software Setup Guide

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Table of ContentsPart 1: Overview 4

I. Welcome! 4 II. Document Themes 6 III. The Big Picture — Software Diagram 7 IV. Master Admin 8 V. Help Desk 9 VI. Contacting Support 9 VII. Putting Together Your Implementation Team 10 VIII. First Implementation Team Meeting 11 IX. Home Page Overview 12

Part 2: Software 13 I. People 13 II. Events 15 III. Attendance 16

a. Attendance Groupings 16 b. Recording Attendance 16 c. Reports 17

IV. Finances 18 a. Access Levels 18 b. Batches 19 c. Transactions 19 d. Deposits 19 e. Online Gifts 20 f. Forms 20 g. Imports 20 h. Repeating Gifts 21 i. Pledges 21 j. Reports 21

V. Volunteer Scheduling 22

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a. Positions 22 b. Schedules 22 c. Reports 24

VI. Launching to Your Congregation 25 VII. Thank you! 28

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Part 1: Overview I. Welcome! Welcome to the Church Community Builder family! To assist you with the onboarding process, we’re providing you with two key documents. The first, ’Executive Pastors: Your Orientation Guide’, provides a broad overview to help you become oriented with Church Community Builder services as the Executive Pastor. Second, this document is a Software Guide specially designed to help Executive Pastors configure and use the software.

While this document is designed to help Executive Pastors with the software, you’ll want to collaborate closely with your site’s Master Administrator. The software cannot be configured in isolation — close coordination is essential to make certain there is synergy with other leaders in your church and unintended consequences are avoided!

In our view, Executive Pastors are in a key leadership role, and we believe you should be an integral part of the implementation team for the software. A strong implementation team will help ensure an efficient and effective implementation for your software. Your team should have influence, knowledge, and commitment:

Influence

These people have the authority and willingness to assign resources to meet deadlines, ensure a smooth transition, and drive cultural change among the church staff as a whole.

Knowledge

These people understand current church processes and have aptitude to be the local experts on the Church Community Builder software. These individuals will be responsible for training your lay leaders.

Commitment

These people will commit to completing the work involved in the implementation and setup of the software.

We recommend the implementation team be comprised of three to six key people. In addition, selecting a regular (preferably weekly) meeting time to review project status, challenges, questions, and decisions will help get the project moving on the right track quickly. In addition, we recommend setting aside a few minutes

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in the weekly staff meeting for the implementation team to give a progress report to the church staff. This report can include progress to date, next steps, and help required.

The software is designed with many features. Think of it as a toolbox with many tools. Our heart is to help you discover the right tools so you can spend more time focusing on people. This document is meant to be a road map to guide you in using these new tools to help you multiply your ministry efforts. Our idea is to walk through what you need when you need it, rather than giving you information about all the tools right away. In addition, we have interlaced a lot of the how-to information with real world application, providing tips in how you can use the software for your church.

Without further ado ... let’s get started!

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II. Document Themes Throughout the document, there are four themes to be aware of:

1. Tasks

You will see these checkmarks (✓) throughout the implementation guide. They denote a task. These may be appropriate next steps or links to Help Desk articles providing you with more information on the topic at hand.

2. Hyperlinks

Hyperlinks are easily identified by black italicized text. For example, click on the following hyperlink to take you to the Church Community Builder’s online Help Desk, available 24/7.

3. Deluxe

There are three different versions of the Church Community Builder software: Essential, Standard, and Deluxe. There are a few features that are available only with the Deluxe version of the software. When these features are addressed, you will see this symbol: "

3. Multi-Site

One of the Deluxe" -only features is the ability for multi-site. As we walk through implementation, you will see

the following icon when discussing multi-site implications: " If you’re not using the multi-site feature, feel free to skip these sections!

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III. The Big Picture — Software Diagram It is important to have an overview of Church Community Builder’s major elements. The software diagram below provides a high-level overview of how the structure was designed and how the major elements of the software software connect to one another. Keep this diagram handy; it will prove invaluable as you get to know the system.

Note: In the graph above, the rectangles with dotted outlines are system-wide features, while the others are campus-specific. If you will not be using the multi-site feature, you can ignore the dotted lines around Chart of Accounts, Merchant Account, Departments, and Attendance Groupings.

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Needs

Contributions

Chart of Accounts

Attendance Groupings

Mail Merge Processes

People

Departments

Check-in

Positions

Resources

Schedules

Events

Merchant Account

System Settings and Admin Privileges

Forms

Groups

Public Website

Messages Files

Online Giving

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IV. Master Admin What is the Master Admin?

The Master Admin (MA) is the lead point of contact for everything to do with your Church Community Builder site. Essentially, the Master Admin position is designed around the concept of being the local expert in the software. They have access into every area of the software, including finances. In addition, there are a few things the Master Admin can do that no one else can. Read more about these responsibilities in the article below:

✓ MA Responsibilities

Who should be the Master Admin?

We recommend the Master Admin be the person who is directly responsible for coaching your staff on the software. This person should be the decision maker for how your software is set up and managed.

How can I change who the Master Admin is?

✓ Read Changing Your Master Administrator

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V. Help Desk The Help Desk contains over 300 articles and videos to help you learn how to use the software. All logged-in users may access these resources by clicking ‘Help’ under the settings gear icon in the software. In addition, individuals may access the Help Desk without being logged in by visiting the following link: support.churchcommunitybuilder.com

Videos and articles are arranged in the Help Desk by topic. You can also search by keywords to find any of these resources. To see the full list of video topics, navigate to the Help Desk and click ‘Videos’.

✓ Read the Help article Using the Help Desk

VI. Contacting Support The Master Admin and designated Support Contact(s) may contact Church Community Builder’s Support Team for assistance. Other users should direct their questions to the Master Admin or a designated Support Contact for resolution and, if necessary, to forward to the Support Team. Additionally, churches that purchase Premier Support will have the ability to call or chat our Support Team.

✓ To learn how to submit a support ticket, please see the Help article Support and Using the Help Desk.

The Support Team will respond to all tickets within one business day. In addition, churches that purchase Premier Support will receive an initial response within one business hour.

✓ Read about how to Add or Change Support Contacts

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VII. Putting Together Your Implementation Team ✓ Create profiles for your implementation team members

• Read about Creating A New Family/Person

✓ Add your implementation team members’ profiles into the Implementation Team group

✓ Generate activation links for all implementation team members

• Creating Logins en Masse

✓ Give implementation team members all necessary admin privileges

• Individual Admin Privileges

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Tip: If your church purchased data migration or virtual or on-site training, you may want to consider scheduling those services. Submit a ticket via the Help Desk to get started with scheduling any of these.

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VIII. First Implementation Team Meeting Meet with your implementation team to discuss the following:

✓ Define your church’s ministry objectives: What ministry objectives were identified during discussions with your sales representative? It’s important for the leadership to have clarity, consensus, and commitment to these objectives

✓ Determine the scope of use for the software: Which features will you be using to help meet your ministry objectives?

✓ Set minimum expectations for church leadership, staff, lay leaders, and church members: How will each of these roles interact with the software?

✓ Start thinking about some key metrics you will want to track, like:

• Group involvement • Visitor retention • Giving • Use of the software (are people logging in?)

✓ Define the implementation team’s authority: What decisions can the team make? What decisions require Leadership Team awareness or approval? Does the team have the authority to buy hardware for things like Check-In equipment or MICR scanners?

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IX. Home Page Overview Members can log in to your online community and will be able to interactively join groups, register for events, express interest in volunteer opportunities, communicate with other members, view their own personalized church event calendars, update their profiles, and more.

When people log in, the homepage will display information about events, messages, and other activity for the groups in which they participate. In addition, they can click on their names to access their personal profiles, from the homepage or any other page in the software.

Lastly, certain system-wide privileges will prompt a red notification circle in the ‘Attention Needed’ bell icon in the header on any page of the software. For example, an individual with Full Financial privilege would see a notification if any online gifts needed to be matched to appropriate donors.

Now that you are familiar with the homepage, check out the walkthrough below to learn more about how to navigate through the software.

✓ Read the Basic User Walkthrough

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Part 2: Software I. People

Viewing and Editing Profiles

Every profile contains information displayed in seven tabs. These tabs include demographic information, involvement, and history. While you have already edited your own profile using the Basic User Walkthrough, you may want to dig a bit deeper.

✓ Check out the Individual Profiles article for an in-depth look at what a profile contains

The Church Community Builder software was designed with both the administrator and the church member in mind. Allowing everyone to log in amplifies engagement. Each individual, whether an administrator with additional access or a church member with basic access, has the opportunity to log in and participate by editing their own profile. Additionally, each person controls who can see what in their profile (Privacy Settings) and how others can communicate with them (Communication Settings).

The administrator will have access to set the system-wide defaults for these settings, and also have the ability to edit each profile individually.

✓ Read the Editing an Individual article

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MAIN IDEA: People profiles are the most important component of the software. They store essential information about individuals such as name, address, email, and phone numbers. Profiles also house family relationships, spiritual gifts, passions, abilities, personal style, social media links, and more.

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Admin Privileges

Because everyone has the opportunity to log in, giving individuals different levels of access is imperative. System-wide access to information is called admin privileges. Just below admin privileges is role-based access, which is designed for volunteers and staff who only need privileges for a particular task. This would include roles like Group Leader, Form Manager, and Queue Manager. For example, a Group Leader can take attendance for their group without needing event admin privileges.

" Admin privileges are campus specific. This means someone with the Full Write privilege on Campus A would have the ability to create and view profiles for Campus A, but not necessarily for any other campus.

✓ Read about Individual Admin Privileges

✓ Want a comprehensive list? Read Admin Privilege Explanations

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II. Events

You may be asking yourself, why would I create an event? Events can be used for a variety of purposes. You may create an event to promote a church-wide special event or simply to track attendance. You could create an event to schedule your auditorium for something like a wedding.

Because the software is designed with a distributive work model in mind, every Group Leader is able to create an event for their own group. Once created, these events show on the Group calendar and your All events admin calendar. While a Group Leader’s ability to independently publish the event to the Church-wide calendar is based on the admin settings of their group, the ability to publish an event to the Public calendar is always determined by the Master Admin and those with the Full Event admin privilege. Group Leaders can submit a calendar publication request for Event admins to approve. Finally, the Group Leader’s ability to request facilities and equipment for their event is based on the admin settings of their group.

✓ Read about Creating Events, Editing Events, Deleting Events

✓ Recurring Events

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MAIN IDEA: All events are hosted by a group, and can be one-time or recurring. Events are a basis for using other features like Check-In, attendance, and reserving rooms or resources. People can RSVP, register, or be invited to events depending on the setup of the event.

Tip: Many churches find value in creating a special group just for particular events. The group would host events that may not fit in other groups. Additionally, you may consider housing many of your church-wide events in a Members & Attenders group.

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III. Attendance Attendance can be recorded for any event. In order to take attendance for an event, it is necessary to set up Attendance Groupings.

a. Attendance Groupings An Attendance Grouping is a bucket of attendance data grouped together for reporting purposes. The best question to ask when setting up your Attendance Groupings is, “What reports do we want to see?” In addition to reports, Attendance Groupings also affect Check-In. So, if your church will be using the Check-In feature, Attendance Groupings will need to be set up appropriately. (Note: Attendance Groupings are a Customizable Field.)

✓ The Attendance Grouping article will walk you through the strategy of creating and using attendance groupings

" Attendance Groupings are system-wide. Be sure to create your Attendance Groupings so all campuses can use them.

b. Recording Attendance There are three different ways to record attendance. One way is through Check-In. The other two ways are through an existing event or through a new attendance-only event. Both are listed below.

1. Existing Event

You can use an existing event to record attendance by creating your event beforehand and recording the attendance from the event page after the event has occurred. This is common for recurring events, like a Wednesday night Bible study, where you have set up all occurrences for the next six months at once. Attendance can be recorded after each individual occurrence.

" In the event settings, you have the option to remind leaders to take attendance via email. If you check this box, an email will be sent to all group leaders one, two, and three days after the event, providing a link to take attendance without logging in to the software. You may wish to enable this feature for group leaders who forget to take attendance.

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Tip: Consider using Attendance Groupings like Weekend Worship, Weekend Children, Mid-Week Events, etc. This will be helpful if and when you start using Check-In.

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2. New Attendance Only Event

What is an attendance only event? When creating an event solely for the purpose of recording and tracking attendance, you may not wish for the event to show on any calendars (with the exception of All events admin calendar) and add clutter. If this is the case, you can create an ’attendance only’ event. Doing so hides this event from all calendar views except the All events admin calendar. When creating a new attendance only event, the software will automatically name the event according to the selected Attendance Grouping. This records attendance only for an Attendance Grouping, rather than for a group. There are two ways to create a new attendance only event:

a. Go to ‘More’ > ‘Attendance Entry’

b. Go to a group and click ‘Record Attendance’ (from the Actions menu)

✓ " Read about Event Notes

✓ Now you know how events, resources, and Attendance Groupings relate to each other. It’s time to compile a list of all known events and create them. You may have many events, so take your time.

c. Reports Attendance reporting is likely one of the key components in your church’s processes. It provides a picture of trends and possible areas for improvement. The software provides both pre-built reports and the ability to build custom reports and searches displaying attendance data.

✓ Read about Attendance Reports

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Tip: As you are creating your events, be sure to choose the appropriate Attendance Groupings and resources. You may also want to place these events on the Public or Church-wide calendars.

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IV. Finances

a. Access Levels If System-wide Financials are turned to ON in your software, everyone who can log in is able to see their own giving information in their profile. In addition, everyone listed as either Primary Contact or Spouse is able to see the giving of everyone in their family.

There are four admin privileges related to finances:

1. Limited Financial: This privilege is designed for a data-entry volunteer. It gives the individual the ability to create, edit, and delete open batches (and the transactions in them), but not to see anyone’s personal giving information. This also provides access to a few reports related to batches.

2. Full Financial: Those with Full Financial admin privilege are typically your business administrators. This privilege provides the ability to create, edit, and delete all transactions, pledges, and batches. This also provides access to view giving for all individuals in your church and run all financial reports.

3. Chart of Accounts: Every transaction is recorded in a COA (Chart of Accounts) category. This privilege provides access to create and edit the account categories listed in your chart of accounts. You would typically limit this privilege to your main business administrator.

4. Change Merchants: If you have an online giving account with an integrated merchant provider like BluePay, then you may consider providing this privilege to the individual who is in charge of the account.

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MAIN IDEA: The financial tools are designed to facilitate donor management and online giving. This includes things like contributions and pledges. There are several useful pre-built and custom financial reports as well. Just remember, the financial tools are not designed as a general ledger.

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b. Batches Batches are groupings of transactions for display and reporting purposes. You choose how to name and compile your batches and which transactions go into which batch. This is primarily used to help you distinguish dates donations were received, and which worship service(s) they came from.

✓ Read about Batches

You will need to export the total amount of donations received from Church Community Builder to your general ledger (we recommend weekly exports). The Batch Report by Category Summary is designed for the sole purpose of exporting all relevant financial data to your general ledger. This report will find all batches in a given range and display the total amount of transactions received for each category. This is the only report needed to synchronize the software to your general ledger.

Note: You can find more about this particular report in the Financial Reports section below.

" Batches are campus specific. When you create a new batch, all transactions you put in the batch will be designated toward the campus you are viewing at that time.

c. Transactions Transactions are always linked to people. While some other software systems link financial transactions to a family, transactions in the Church Community Builder software are linked to a single person. Additionally, transactions can have any type of designation, such as tithe, offering, or payment on a form.

✓ Read about Creating Transactions Manually, Editing and Deleting Transactions

✓ Viewing Transactions

You may also consider using a MICR scanner to enter checks. The MICR scanner does not save the check image or deposit the funds, but it quickly reads check information, streamlining the data entry process.

✓ Read MICR Setup Instructions

d. Deposits This tab in the financial section is applicable if you have a merchant account with ProfitStars. This is used to manage any checks scanned through Remote Deposit Capture (RDC).

✓ Watch the video on Using ProfitStars and Retrieving Deposits

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e. Online Gifts This tab is used only when you have a merchant account with BluePay, ProfitStars, or Authorize.net. Gifts showing in this tab are ‘unofficial’ in that they do not yet show in reports. At this point, the transactions have already begun the process of settling to your bank account for deposit. To make these transactions official so they are displayed in reports, you must create the transactions by placing them in a batch.

✓ Review Posting Online Gifts

✓ Creating A One-Time Gift For Someone Else, Scheduling A Repeating Gift For Someone Else

f. Forms The Forms tab is very similar to the Online Gifts tab. The difference is only transactions from form payments appear in this tab.

✓ Read about Processing Form Payments

" Deposits, online gifts, and form transactions are all campus specific. When creating and managing these transactions, remember to be aware of the campus you are viewing. Also, when setting up one-time or recurring gifts on behalf of donors, the gifts will always apply to the donor’s assigned campus.

g. Imports To use the Financial Import tool, you must first obtain a file containing individual contribution data from your Merchant Provider. The file must be created according to our specifications for file type and content. We recommend importing your contribution data at least once per week.

The first time an individual is recognized in the system through the Financial Import tool, a Financial admin must match the individual from the file to the appropriate individual in the site. If a Church Community Builder individual ID, giving number, or checking/routing number is associated with the individual, then the next time the person appears in an uploaded file, he or she will automatically be recognized by the system.

✓ Read Transaction Import Settings

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Tip: Most organizations use giving number as the identifier for their online donors. If your merchant provides any type of individual ID in the export file they provide, you will want to map this column to the Giving Number field in the Church Community Builder software. The first time a donor is matched, the individual ID will auto-populate as the giving number in their profile. Every import after this, the person will be auto-matched.

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h. Repeating Gifts If you have a merchant account with BluePay or ProfitStars, you may have donors who have set up repeating gifts. Use this tab to view or cancel these gifts.

✓ Use the Stopping a Repeating Gift article for reference

i. Pledges A pledge is a voluntary statement of a donor’s financial intent. The pledge feature is used by many churches to forecast giving.

✓ Read about Pledges Campaigns

✓ Create Pledges, Editing a Pledge, and Deleting a Pledge

j. Reports ✓ The Financial Reports and Statements article will cover every report related to finances in the software

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V. Volunteer Scheduling Volunteer scheduling is a feature which allows people who fill positions in a group to be scheduled to serve during a given time frame or service. For example, an individual serving as a Greeter or Usher can be scheduled to serve for your weekend worship service(s). An automatic email reminder is sent to every volunteer who accepted a schedule request two days before they are scheduled to serve.

Note: Positions and Schedules are tied to groups. Group Leaders have access to create and edit both Positions and Schedules.

a. Positions A position is a role people fill, like teacher, usher, or nursery worker. An individual must fill a position in order to be scheduled. You can set qualifications for a position to match the gifts, passions, and abilities found in the My Fit area of People profiles. If someone has their My Fit section filled out, they can browse for positions based on Best Matches. Alternatively, leaders can pick people to fill a position based on how well someone’s My Fit qualities match the qualifications for the position.

Each position has a Position Leader who can view, edit, and add people to the position. Those with the Position admin privilege can view, edit, fill, and delete any position in all groups.

✓ Read about Adding A New Position, Editing An Existing Position, and Deleting A Position

✓ Applying To and Informing About A Position

✓ Who Can See This Position?

✓ Create a sample position

b. Schedules Once positions have been created, a schedule can be set up. Schedules are time slots when someone filling a position can serve. Schedules can be created for up to 26 weeks at a time. The schedule creator can choose which dates and time slots need to be filled, and how many people are needed per position. A schedule can be created for multiple positions. Lastly, the person who creates the schedule becomes the Schedule Organizer.

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Service Times

Service times are set by your Master Administrator in your site’s Campus Settings. These service times only affect the volunteer scheduling tool, and will be available as the default service times when creating a new schedule. Alternatively, schedules can be created with other custom times.

✓ Read about these settings: Manage or Edit Predefined Service Times

✓ Review and set your service times

Creating Schedules

✓ Read Create New Schedule (Regular Times), Create New Schedule (Custom Times)

✓ Edit Schedule (Week or Time), Delete Schedule

✓ Create a test schedule

Assigning Volunteers

Once your schedule has been created, you can assign volunteers. The default view when assigning volunteers is to see the first five times in the schedule date range. This view is easily changed by choosing Reselect Dates and Times under the Actions menu. If the same volunteers serve together during the same service time each week, you can drag and copy a whole column of assignments from one date and time to another. To schedule volunteers, they need to have an email address saved in their profile.

Once the entire schedule has been assigned, send out the requests. An email will be sent to all volunteers, allowing them to accept or decline all requests in the schedule without logging in to your online community. Once requests have been sent, anyone with the Schedule admin privilege can accept or decline requests on behalf of volunteers.

Note: If volunteers decline a serving request, they can include a reason for declining the assignment, which will send the person who sent the request an email notification about it.

✓ Read about Assigning Volunteers

✓ Inform Volunteers of Assignments

✓ Communicate With Volunteers

✓ How To Volunteer

✓ Accepting, Declining or Viewing Volunteer Opportunities

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✓ Map out the teams in your ministry which could begin using the scheduling feature. Train your volunteer coordinator how to create and manage positions and a schedule, and give them the task of adding volunteers to positions and creating schedules for your volunteers

c. Reports ✓ Read more about Scheduling Reports

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Tip: There are two styles of volunteer management: assigning volunteers and requesting for volunteers to serve. If you assign volunteers to time slots, use the Volunteer Scheduling feature. If you create time slots and have volunteers choose the times they can serve, use the Needs feature.

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VI. Launching to Your Congregation Determine when it’s time to start letting your members and attenders know they can log in. It allows them to do things like update their own profile, accept volunteer schedule requests, connect to those in their small group, and participate in weekly activities in your online community. This, in turn, reduces your administrative tasks.

Launching is all about introducing the concept of Church Community Builder to your members and attenders. The goal is to create awareness of how the software helps you accomplish your church’s mission, and how they can participate. Even though people can benefit by logging in, it is truly a leadership-driven church management software. This means even more people can benefit without ever logging in, simply because your church leaders are using it. So keep in mind the ultimate goal is not necessarily to get everyone to log in to your site.

Here are some questions to help you start thinking through your launch:

• How does this software help you to accomplish your mission? • Which tools are key for your church members to interact with? • Why should your members log in? • Is there a smaller group of people within your church whom you can pre-launch to? • What does your launch timeline look like?

Some of the most successful launch campaigns are both strategic and creative. Here are three creative ideas we have seen:

1. Naming Your Site: Many churches have chosen to call their site something other than Church Community Builder. Anthem Church calls it Anthem Church Online Community. The Bridge Evangelical Free Church calls theirs The Hub. We encourage you to find a name to match the DNA of your church and community.

2. Announcements: You will most likely be announcing your launch via email, video, or even from the stage on a Sunday morning. Making these announcements interesting and engaging is a great way to get people’s attention. Heartland Church created a series of videos with a quirky main character called Cecil McBee who discovered the MyHeartland site. Regardless of your depth of resources, a little creativity can go a long way. No matter how you are announcing your launch, we encourage you to clearly outline what you want your members to do and why. For example, you may want them to log in and look at the financial tab in their profile so they can be

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aware of their recent giving. The benefit for them is they can print their own giving statements any time they need to. In turn, this eliminates the need for the church office to process giving statement requests.

3. Welcome Message: A great welcome message can help create a positive impression for people when they first log in to your online community. You can communicate important information, provide links to vital online tools, and even brand your site with your church logo in the Welcome Message area. This is also a great avenue for creatively introducing your Church Community Builder site to your church. Many churches include a few key steps to help guide church members through the site. This could be something as simple as a list of steps that walk people through how to access and update their profile, or it could be as extravagant as a link to a user guide document.

Ongoing Engagement

When implementing a new software or process for your church, there is no finish line. After your initial launch, there will be management and maintenance continuing as long as you use the software. As your church continues to grow, so will your leadership base. Be sure to continually train leaders. This helps keep your staff and volunteers connected while making the site a natural part of your church’s culture.

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Tip: Here’s a creative solution to getting people to log in for the first time: create a Genius Bar in the foyer during your launch. Station some ‘geniuses’ around a table with laptops and iPads, allowing people to walk up after service to easily discover your new online community.

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Wrap-Up

A few last tips on launching:

• While your software is a full toolbox with many ways to engage the community, we encourage you to not abandon using other forms of engagement like social media and your public website. These are still great tools which allow you to meet your congregation where they already are.

• You don’t have to bear the weight of training the entire church by yourself! We recommend you build up a few key staff or volunteers to train the people around them. This typically leaves you to train only the implementation team, who then train the staff, who train your lay leaders, who train your congregation.

• If you are wondering about how to get buy-in from your staff or members, be on the lookout for anyone who seems to be excited about the software. These people, whether staff or not, will be your biggest helpers. Spend a lot of one-on-one training time with them. This will pay off in the long haul, as they will become your biggest advocates for getting other people excited about using the software.

• Spotlight people in your congregation who use the software exceptionally and creatively to accomplish a goal, like using the Needs feature to help schedule volunteers for a homeless ministry. Feeding off the excitement of these people is one of the best ways to create engagement among staff, lay leaders, and members. Whatever this looks like for your church, fostering ongoing excitement is the key to engagement, which ultimately leads to a more connected community.

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VII. Thank you! On behalf of Church Community Builder, thank you for taking the time to work through this document. As you journey through using this new software, we are here to answer any questions you may have. Our heart is to partner with you to help make you more effective at what God has called you to do. If there is any way we can serve you better, please give us a call at 719.266.2888.

Thank you again,

Church Community Builder

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