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CRM for Churches

Feb 20, 2005
Church CRM

I’ve been contemplating the need for a CRM solution for churches. Church is all about people, so why not have a software package that assists with managing all the related data about people?

Churches probably have more people interaction than a small business. A small business (in general) has set bounds that their people fit into, suppliers, customers, etc. Whereas a church has interactions with all sorts of people that aren’t bounded by anything! Some examples may be visitors, members, neighbours, council members, school principals, other church relationships, missions organisation relationships, equipment suppliers and local businesses, the list goes on!

There is an immense amount of people data that church have to deal with on a daily basis, yet most churches that I know of use technology sparingly. Why is that? Does this mean that there is no solution available for them? Maybe they don’t realise the power of a CRM system? I think the answer would be interesting, and a good challenge for a CRM solutions provider to overcome.

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9 Comments

  1. Nick Airdo  •  Mar 16, 2005 @6:33 am

    Yes, we’ve been thinking the same (here at our church) and are actually just beginning to investigate a CRM solution.
    We anticipate there will be complexities such as children belonging to multiple families but we’re also wondering why more CRM providers have not taken up the challenge to package a church CRM solution.

  2. Chris  •  Jun 28, 2005 @2:34 pm

    I’ve noticed that there are no sophisticated CRMs for anyone that does not view the world exactly like the sales team at Dell does. What do I mean by that? Well, every major player in this industry believes that sales are made first to accounts/companies and that contacts are merely a subset of those companies. A church or someone in my field - real estate - has no need for an account designation. Salesforce.com, for example, requires an account for every contact. I don’t have “accounts.” My prospects are people and people only. Anyway…

  3. Giles Benson  •  Jun 28, 2005 @10:23 pm

    I agree about the potential here - I have been interested in this idea for some time. However, I echo sentiments/challenges alluded to above: the church with which I worship, The Church of England, in my experience uses technnology sparingly; and having implemented CRM for a computer hardware distribution company I agree that the whole account/prospect/contact architecture underpinning the CRM model suggests incompatibility.

    Very interested to see the area explored though…

  4. Dan Harper  •  Jul 1, 2005 @9:11 pm

    Hi Chris,

    Thanks for your comment. I understand what you’re getting at. I have even fallen into this trap as a developer myself (see http://leopardcrm.sf.net) where I designed from this point of view. One guy did ask for the functionality that you’re asking for. It’s interesting how we all tend to fall into the same patterns when designing software that’s been around in other forms for quite some time.

    There really needs to be a shake up of CRM offerings out there. If people like yourself keep asking, maybe someone will listen. Actually SugarCRM (http://www.sugarcrm.com) has the “accounts” functionality that you speak of, but they don’t enforce the relationship between accounts and contacts. I haven’t yet used SugarCRM to its full potential as yet, but it may do what you mention.

    Cheers,
    Dan

  5. Damian Spaulding  •  Jul 17, 2005 @3:58 pm

    My thoughts are, why create an industry specific package when a outof the box CRM package is capable of providing their every need? I realize most didn’t know it was out there.

    http://darwinproductions.net

  6. Chris Wood  •  Aug 13, 2005 @1:54 am

    Howdy from Texas,

    I have good news for you! Fellowship Technologies is currently serving 209 customers in 37 states in the US and we have a customer in Aukland, NZ. Our Enterprise CRM solution for churches was developed initially by Fellowship Church in Grapevine,TX. I invite you to check out our website and I can give you blog references as well as to what churches and staff are saying about our applications and processes.

    How can I best serve you in the future?
    Best of regards,

    Chris Wood,
    Director of Product Marketing and Sales, Plano,TX

    cwood@fellowshiptech.com

    http://www.fellowshiptech.com
    http://www.dynamic-church.com
    http://www.closethebackdoor.com

  7. Damian Spaulding  •  Aug 23, 2005 @10:53 pm

    Did you get a chance to visit the site?

    We have just finished a major sire revision. Our site is now full of screen shots and many pages of useful information. Feel free to let me know what you think.

    http://darwinproductions.net
    http://theevolutionofbusiness.net
    http://darwinproductions.info

  8. Jim Miller  •  Nov 4, 2005 @1:21 pm

    Most people that try to implement CRM make it too complicated. You can simplify greatly by doing one these things. 1) If you decide to use the SFA (sales force automation) side of CRM, ignore account (or if force to, make account = contact = church_member). 2) Consider the SERVICE side of CRM; most needs of members are service related vs. inventory/price based. Matching service requests with service providers (staff and volunteers) with talents and scheduling appointments is the name of the service side of CRM. 3) Make accounts into subsets of your church, say by ministry; a particular member can be involved in several ministries, and serve (or be served) in different roles in each.

  9. Dan Harper  •  Nov 4, 2005 @8:12 pm

    Hi Jim,

    Thanks for your comments. I like some of your ideas, these could be
    good ways to leverage existing CRM packages to serve a church context.

    I like the idea of number 3, it sounds like a logical way to get things
    to happen. The only problem I can think of here is that most CRM
    solutions would probably only allow one church member to be a part of
    one account and not multiples.

    My other thought is that although these ideas do allow the use of an
    existing CRM solution for churches, how do you think reporting would
    happen? There maybe a few hidden problems that might pop up here, which
    could make the CRM solution ineffective.

    What do you think?

    Dan

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