Church Dimensions

Safety in Numbers

2008-06-16T14:41:00Z

We’ve all heard the phrase, “There’s safety in numbers”. This saying usually conjures up a certain sense or feeling in the one who hears it. In the church world, the phrase can often mean different things. To the new visitor, safety may come from blending into the crowd without being put on the spot or making a commitment. To the church member, the safety might come from the community the church provides. To the Pastor, the ‘numbers’ might be attendance, or giving; some measurement of health. Whatever your perspective is on the phrase – it is the people, the ‘numbers’ if you will, that provide the sense of safety.

Let’s drill in on that last scenario for a second – with the Pastor, the numbers involve some sort of ‘measure’ or ‘metric’, such as giving, or attendance, or involvement in a small group. Here at Fellowship Technologies, providing the ability to record, track, and analyze these metrics is at the heart of what we do. A church is all about the people, and we are all about the church. We provide an exhaustive set of data points whereby a church can better understand ‘the body’ and the effectiveness of their ministries as a whole.

In my role as Director of Data Services I care about each one of these data points; how we collect them, how we retain them, and what we do with them. My belief is that data can be used as a very effective tool to analyze the health of a church. I also believe that data-driven tools like Fellowship One can help make a large church small again in one sense. With a church of 100, it is not difficult to know everyone’s name – to know what is going on in the life of each family. As a church grows, it becomes increasingly difficult without good information. Data Points will never take the place of people – at the very core it is the relationships that really matter – but good data in the right hands at the right time can help make all the difference.

Over a series of blog posts I would like to dig a little deeper into what we are up to in the Data Services realm of Fellowship Technologies. Some of the topics I plan on discussing are Data Conversions, Data Quality, Data Reporting, Data Warehousing, Data Analysis, and Data Mining.

Geoff Whitney

What? I Can Have All My Reporting Questions Answered in Person!?!?

2008-02-06T17:00:00Z

Posted by Brian Vinson

How many of you know that you could 'bypass' opening a support ticket or calling a support agent when you have a specific reporting question?

How many of you know that EVERY Wednesday from 2:00PM to 3:00PM there is an open forum to pose your 'stupid' question (just kidding, we all know there are no stupid questions...) or most complex report request?

How many of you know this is FREE?!?!

How many of you know where to sign up for such a session?

Well, we do. Each Wednesday I host an open forum so you may ask any reporting question you can think of or may have already thought of. To sign up, click here or go to https://experience.fellowshipone.com/Experience/education.aspx and select Online Instructor-led Q&A Sessions.

I look forward to hearing from you!

How Many Volunteers Signed Up Because of our Last 'Push'???

2007-11-20T15:23:00Z

Posted by Brian Vinson

Recently a user asked me if we store the date an assignment was created behind the scenes.

If you do not know the answer to that question, it is YES!

Below are reports that utilize this field (as a filter, displayed on the report itself, or behind the scenes) if you ever need to see, for example, individuals that were given a staff assignment in a date range.

M3518(E): Staffing Pre-Assignment Created Between Date Range

M3519E: Staffing Pre-Assignment Based on Staffing Schedule With Activity Group
This one is a Microsoft Excel Export that includes name and communication values as well as the assignment created date and all the information associated with staff assignments (no sample)

M3521: Staffing Pre-Assignment Created Between Date Range Call Sheet

3rd Annual: Running of the Statements

2007-11-11T18:52:00Z

Posted by Brian Vinson

Exciting isn’t it?!?! It only visits us once a year. Some wait with great angst. Others come prepared to run and win. With contribution statement season right around the corner, I thought it might be useful to throw out some answers to Frequently Asked Questions regarding the ‘Running of the Statements’. If you follow along over the next few weeks you will be prepped and ready to run with the best of them! The first three questions we will cover are:

“How do I run statements where the head and spouse want their contributions listed together but do not want to include contributions from their children?”
“How do I run statements for households where the head and spouse want their record of contributions to be separate?”
“I would like to run separate statements for children that have contributed to our church this year. How do I do this?”

Combined Head and Spouse Contributions
If your church is utilizing Fellowship One WebLink Online Contributions, you know that each contribution is recorded at the individual level. We will need to include these contributions at the individual level as well as contributions at the household level in order to combine the head and spouse contributions for the year. Below you see that we have selected to only pull back contributions at the individual level for head and spouse. We also are going to include household contributions while rolling up any contributions at the individual level by the head or spouse to the household. This combination gives us our desired results and excludes contributions from children within the household.

Separate Head and Spouse Contributions
Some individuals at your church may request that they and their spouse receive separate statements. The quickest and most effective way to accomplish this with Fellowship One is to setup an individual attribute ‘Separate Statements’ and apply it to these specific households (both the head and spouse will need this attribute on their profile). On the request page choose your attribute, the position in the household of head and spouse and only mark the ‘Individuals’ option in the Output section.

Children’s Contributions
Many churches like to send contribution statements to children that are active contributors. Simply select the household position of ‘Child’ from the Filters section and only mark the ‘Individuals’ option in the Output on the request. This will pull contribution statements for children at your church. One of the really great things about pulling separate statements for children is it allows your church to send a special note specifically to these young contributors.

Next week we will review some other FAQ’s regarding statements in Fellowship One.

"For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen"
Romans 11:36

Experience Is The Best Teacher

2007-10-30T16:44:00Z

Posted by Rick Chatham

When Fellowship One launched in January of 2004 there were two dozen reports included in the product. There were membership, roster, class assignment reports and the quintessential contribution statements. We knew that we were light on reports, so we quickly launched Report Central and began hiring report developers to field the many custom report requests that were pouring in from our new church partners. Consensus at the time concluded that we would peak somewhere around three hundred standard reports, give or take a hundred. Almost four years later there are over 1400 reports available in the Fellowship One Report Library.

Over this period of time we have learned a great deal from our churches about their reporting needs. We learned that most churches are very particular on how they want their contribution statements to be formatted. In response we created statement styles to ensure that your statements would look just as you wish. After a period of time we concluded that churches needed to generate significant numbers of mailing labels. So we created one-click labels from the majority of our people oriented reports. Overtime your reporting needs have become more sophisticated including an elevation of requests with trending and analytical elements. So our team is working diligently on data warehouse and OLAP solutions.

All in all these four years of reporting experience have enabled us to chart the future for Fellowship One reporting. 2008 will be an exciting time for us as we deliver several new products centered on custom reporting and analytics.

On Church Dimensions we plan to share tips on current reporting solutions, announcements of new offerings and an occasional peek into the future. It goes without saying that we always welcome your feedback. The number one goal is to help you get the most from Fellowship One reporting.