Experience.FellowshipOne.com

Since the New Year is upon us, I thought I’d use this blog entry to answer a question I get quite frequently - why do churches buy Fellowship One? A church buys Fellowship One for reasons that are specific to that church. It is really about value and the value that a church places on Fellowship One differs based on the needs of that church. What one church values is not necessarily the same as another. However, the following list does a pretty good job of addressing some of the more popular “value” propositions:

1. Some churches buy Fellowship One because of our best-in-class check-in system.  We have one of the only true touch-screen applications (access to a keyboard and mouse is not required at all) on the market for checking an adult or child into an activity, providing secure system that cannot be circumvented by an estranged parent. This also provides real-time attendance tracking for reporting purposes – no one is required to enter attendance from a manual roll. Additional benefits include helping with classroom load-balancing, closed-loop process with our online registration application, convenience to the congregant because of the speed of the check-in process and the enhanced fellowship associated with the printing (and then wearing) of attractive name tags for all who attend a class or activity.
2. Other churches are interested in buying a web-based church management system so that their staff and volunteers can access the church information from anywhere and everywhere. As the Internet gets more pervasive and people are doing more and more activities on the web, both business and personal. Churches are also looking at better ways to do things that can take advantage of this new technology platform and the benefits it has to offer. I agree that technology for technology’s sake is inappropriate; however, in many cases the new technology was invented for reasons that are relevant to the church. With Fellowship One, a church staff can get things done where they are and when they need to, not just when they are in the office.
3. Another significant reason churches buy Fellowship One is the enhanced reporting capabilities. I often hear a church’s current system referred to as the “data input system” or described as “what goes in, does not come out” because although the system may allow for a lot of information to be entered, it is difficult to get that information out. Fellowship One provides a vast library of over 750 standard reports that are configurable by a host of different parameters that provide a virtually endless amount of information for analysis and decision-making. And if a church needs a report that is not currently available, Fellowship Technologies’ Report Central will write it for them.  We have several staff members that have the sole job of writing new reports for our customers.
4. Still other churches buy Fellowship One because of its ability to seamlessly integrate the church’s website to the back-end database. More churches are realizing the benefits of providing “self service” capabilities at the church web site so that the congregation members can perform certain functions themselves without having to call the church office or wait around in the church lobby after service to register for an event, see their year-to-date giving, give online, or complete a volunteer application. This ability limits the calls into the church office and also provides a service that is convenient to the member.
5. Many churches license Fellowship One to change their way of processing information, and in some cases, their way of thinking. The old paradigm was to have a handful of people enter and report all the information to the many ministries of the organization. These few people would “own” the data and provide a service to others. The new paradigm is built around the premise that the organization and various ministries should take “ownership” of the data and that entry and access of certain information should be dispersed throughout the organization to the people who really have a vested interest into the quality of the data. Too often, when we convert a church’s data from their current system to Fellowship One we are astounded at the number of duplicate people and household records. With all of these duplicates, it is no wonder that the information within the system is not trusted. There have been times that the information within Fellowship One was viewed as suspect by a new customer because of the initial data conversion only to come to the final conclusion that the data has been that way in the old system for quite some time. It’s just that no one had visibility to the problems or that the lack of flexibility of the system forced them to do things a certain way that were really not the way the church needed or wanted it.
6. A significant number of churches have purchased Fellowship One because of the value they see in going with a hosted solution. The technical aspects of the system are outsourced to the solution vendor and the security of the information is performed by a professional organization that has the resources to protect the data as part of its business. There are two churches in particular that are very appreciative of the hosted model. This is because their data was safe and accessible even though the church buildings and nearly the whole town was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. They were able to quickly set up the church office function at a nearby city and begin contacting people to see how they could be helped. Even more recently, a Texas church was destroyed by a wild fire. Fellowship Technologies has offered to donate a year’s access to Fellowship One to this church to get them up and running as quickly as possible. With Fellowship One, this church’s data will be kept safe and secure in a professionally operated data center that is certified to withstand up to an F5 tornado and has state-of-the-art technology for fire suppression, as well as battery backup and secondary electricity generation capabilities.
7. And still others buy from Fellowship One because they see the vision that Fellowship Technologies has and where it thinks church management systems should go and want to be a part of that. We hear over and over how our customers appreciate the fact that we are always looking for new ways that our system can enhance ministry and minimize administration. One of my favorite Bible verses is John 10:10 where Christ said that he came that “we might have life, and have in to the full.” Our vision for Fellowship One, coupled with the other products that we are working towards, will definitely help the local church be the best that it can be. In this technology age, doing so without the proper information systems is impractical and irrelevant to the generations that are to come. We are laying that foundation now with a system built to support the main purpose of the church – the needs of the congregation – the people.

Perhaps your church has purchased Fellowship One for other reasons.  I would like to hear about those reasons. I would appreciate you taking the time to make a comment to this blog below.

Grace to you as you go out and start the New Year and, perhaps, implement Fellowship One.

Jeff Hook