Mobilizing ChMS Data For Multisite Expansion

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Mobilizing ChMS Data for Multisite Expansion Presented by: Aplos & Seraphim Software

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CHURCH EXECUTIVE • M O B I L I Z I N G C h M S D A T A F O R M U L T I S I T E E X P A N S I O N

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Table of Contents HOW TO MOBILIZE ChMS DATA FOR MULTISITE EXPANSION

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In this Q&A with Tim Goetz, CEO of Aplos Software, he acknowledges that most church leaders don’t use their ChMS to its maximum advantage when trying to determine where they should open a new multisite campus. But, what can they do about that?

Reporting by RaeAnn Slaybaugh

PLOT YOUR CHURCH’S GROWTH WITH YOUR ChMS

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Most churches see their ChMS as a tool to automate common tasks — attendance management, event scheduling, contribution-tracking, or email communication. But strike deeper, and you’ll find that it gives you exactly what you need to drive the strategic growth of your congregation.

By Sam Batterman

LETTING “THE NUMBERS” LEAD THE WAY

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Several years ago, Tim Goetz, CEO of Aplos Software and former “data-cruncher” for The Well Community Church, was presented with a problem — could their church afford to open a new location?

As a CPA by trade and The Well’s de facto problem-solver, Goetz’s gaze went towards the first thing a man of his analytical nature would look to: the numbers.

PEOPLE OVER PROCESS

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In designing and advancing innovative church management software (ChMS), Seraphim’s solid technological foundation is rooted in a very strong belief system — the most important being that a church’s people must come before the process of management. While this might sound like a rather idealistic view in today’s world, it’s actually quite practical and forwardthinking in the modern ChMS industry.

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M O B I L I Z I N G C h M S D A T A F O R M U L T I S I T E E X P A N S I O N • CHURCH EXECUTIVE

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Multisite Churches

How to mobilize ChMS data for multisite expansion Q: Generally speaking, do you feel most church leaders use their ChMS to its maximum advantage when trying to determine where they should open a new multisite campus, or campuses?

Goetz: For the most part, I don’t believe they do — at least, not to their maximum advantage.

Q: What do you think is holding them back?

Goetz: Churches are generally phobic about projecting income, especially with deciding when and where to open up a new multisite church. It’s the idea that ‘God will provide us with what we need,’ so it’s often left at just that.

While I certainly don’t disagree with this theologically, church leaders should lean more on budgeting and planning accordingly with proper accounting and ChMS tools.

Also, church planning of multisites often dictates a three-year path to sustainability, with the main campus funding the multisite 100 percent for the first year, 50 percent for the second year, and, hopefully, leaving them on their own by the third year. This conventional way of thinking is shared broadly among many churches and often prevents them from leveraging church management software to help with the important planning that should happen.

Instead of thinking how the main campus is going to keep the multisite location afloat, the multisite location should be doing tithe projecting and using tools to help them determine — beforehand — how the campus can support itself before it’s opened.

Q: In what ways has your software program been enhanced to help churches practice smarter expansion?

Goetz: We allow organizations to pull financial statements by fund or location. Many multisites begin meeting as a campus before the campus actually launches (at a house or a town hall meeting), and then they start tithing before the campus launches. This helps them practice better budgeting to prepare for the expansion, and our software allows for them to pull reports to make smarter decisions about the expansion.

Prior to launching Aplos in 2009, I was an executive pastor at a large multisite church in Fresno, Calif. When we were opening multisite campuses, the ability to pull statements by fund or location didn’t quite exist in other software. So, we built it into ours.

Q: When deciding where to open a new multisite campus, what key questions should a church leader seek to answer using the ChMS data on hand?

Goetz: (1) Do we have people that will attend this multisite? (2) Is there a clear missional value to the multisite we’re going to open? What is it? (3) How big should the budget be?

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CHURCH EXECUTIVE • M O B I L I Z I N G C h M S D A T A F O R M U L T I S I T E E X P A N S I O N

Tim Goetz, CEO, Aplos

Expansion-friendly ChMS functions • Personalize your church’s accounting and track true financial health across your church • “Slice and dice” your financial reporting to see the exact data you need across your funds, departments, projects and locations. (examples: the costs of your children’s ministry across each of your campuses; expenses of your mission fund by project) Go as highlevel or as granular as necessary.

• Monitor the financial health of each campus, department and ministry • Create budgets and custom tags to track the most important areas of your organizations.

• Then, label your transactions for more flexible reporting, while maintaining impeccable fund accounting.

Source: aplos.com/advanced-accounting/multisite-church-software

To find this data, a church leader can set budgets and income statements by location. If they’re holding town hall meetings prior to launch of the multisite, all this data would presumably be documented in the software.

If not, they can collect it using church-wide surveys, individual surveys, and data collection from town hall meetings.

Q: After a new multisite location is up and running, how can ChMS come alongside church leaders to help manage that location?

By producing the locations-based financial statements so that church leaders know when that site needs to expand, when to hire the next person, when to consider building needs, and so on.

If you’re not tracking by location, you don’t know if you’re spending too much money for what that that campus can afford. Use the data to determine how healthy the campus is, financially.

— Reporting by RaeAnn Slaybaugh churchexecutive.com

Multisite Churches

Plot your church’s growth with your ChMS

By Sam Batterman

Growth through satellite locations Your ChMS becomes an invaluable tool when you’re ready to expand into new campuses. Your current members’ addresses tell part of the story.

But, siting your new campus based only on the highest concentration of members is not the way to ensure its survival.

You want committed members already active in doing the work that a growing church needs, from bookkeeping to youth ministry. A more reliable picture would include the ministry experience, average giving, and attendance rates of the new location’s prospective users. A ChMS (like ours) will aggregate all this data into one, easy-to-understand map — no exporting it into other tools to sort and plot your info. Filter your data with the indicators you want to use, map it, edit your selections, and see your new campus practically come to life on the screen.

You know your church needs a church management system, or ChMS. But do you know why?

Most churches see their ChMS as a tool to automate common tasks — attendance management, event scheduling, contribution-tracking, or email communication. Using a ChMS this way is like clearing a riverbed: things move faster and smoother, but you haven’t changed the course. It’s business as usual, only with less manual effort.

But strike deeper, and you’ll unleash a gushing spring of insight. Your ChMS gives you exactly what you need to drive the strategic growth of your congregation.

This is the heart of our mission as a software provider: empowering churches to reach more people, more effectively with the message of Christ. A robust ChMS can illuminate the patterns in your historical data to provide a powerful view into your potential.

Here are just a few of the ways to turn your ChMS into a forward-looking tool for informed decision-making.

Growth through local presence When you use your ChMS to collect data from new members, you can see exactly what’s bringing people to your church. Is it children’s programs?

Hosted events? Partnerships with charities or community organizations?

Understanding what has worked in the past helps you replicate more of the activities that draw in local people.

You can also see where people come from. Seraphim’s mapping feature is closely integrated with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software so you can not only see where your congregants live, but their most likely route to church. Layer in enough of these commutes, and you can instantly visualize the best place for some out-of-home advertising, or plan a mail or email campaign to reach neighborhoods that are demographically similar to your current congregation. churchexecutive.com

Growth through global distribution We’ve become used to “sampling” things online, and there’s perhaps no better way for your future members to get to know you. A combination of strong Biblical preaching and compelling visuals can build your church’s credibility as a thought leader, opening the doors to belief, membership, support, or all of the above.

Seraphim’s presentation package, Airstream, allows you to edit video feeds, lyrics, slides and animation effects into a richly layered online experience. Use your ChMS to livestream a service or share it on social media, and you’re extending your reach and your life-changing message well beyond your city.

Harnessing the power at your fingertips You can see now that your ChMS is not a little hand tool, chipping away at your church’s mission. You can lean on its capabilities to cut through the clutter of information and get to the heart of God’s plan for your congregation.

As powerful as it is, ChMS is not the most important tool in your toolbox. Pastor and author Mark Dever reminds us, “The more we pray, the more we acknowledge that God is the reason for any growth that comes.”

All of us hope you’ll prayerfully consider how to put resources — like a ChMS — to work for you and the people God is drawing to your door.

Sam Batterman is president and CTO of Seraphim Software [ www.seraphimsoftware.com ] in Collegeville, Pa. After years of working for companies including Merck and Microsoft, Batterman and his team now enable churches with high-tech tools designed especially for them.

M O B I L I Z I N G C h M S D A T A F O R M U L T I S I T E E X P A N S I O N • CHURCH EXECUTIVE

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Letting “THE NUMBERS” lead the way Several years ago, Tim Goetz, CEO of Aplos Software and former “data-cruncher” for The Well Community Church, was presented with a problem — could their church afford to open a new location?

As a CPA by trade and The Well’s de facto problem-solver, Goetz’s gaze went towards the first thing a man of his analytical nature would look to: the numbers.

How many people attended the south location?

What about the north location?

How much in tithes did the organization bring in each year?

These questions were the beginning of a new method that clashed with the classic approach to expansion. Before, whenever a church wanted to “spread the word,” it would expect parent churches to support 100% of a new location expenses the first year, 50% in the second year, with the aim of financial independence by the third year. Goetz wanted to raise the bar — open a church with complete independence on Day 1.

The church’s sight was set to start a new congregation in Sanger, Calif. After going through the database, Goetz learned just how many Sangerians commuted to the north and south locations in Fresno.

Scheduling a town hall meeting in Sanger, The Well brought together the local residents to talk about whether they would be willing to try out a new location or if they’d prefer to commute to Fresno.

Support for the new church was not hard to find, which made it financially feasible, and a date was set to bring a new Well church into the fold. To further cushion the monetary burden, The Well found a volunteer to hold weekly sessions at their Sanger home during the weeks leading up to the opening of the new church. This meant more savings for the big day.

As soon as the ribbon was cut, The Well in Sanger was already fully supported and independent of the organization’s existing locations.

Goetz, along with the others at The Well, avoided years of moneyinduced headaches by approaching the situation logically and taking advantage of the numbers the church had accrued over the years.

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CHURCH EXECUTIVE • M O B I L I Z I N G C h M S D A T A F O R M U L T I S I T E E X P A N S I O N

For smarter expansion, don’t ignore your data — mobilize it!

Many pastors might have a mindset hoping that “God will let the good things come.” While there’s nothing wrong with this, there is data out there that can save an organization plenty of hassle. Understanding the complexities of managing a multisite church can guarantee the success of your organization, making sure the doors stay open and your congregation stays happy.

Fund accounting — knowing where the money for your church goes and how to use it — only gets more complicated if you’re looking to expand beyond the scope of one building. It can be daunting and a little intimidating. However, with Aplos Advanced Accounting, you can do in minutes what your former small-time operation did in hours.

Partnered with Church Community Builder, our church management integration makes it simple for you to monitor the financial health of each of your church campuses, departments and ministries. You’ll be able to create budgets and custom tags to track the most important areas of your organizations, then label your transactions so you can accomplish more flexible reporting, all while maintaining impeccable fund accounting.

Goetz is a CPA and has personal experience with growing a multisite church. He knows what data every church needs to see to make strong financial decisions, and he knows just how hard it is to get that data with most accounting software out there.

Sign up for a free demo of our advanced accounting software. Why use business software that wasn’t made for your church? churchexecutive.com

People over

process The transformation of church management software

In designing and advancing innovative church management software (ChMS), Seraphim’s solid technological foundation is rooted in a very strong belief system — the most important being that a church’s people must come before the process of management. While this might sound like a rather idealistic view in today’s world, it’s actually quite practical and forward-thinking in the modern ChMS industry.

“For too many years, ChMS was not listening or developing based on church feedback but rather on what the developers could create,” points out Sam Batterman, Seraphim co-founder and CTO. “Seraphim changed that. We put church, ministry and people first so our mission aligns with our churches’ goals.”

Seraphim realized early in its inception that the ChMS must serve as a true church partner to connect, engage, and grow church communities.

Systems simply work better when developers listen to the needs of the end user before all else. Engagement is key to creating the best system possible.

With an unwavering focus on product evolution and a superior support team, Seraphim not only talks the talk, but they walk the walk. Constantly bringing new ideas to the table is critical, but even more important is that these new designs are built to fill needs discovered by listening directly to customer feedback.

The cornerstone of Seraphim is not about one single feature, but how each piece works together to provide churches a solution — not a product — that satisfies every stakeholder. Specific features include: • Mobile Church App • Member Management • Ministry Planner • Finance Tools • Reporting & Analytics

• Giving Tools • Cherub Safe Check-in •G ift /Skill-based Volunteer Matching • Attendance Tracking

“Basically, in a world of Blockbusters, bogged down in their product offerings, we offer a streamlined Netflix-type solution.”

Co-founders, Sam Batterman, CTO, and Chris Caldwell, CFO, continue to build this forward-thinking organization and now lead a staff of more than 20 employees and serve more than 150 churches nationwide.

Under one all-inclusive umbrella, Seraphim Software built a system founded on member management, plus financial tools and ministry planning, but Seraphim kept reaching for more. Seraphim listened to customer needs and grew their model to include things like safe child check-in, analytics, and even a mobile church app. Seraphim knows churches must look to the future in order to keep growing, so this ChMS continues to add and amend features, displaying an inherent understanding of the inner-workings of a church. These powerful tools build communication bridges between church administration, staff, leaders, volunteers, and the entire congregation.

“It’s imperative to our core values that we maintain personal relationships within all aspects of the ChMS while still developing new 8

CHURCH EXECUTIVE • M O B I L I Z I N G C h M S D A T A F O R M U L T I S I T E E X P A N S I O N

technological approaches. We are constantly updating and always catering to the end user,” Caldwell shared. “Basically, in a world of Blockbusters, bogged down in their product offerings, we offer a streamlined Netflixtype solution.”

Seraphim offers the most advanced software management solutions while relieving churches of the complexity of this constantly evolving technology. Seraphim not only believes that churches should be able to connect and engage with their congregation more than once or twice a week, but they have actually created the ways to do just that.

For instance, Seraphim rethought the Church Management App by integrating all stages of involvement, from volunteering to giving, to following the church service, listening to the sermon, doing bible study, updating personal information, and so much more. AirStream is an example of one of Seraphim’s newest applications, offering churches all they need to create, present and stream Sunday’s service.

Using AirStream, users are able to collaborate and communicate with one another to build and run presentations whether at church, at home or on the go. Basically, Seraphim Software simplifies everything, even cost of ownership. With a subscription-pricing model, users pay as they go and pay for what they use.

Moreover, there are no “versions” of Seraphim. A single version of Seraphim exists across all customers. No need to buy servers or network equipment or even worry about backing up your database. Seraphim does that for you, maximizing your computer’s hardware while leveraging the Cloud as centralized storage. Users can access updated content from anywhere with Internet access.

As a cloud-based platform, Seraphim is in a state of ongoing delivery — always releasing and improving. Similar to powerful apps like Office 365, Adobe Connect or Spotify, Seraphim continuously updates users.

Users are perpetually pushed new capabilities, all from the same system, based on current client’s needs. In 2016 alone, Seraphim had 100+ platform updates. No other ChMS listens to customers so closely.

Reinventing the Church Management model, putting the customers needs above all else, and erasing barriers like location and time — Seraphim allows users to stay focused on the church, rather than church management. churchexecutive.com

Revolutionizing Church Management Welcome to the Seraphim Suite of tools supporting the core of your church through church management, finance, worship, safe check-in, ministry planning, and mobile access.

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