Christian Computing Magazine
CCB Cover Story
By Steve Hewitt
For over a year I have been talking about the convergence of Church Management Software (CMS) and web content management services. This has come about for several reasons, one being the interest in CMS programs moving online as an ASP, and the development of web content management ASP services. Church Community Builder (CCB) is a fantastic example of just how such a convergence has taken place in software and services. CCB is a Church Management Software program, a content management system, a customer relationship management system (called CRM in the business world), and a combination of tools, including website building, e-mail, mail merge, event scheduling, volunteer management, discussion boards, online help system, pledge, contribution and batch tracking.
I recently experienced a personal walk-through of the CCB demo online and can openly state that I was very impressed. There is little doubt that CCB is a CMS package. Of course it provides an online database of your membership information including contributions and can assign people to groups, talents, skills, etc. And, as you would expect, it has some great communication abilities to send targeted emails to specific groups. But it has other features that are normally considered part of a desktop-based product, such as creating labels and/or mail-merged letters.
Because CCB is a very powerful and full-featured product, this review will just serve as an introduction. CCB has done a great job of providing a lot of information about all that they have to offer online. There is an online demo, feature charts, and even a four-page PDF file that provides instructions on how to use some of the main features of their service (great to print out and make available when you are in the process of introducing CCB to your church or committee). If this article peeks your interest in their services, I encourage you to visit their site (contact information at the end of this article).
CCB provides many different levels of administration and security. This works all the way down to individual members of the church, allowing them to see specific information on the web page when they visit and log in. When a member logs in using their name and password, they might be able to view a statement of their contributions. Or, if they are in any specific groups, they would see content specifically designed for those within those groups. They might find an invitation to register for a specific event, also based upon the groups they have joined. For example, if you were a member of the adult choir, when you log in you might find an invitation to register for a special dinner for the choir members. Visitors, or other members, who are not a member of the choir, would not see this invitation if the administrator wanted to offer the invitation to members only. Other levels of administration determine functions and content that is accessible.
CCB has the ability to establish specific groups. Some of these can be set up so that members, or visitors to your site, can ask to be included. Other groups can be set up requiring approval. Also, to further the possibilities for privacy, groups can be either listed or unlisted, and either announce only or members interact. Once a group is set up, there are many report options, created in PDF format, available. For example, it is easy to create a list of church choir members, or even a report on who is having a birthday within the choir membership.
There were several features that caused me to be impressed with CCB. One of these was the ability to facilitate communication. Since the church is IN the communication business, I can appreciate the great features they have included in their service that combines their group and communication functions. You can easily send targeted information to specific individuals, families, or groups. Once you have defined whom it is you wish to communicate with, it is easy to create a letter, a label, or an e-mail. And, in order to make it personal you use mail merge features so that the person's actual name appears in the correspondence. And, you can create and save template letters, such as a birthday greeting that can be quickly selected for future mailings. They have even thought of specific situations that apply to the exporting and communication features that are important to a church setting. For example, if you were going to send a letter to all of the members of a specific group (for example, those in the choir) the program will check for multiple family members within the same group. After all, there is no logic in sending the same letter to the same house, to both the husband and the wife.
As I went through the demo, I was impressed by the fact that as each feature was explained, it built upon the other features. For example, the program has one of the best event scheduling features I have seen. Combine that with the ability to set up groups, families and their communication features, and you could easily send a specific e-mail to those within a particular group, who held a unique position that had also signed up to attend a distinctive event! I think the power of this combination of features is what I loved the most about CCB. CMS is all about people, and good communication is what can make a group, an event, or relationships a success!
As I said, the event features in CCB are some of the best I have ever seen. When setting up an event, the program takes into consideration custodial staff, resources, setup and cleanup time, registration, attendance tracking, etc., and can even help create a PDF flyer for promotion.
CCB also includes the ability for assessment of attributes, gifts, skills, passions, styles, etc., enabling the ability to manage your volunteers. Your members will be encouraged to take the time to fill out an online form, defining their interests. Administrators can also include information on their own, which can remain private. If your church has a discipleship program (many have a four step plan) and/or an assimilation process, you can track the completion of these steps and have it displayed for administrative purposes. This data can be used when seeking people for specific positions.
And, of course, CCB is a content management program for your web pages. Articles can be assigned a start date, and an optional end date. Articles can also be assigned to specific groups; only viewable by those for which it was intended.
There are many other features that impressed me about CCB. For example, they do nightly backups on-site, and weekly backups off-site. They offer eCards for their users to make available to their members (you can send birthday greetings etc., directly from the page). You can also create personalize pull down menus! And they have much of the obvious features, such as the ability to import graphics and your logo, as well as pick customized colors and a variety of neat templates for your page look.
And, of course, their product is an ASP (Application Service Provider). While some would warn that the disadvantage of an ASP is that if your connection to the Internet goes down, so does your access to your site. However, your access to a desktop system can also go down if your computer or network fails. And, with an ASP product, you also have the added benefit of being able to access the service from anywhere! So, if a church staff member or leader is at home or on the road, they can still access the program, add content, edit information on an event, etc.
Another advantage of an ASP system is that there is unlimited user access, versus a program that might require license fees for each computer! And, with an ASP application, upgrades are free (done quarterly) and you do not have to re-install anything.
Community Church Builder is new, but it has a mature product. If you are looking for a way to provide a dynamic web page for your membership, and are considering a change in CMS packages, CCB should be given a serious look. They impressed me, and I'm not easily impressed!
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