Launching My ChurchSuite successfully
Why roll out My ChurchSuite?
ChurchSuite provides both an admin facing side, for your users to manage all their admin tasks and a member-facing platform called My ChurchSuite.
Just like ChurchSuite, My ChurchSuite is accessible via both web browser and the ChurchSuite app. For a more detailed description of My ChurchSuite, see our support article What is MyChurchSuite?
Encouraging your members to interact with My ChurchSuite helps those members feel engaged with your organisation, enabling them to easily keep their information up to date, view upcoming events, manage their rota commitments and view available small groups that they might wish to get involved with.
Setting up for a win
1. Answer people's questions before they ask them
Launching My ChurchSuite is an opportunity to talk about how much you value data protection and people's privacy. You'll likely want to start with a default setting for everyone's contact details as not visible to others, so that individuals can then take responsibility for managing their own privacy settings, choosing how much or how little of their contact details they wish to share with other My ChurchSuite users. Individuals can see quite a lot of their own details but, at most, they will only see the name, address, telephone, email and mobile details of other members of your organisation and all of these can be set 'not visible' by the individuals if they wish.
So, what questions do people often ask?
Who can see my or my children's contact details in My ChurchSuite?
Access to My ChurchSuite is by an email invitation initiated from within ChurchSuite. Leaders can manage which Address Book contacts are granted login access and can choose at what point it's appropriate for newcomers to be given a login. Importantly, children's contact details are safeguarded; so while primary parents/carers can manage their own children's details, childrens' contact details remain hidden.
Most of My ChurchSuite does not involve people being able to view one another's contact details; instead, the content is personal to the individual who is logged in, showing information as it relates to them. There are three exceptions to this - "My Rotas", "My Groups" and "Search for others". If you serve on a rota or are in a small group, your fellow team/group members will see the contact details that you choose to set visible - your address, telephone, mobile or email address.
The "Search for others" feature is a searchable contact directory. Organisations can optionally restrict access to this feature to just those in particular tags, perhaps a member's tag or a leader's tag. It's also possible to restrict the people shown in search results. So, for example, you might only include those in your regular member's tag rather than your entire Address Book. In this way, you can prevent newcomers from showing in the search results, perhaps until they've had an opportunity to be invited to My ChurchSuite and can manage their privacy settings. Only Address Book contacts are shown in search results; children's names are never shown and are not searchable.
The Address Book module options are the place to set the default privacy settings for new contacts that are added to the Address Book. For existing contacts already in your database, you can view the privacy settings for some or all of your Address Book in the main Address Book page by selecting the Login & Privacy column using the column selector. You may wish to set all contacts to have only Name set visible to begin with, to enable everyone to then select the visibility they are happy with. See the support article Managing privacy settings for further information on how to use a bulk action to achieve that.
What if I don't have an email address?
Log in to My ChurchSuite requires an email address and a password that is set when the contact first receives the invitation to log in. Those without an email address will not be able to use My ChurchSuite. It's worth remembering that we must always continue to cater for those who don't or can't "do" technology. My ChurchSuite is designed to be an engagement tool to supplement what you already do; it's not meant to be a replacement.
For example, in your newsletters, you'll of course encourage people to sign up for events using My ChurchSuite in the first instance; but for those who may not have access, don't forget to also direct people to your information desk or website to sign up too.
What if we only have a shared email address?
Families who share an email address can still use My ChurchSuite. Each family member is sent a My ChurchSuite email invitation from their contact profile page as usual. The email is personalised, so each family member can identify their invite. Each invite has a unique login link so that each family member can set their password, which must be different to that of other family members. In this way, My ChurchSuite can correctly identify which family member is logging in.
What about compliance with Data Protection?
This is covered more fully later in this article - see section 8 about policies.
Is there an instruction manual for users?
While most people find My ChurchSuite intuitive and easy to use - there's nothing that they can break and they quickly learn to navigate and use the features they need. - you can share the support article My ChurchSuite user guide with your contacts. The guide covers every aspect of My ChurchSuite but you are free to copy and paste content from the guide and create your own, bespoke user guide, to help you inspire your contacts to try it out.
2. Who should be given access to My ChurchSuite?
This will vary from organisation to organisation. Some will want to know people for a season before they invite them to log in and participate in My ChurchSuite. In this scenario, organisations might use the Flows functionality within ChurchSuite as a means of managing newcomers through to the point where a decision is made about extending an invitation once they have been known for long enough.
Other organisations may prefer to engage contacts immediately with My ChurchSuite, to encourage engagement from the outset. There is no 'right' answer here, it is dependent upon what you, as an organisation, wish to do.
3. Connect your launch of My ChurchSuite to your vision
Every organisation experiences trends and fads which come and go. Getting people engaged with My ChurchSuite is all about vision. If people can easily connect your plans to use My ChurchSuite with different elements of your organisation's vision, they're much more likely to get onboard and use it. A few things you may wish to consider sharing as pointers to encourage engagement (in no particular order): -
- keeping your own information up to date means the admin team have one less task to do - and the information will be correct
- accurate information enables more targeted communications
- the platform enables everyone to keep up to date on upcoming events and courses, enabling them to sign up to them quickly and easily
- accessing information about available small groups is straight forward, enabling people to find the right group for them - and therefore find community
- newcomers can connect to the life of the church more quickly
- volunteers can easily see their up coming serving commitments, leaders can manage rotas and contact their teams easily
- small group leaders can communicate with their group members and track attendance, enabling them to manage the pastoral care element of their role more easily
- leaders who work with under 18s will see accurate and up to date information about the young people in their care
- contacts can manage their privacy settings, addressing the need for data protection compliance
- providing a cost effective platform to steward donations
4. Demonstrate My ChurchSuite as part of your launch
Creating a promotional video that relates to your particular context will help get get people excited about My ChurchSuite. It might also be helpful to take an opportunity to promote My ChurchSuite every now and then, once you have launched, to introduce newcomers to the concept.
5. Communicate your timeframes for going live
Be specific about when the email invitations will be sent out. You might like to begin by first launching to your staff team or small group leaders and ministry overseers, so that those early adopters are ready to be your My ChurchSuite ambassadors as you launch to the wider church.
6. Content is king
Having sufficient, relevant and up-to-date information available in My ChurchSuite is key to maintaining momentum. If My ChurchSuite is "the" place to find out what's happening in your church, then people will come back time and time again. The features that you offer will be largely dependent on the ChurchSuite modules that you have. If you only have the Address Book module then you will have considerably less scope for content compared to a church that has multiple or all ChurchSuite's modules.
Fortunately, the process of keeping your content relevant and up-to-date is really easy. Much of the information already in your ChurchSuite database will automatically populate content in My ChurchSuite. For example, public-facing events, small groups and rotas can all be set to pull through from ChurchSuite to My ChurchSuite. Also, if you've got an existing podcast on something like iTunes or Soundcloud, that too can easily be enabled within My ChurchSuite with no additional ongoing maintenance; new content will appear in My ChurchSuite as your podcast feed is updated.
Taking a little time to source good quality, royalty-free graphics and write well-written descriptions for events, groups and ministries will all reap rewards by raising the profile of what your church offers and increasing engagement.
ChurchSuite's optional features can also help maintain momentum. For example, the following features all make for useful functionality for church members and ministry overseers and are great reasons to keep logging back in.
- rota swaps
- rota accept/decline
- rota unavailability
- small group sign-up
- small group attendance recording
- rota management for volunteers and ministry overseers
- online giving
- subscribing to rota iCal feeds so that serving volunteers can see their upcoming rota commitments in their preferred calendar/diary application
An often overlooked feature in My ChurchSuite is external links. Beyond the system content on the My ChurchSuite menu, you can also add custom external links. These are added in the Address Book module settings. For each custom external link that you create, you can also assign one or more tags. In this way, you can deliver custom menu items based on a tag or tags that people in your church might have. For example, your newcomers' tag - imagine providing custom content through external links to just newcomers, such as a link to a survey or questionnaire (see the customisable Forms feature) or a link to the next featured newcomer event your church is running. Or what about tagging all your leaders and then providing external links to leadership resources or small group resources? In this way, when external links are restricted to certain fixed or smart tags, custom content is shown in My ChurchSuite to only those people who are in those tag groupings. For further information about this area, see our support article Adding custom links to the My ChurchSuite menu.
7. Check under the hood before going live
Ahead of inviting the first people to use My ChurchSuite, take time to go through each module's settings and check that everything is set up as you would expect. The Address Book, Children, Calendar, Small Groups, Rotas and Giving modules all have My ChurchSuite module settings so that you can customise the user experience of My ChurchSuite. Using the styling and logo options in the Profile section of your Account Settings, you can style My ChurchSuite to reflect the colours of your website, giving users a familiar experience when they log in.
One area to consider in the Children's module settings is the setting for who can add new children.
Sadly, for many couples, starting a family is not plain sailing. However, it's possible to demonstrate sensitivity by hiding the "My Children" menu from individuals without any children, so that only existing parents will see that menu option.
8. Review your policies
Launching My ChurchSuite is a perfect opportunity to review and update your organisation's Data Protection Policy. While Data Protection law covers more than just your database (i.e. it covers email systems, files on computers, phones, tablets, paper documents, etc.) your policy must reflect the extent of the data that you hold about individuals and the purpose for which that data is used. Your policy will also outline an overview of who has access to people's data and how that data is maintained. It might also include a mention of your use of ChurchSuite and My ChurchSuite.
If you need help with your policy, you could try reaching out to others, e.g.
- The ICO (Information Commissioner's Office) website. They also have a (UK)GDPR section that has comprehensive coverage of GDPR with regular updates as each consultation takes place.
- Your local UCAN Administrator's network
- The Evangelical Alliance
- Legal/professional advice from a Data Protection and/or charity expert - you may have people in your church who can help, or you may need to instruct someone professionally to advise your church. There are some great charity/governance consultants out there that will guide trustees and church teams.
- Overseers or the governing body for your church's affiliation, denomination or stream
- Other churches in your local area or network
What next?
If you haven't already done so, there are a couple of helpful ChurchSuite support articles that are a must-read - see the related support articles at end of this article.