Because of my work in new media for the Church, especially as I have advised parishes in the past on various tech tools to use, I sometimes get asked by developers who wish to put their skills at the service of the Kingdom of God what kind of technology solutions parishes need. I’m afraid that they might be hoping for something cool like a new Confession app for the phone or some new Catholic social network. Unfortunately, parishes’ needs tend toward the more prosaic. On the other hand, these are the sorts of things thousands of parishes might be interested in buying from you.
If you are a developer, here’s what I think parishes need most: an online event/project registration and payment system. They need an easy way to sign up and track children for religious education programs and to allow parents to pay for it online or in person, using check or cash or credit card. Parishes need an event system that lets them run, say, a parish trip, to sign up people easily, receive their payments, and communicate with them effectively. A system that would be flexible enough to accept payment on a smartphone or tablet in the nave of the church after Mass for tickets for a parish dinner and to have a page on the parish website where people can do that same.
So what’s the business model? Well, you could sell your product with a service plan model or you could sell monthly or yearly subscriptions to it, but what if instead you gave it away and took a small bit of each transaction? Taking religious education alone, in the US in 2013, there were more than 3 million children in non-parochial school religious education. A piece of every one of those transactions is a pretty good business. Then add in all the other event and ministry registrations.
Heck, throw in online giving for good measure. And do a combination of a low-cost subscription and per-transaction fee.
Yes, there are registration and payment systems out there. A parish with a halfway talented techie could cobble together a simple registration form on the parish website with a Paypal account. But that’s exactly what it would be: a cobbled-together solution that relies on the person who made it to maintain and whose user experience would probably be so bad that no one would use it.
To be frank, I’m tired of half-assed Catholic tech solutions. I want to see the kind of care and attention put toward software and hardware aimed at the Catholic market as I see coming from Apple and the best Apple developers. Some are already there now. The latest stuff coming from eCatholic is pretty impressive. Little iApps started the trend with their awesome iPhone apps. I’ve had private demonstrations of other software that show a lot of promise too.
So, developers, there’s your answer. Event and organization relationship management isn’t sexy, but it’s needed. So who’s willing to step up?
Photo by IRISS Collection on Flickr. Used under a Creative Commons license.
Yep, you’re totally right. Just had a meeting at our parish about this. One of the things we’re running into is that a lot of events, particularly retreats, require medical information as part of the registration process. We are looking at using Gravity Forms (on a WordPress site) tied to a payment process through OSV’s online giving processor, since it sounded like that would be easiest for account reconciliation. A full solution would need to address storage of personal information, etc.
But then, as you mentioned, there are events like parish dinners that in no way require a full-fledged data storage setup. I personally think that PayPal, although a pain in many ways, does make the “take payments via smartphone” thing pretty easy now that they have the PayPal Here credit card processor that plugs into your phone. We’ve used that for little league concessions and other “on-the-go” stuff.
Yep, we’re going to be looking at the different smartphone payment apps with the credit card swipe and see if one works for us. If we do cobble together a system it might be nice to have a kind of point-of-sale system with ipads in the parishes and school offices. (I’ll be working as communications and technology director in a collaborative of 3 parishes with a school.) And then people with proper training and accounting controls could use them in other locations too.
Of course, that means I will need to get wireless everywhere…
I should clarify that we are NOT using online forms for the medical info part of the registration process, since then we run up against HIPAA regulations.
Domenico, ask and you shall receive! I’m one of the co-founders of Growing the Faith, and we are building exactly what you asked for: a simple, beautiful system to manage all the day-to-day logistics of parish life. Our system, OneParish, currently handles the parish directory (change your picture more often than every 5 years!), finding Mass/confession/adoration all over the country by location, Relevant Radio streaming, and the Pope’s Twitter feed, among other solid Catholic content. Pastor messaging to their entire flock is on it’s way as well.
By this time next month, we will have baked-in mobile donations, with the complete calendar and ministry management system rolled by early Fall. Imagine being able to set up an event, let everyone find out about it easily, have them pay for the event on the spot, and get reminded when it occurs. Our goal is to take all the hassle and pain points out of parish life, so we can focus everything on what matters: the fundamental encounter with Christ and His Church.
Check us out at http://www.oneparish.com
Cheers
Thanks Ryan, I will check that out. I should say that I’m wary of solutions that try to do too much, that become jacks of all trades and masters of none. I’d rather see a perfect registration and payment system than a mediocre one that’s part of a larger suite of features. I’m not saying that’s what you’ve got as I haven’t looked at your software yet, but just stating a principle. Thanks again.
Hi Ryan,
As I start to deal with this myself in my new job the key will be back end administration. Any solution would have to include database management of families and children, tuition tracking, sacrament tracking and more.
Domenico,
We are building out all the features you mentioned by the end of this year. We already have family database management, and we are adding tuition and sacrament tracking along with many other components.
I’m also wary of all-in-one solutions, as they have a tendency to do a lot of things so-so instead of a few things really well. The trade-off is that a system with several components can leverage a single sign-on, your previously created data, etc.
We are striking a balance by use a Google-like model and building one component at a time – donations, calendars, ministry management – and treating each one with extra time and care. We don’t move on to a new component until the previous one ‘sings’ 🙂
Domenico,
I am happy to tell you this solution already exists. My company, Liturgical Publications (LPi), is most definitely a “Catholic” focused company. Our primary business is printing bulletins for roughly 4,200 Catholic Parishes.
Our online giving tool, WeShare, is used by over 600 Catholic Parishes and not only handles standard online contributions, but also easily handles events. We have an easy to use form builder. It is a very visual user experience and handles your iOS with ease.
Frankly the only issue we’ve run across with our registration forms for things like religious education is the complexity some parishes would like. We’re working hard to improve that experience. I’d recommend you check it out. We built WeShare so we have the ability to improve and enhance the experience and that is exactly what we’re doing.
Not on topic, but for any church looking at online giving…make sure you do your homework and understand the “Merchant of Record” issue. Too often a church will take on needless risk and exposure by becoming the Merchant of Record. We remove all the risk and exposure for the church so you can sleep at night.
Mike,
Sounds interesting. I will sign up for one of your webinars to check it out.
Dom, Thanks for the eCatholic mention. Noted… 🙂 We are working hard to change the way that the Church communicates and are currently looking for another developer to join our team. Keep up the good work.
http://www.eCatholic.com/joinourteam