Church management software is a specialized software that assists churches and other religious organizations in organization and automation of daily operations. These packages typically assist in the management of membership and mailings, fundraising, events, and report generation. Churches use the packages to reduce the cost of operations and track the growth in their congregations. The growth in the church management software business coincides with the growing trend of using computers for religious activity.
Larger systems allow multi-user access, with security options to protect confidentiality. Flexible features to keep and report information on attendance and pastoral visits can help church staff to make sure that no members are overlooked. Using a purpose-made package guards against relying on the knowledge of a specific individual to maintain a bespoke database. However, different church management applications vary significantly from one another, and what works well for one church may not fit the needs of another.
Christian Computing Magazine publishes an annual overview of commercial church management programs every October. The magazine's website also includes a table summarising the features of alternative products, and this is updated as new versions are released. However, this list is not comprehensive; it only covers a subset of commercial applications.
Free open source church management systems are also available; these are not listed by the above survey. An example of a free open source application for church management is the ChurchInfo project, hosted on SourceForge.
Other alternatives include online products, some of which also facilitate collaborative planning of church services.
Read more about this topic: Church Software
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