What's New (October 1)

Nikki Tremann

Happy Tuesday! Check out what's new this week in Blackbaud Church Management!

Congregation summary

To help you deepen relationships within your ministry and gain insights into the membership patterns and important milestones of your congregation, you can now track changes in membership status and faith journey steps in the Congregation summary dashboard.

From Constituents, Congregation summary, you can:

• View a breakdown of congregation membership metrics for a selected time period, including the total membership statuses for your congregation and the number of individual congregants with membership status changes.

• Track your congregation's completion steps in the faith journey, such as baptism, marriage, or confirmation, within a specific time period. You can view the total journey steps completed for your congregation and the number of individual congregants with new journey steps.

• Select a journey or membership metric on the dashboard to create a list of congregants you can use to guide outreach and engagement. For example, you can create a list of first-time visitors who attended last Sunday to send them a welcome email. You can also export a list of people whose journey steps indicate they were recently married to invite them to a small group for young married couples.

For more information, see Congregation Summary.

Small groups

To make it easier for small group leaders to manage their groups in Blackbaud Church Management, admins can now provide leaders with a direct link to their Small groups page. From Constituents, Small groups, under Small groups, select Share leader link, and then copy the URL to send in an email or text to leaders. When a leader accesses the URL, they open the record for their small group where they can schedule meetings, take attendance, and send text or email to group members. If a leader manages multiple small groups, the page opens to a list of their groups.

To further streamline this workflow, admins no longer need to set up Blackbaud ID accounts or set security permissions for small group leaders. If a leader does not already have an account when they access the leader link, they're prompted to create a new account. For more information, see Small Groups.

MobileMission

For those of you trying out the MobileMission app, you can now view your giving history. From the app menu, select Giving history to view all one-time gifts and recurring gifts made in the app or entered in Gifts, Gifts management in Blackbaud Church Management. Each gift in the list includes the date, amount, and gift type. If you select a recurring gift, you can also view its frequency. For more information, see MobileMission.

Volunteers

You can now view and manage detailed information about a volunteer opportunity occurrence from its opportunity record. From Volunteers, Opportunities or Events, Volunteer opportunities, select the volunteer opportunity name.

From the opportunity record, you can:

• Edit the overview for a volunteer opportunity, such as the number of volunteers needed or the opportunity description.

• View volunteer information for the volunteer opportunity and assign new volunteers.

• View details about the event attached to the volunteer opportunity.

For more information, see Opportunity Records.

Events
Online registration — With consent options on online registration forms, registrants can choose the specific communications they're interested in receiving from your church, such as newsletters or text reminders, when they register for a one-time event. To add consent options for email, mail, or SMS communications, from the event registration form designer in Events, under Billing & payment, move Consent to the form and then configure the text to display. For more information, see Registration Form Consent Options.

Tip: Don't see consent options for mail or SMS? Email channel options are provided out of the box, but you must configure all other channels and categories in database view. For more information, Consent Options Business Rules.

Event prices — To help raise money or to cover the setup costs for an event, you can charge people to participate in or attend events. For example, you may sell tickets for a concert and offer different prices for children and adults. To speed data entry and streamline event set up, you can now more easily add prices in Events. On an event’s record, under Prices, select Add price and enter what participants can purchase in the Name field. Previously, prices were set up in the database view during your implementation. For more information, see Prices.

Note: Admins! In the database view, prices appear as event units in Tables under Configuration. If you enter a price name that already exists as a unit, the web view doesn’t create a duplicate entry for it in the database view.

Donation forms
Associate appeals with forms: Appeals are the solicitations you use to bring in gifts, such as an email asking congregants to give to a specific fund. To help you track the online gifts you receive from these solicitations, you can now associate appeals with donation forms. For example, if you use a donation form to collect gifts from a mailed letter, select the mailing as the appeal on the form. From Tools, Donation form designer, add or edit a donation form and choose a solicitation in Appeals under Get started. For more information, see Donation Forms.

Tip: Admins! To add or manage appeals, select Appeals from Records in the database view.

Split gifts across funds: Funds represent a donor’s intent for how you should use a gift, such as toward a specific cause or financial purpose. For example, a capital campaign for a new library may use separate funds for construction, books, and furniture. To help congregants indicate their intentions for online gifts, you can now allow them to split their giving across more than one fund. From Tools, Donation form designer, add or edit a donation form. Under Get started, choose the funds to include as options in the Funds for designating gifts field and select Allow donors to split a gift between multiple funds. For more information, see Donation Forms.

Tip: Admins!  In the database view, you create funds from Records.