Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Church Management

Louise Alderton, 16 April 2011

A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system might seem inappropriate for a not-for-profit or church organisation – one with members rather than customers. But with the xRM framework it is possible to strip out the business lingo and build a membership management solution that is specific to the needs of a Church.

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Microsoft Dynamics CRM arms you with the aptitude to manage each and every aspect of a church from members and contributions to missions and events. Individuals involved in church management are busy and often out and about so the ability to access the management system internally, through the web or even on a mobile device is an important aspect.

Let’s take a closer look at the features and benefits of Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Church Management:

A 360-Degree View of Members
A central and easily accessible system creates a valuable hub of information. You will have the ability to access a 360-degree view of each church member including activities and relationships between entities. It is much more than a database of contact details. With this system you can establish rich profiles around each member and contact in turn, allowing you to serve them better.

Administrative Efficiencies
Microsoft Dynamics CRM lets you create automated workflows allowing administrative tasks to be managed effectively across the various components of the church. It is also possible to seamlessly integrate your financial management software with Dynamics CRM to track expenses as well as manage member contributions, pledges and any other financial transaction. Such an integration can save a lot of time with intelligent workflows and no need to switch between two different systems.

Informative Reporting
With the comprehensive analytical and reporting tools in Dynamics CRM you can easily identify trends and have the competence to make more informed decisions, ultimately allowing you to grow your church and reach more people in your community.

Active Communication
Marketing tools, quality profiles and automation make communicating with members and other key contacts easy and effective. With template and mail merge tools you can easily communicate with a large group while still making it feel like a personal communication. Marketing lists can be used for defined targeting and events can be organised with minimal fuss. You can even create automatic alerts for important dates like a member’s birthday.

Case Studies:

LIFE

LIFE Church is an Auckland-based Christian church that, in the space of less than 20 years has grown from nothing to a congregation of several thousand who attend services at six centres in the Auckland region. With so many members – and growing – keeping the congregation’s records in order was becoming more than their Access-based system could handle. The Microsoft Dynamics CRM solution Magnetism were able to develop for LIFE allowed them to not only enter data into the system but get valuable information back out of it to effectively run the organisation. It has greatly reduced time spent on administrative tasks and they are able to keep track of everything effortlessly.

Read the full case study

ELCA Board of Pensions (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, ELCA)

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The Board of Pensions provides benefits for more than 10,000 congregations in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and other sponsoring faith-based organizations. Its staff members serve 50,000 pastors, rostered lay persons and lay employees, along with their families. A number of point solutions lead to numerous headaches for the organisation. They were not able to share member data or take advantage of common workflows. The old system was replaced with Microsoft Dynamics CRM to serve as an application portal for 12 business line systems. Using the xRM platform the solution was integrated with other key systems and department-specific applications were developed. Member service and staff productivity greatly improved. Job recruitment time has been reduced by 75 per cent while a retirement planning group application reduced administrative labour hours by 50 per cent.
Read the full case study

* Image from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Church_clipart.svg
** Image from: http://www.elca.org/our-faith-in-action/donate-now/goodgift-appeal4.aspx