Does your church pay you?

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Branjawn's picture

Could everyone please list their church size, their position at the church, whether they volunteered or were recruited, and how much you are compensated.

I have been volunteering for 2 years now, but can not afford (literally) to simply volunteer anymore. My other work has not been very profitable this year and I need money to pay the bills! Trying to figure out how much I'm worth, how much I can ask for.

I am the web team: I do graphics, maintain the server, support email accounts, do pretty much any and everything Drupal related. Have put in hundreds of hours over the past two years and now average about 10 hours a week in the maintaining mode with about 1-2 site improvements a month on top of that.

Comments

I was recruited to be a

jmbeach's picture

I was recruited to be a member of my church's communications committee, but I accepted that position so that I could become the church webmaster. The web site at the time was a only mishmash of tables and javascript that was extremely difficult to change. I upgraded the site, first with static HTML and CSS and finally with Drupal 6.

My work is done on a volunteer basis and primarily consists of adding events to the church calendars on a monthly basis (with scheduling, past events are automatically unpublished).

I have tried to get others to help with the site, but it has been very difficult to get more volunteers even though the site has been one of the main focuses of the communications committee since its inception and is the primary means of reaching people outside the church.

I believe that our current congregation is around 500-600. The web site and domain name are paid for by the church, but I receive no personal compensation for my work.

Just out of interest jmbeach.

yautja_cetanu's picture

Just out of interest jmbeach. When you say you're looking for more volunteers. What kinds of things are you looking for? Are they volunteers to just update the site with content or are you looking for people to help with actually building the site (programming and stuff?)

I'm trying to help put together a church install profile so I'm interested in what churches tend to need.

In reply to the original post we're working for a couple of churches for free. One church is asking us to update their database and I'll post roughly how much we'd charge when we know. Last time I went to a drupal meet up people suggested that they can get roughly £30-£40 an hour, but then that is the high end of what a drupal developer costs.

Volunteers

jmbeach's picture

I've got the basic site building down so I'm just looking for church members willing to update the content of the website. Heck, I'm even just looking for members that are willing to create the content so I can do the site updates.

My experience

nisaak's picture

I created my church's website a couple of months ago (jubileemennonitechurch.ca), but when I started I told those I was working with that I wouldn't be responsible for the content on the site. I did a fair bit of work on the site to setup some simple to use content types and worked with wysiwyg to make maintenance as simple as possible. I've trained our church secretary and also our pastors on how to use the system and they've run with it and take care of all content changes themselves. They still come back to me when they need support or help with some graphics, but that hasn't needed too much time, but it's also a very small church (100 regular attenders).

I've also been working on a number of other freelance websites including another church, and have been charging about $30 / hour (Canadian $), but I've been told that it's too low for what I'm offering, but for now the lower rate is getting me some more business and helping me build up a bit of a portfolio. I had one person suggest that I should be charging somewhere between $50 - $60 / hour. Of course this is also all on the side (I do Drupal work for a living: mcc.org) so it isn't a big deal for me now that I'm not charging as much as I should.

Similar experience

jwatson3d's picture

nisaak, I've had a similar experience...First I started with plain HTML/javascript using Dreamweaver then moved on to DotNetNuke in hopes of getting others to maintain "their own" content. Last fall we re-launched the effort with a team and I led them through building out a Drupal 6 site (http://stmattumc.org). We launched that in the spring just as I took a new job. Nearly 100% of the maintenance fell onto the admin. assistant as the rest of the team quickly lost interest. Having done all the technical work, I had great hopes that God would lift up one or two people who would take a strong interest in managing the site but it didn't happen. I'm now working with the admin. assistant to create a new site on Drupal Gardens to get the benefit of their support, administration and maintenance. Oh, we're averaging around 350 attendees in worship at two sites.

Almost two years ago, I setup

pvsilvestri's picture

Almost two years ago, I setup a website for my church's Religious Formation/Education department so that they could post pictures from their summer events so that parents could go download them. At the time, the church site was running on Joomla and was being hosted on a sub-domain (even though we owned a .com domain) and was a complete disaster.

In October 2009, I had a meeting with our Business Manager and I was "recruited" to take on the day-to-day operations/management of the website, which is in Drupal. I host it on my own servers, I do all of the management, and I run/manage their email via Google Apps for Business. When I first started management of the site, it was on a volunteer basis. However, after consulting with them and totaling up all of the work I was doing (which was over 150 hours a month), I wrote up a very basic contract and I get a check every 6 months from them for my work. The amount varies, because it depends on what's available in terms of funds, but it averages out to about $100/month in compensation; most of which goes into upgrading server hardware, domain name purchases/renewals, and other stuff that I have to purchase.

There has been talk within our church of forming a "Web Communications Team" to manage all of the websites we have, to make sure each group/committee/ministry is represented on the website and has a say, and to also manage our Social Media outlets (Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr at the moment). However, with budget cuts in the works, that is no longer on the table, so I'm the one in charge of everything and am the only person doing anything.

pvsilvestri: I'm interested

yautja_cetanu's picture

pvsilvestri: I'm interested in this web communications team. Was the suggestion to have a proposition to have everyone on the team being paid? Surely this kind of team could be something lots of volunteers could do without stressing out individuals too much? They would just be managing information, not programming right?

The plan was to have a team

pvsilvestri's picture

The plan was to have a team of 14 people (not including myself) who were "the main people who made the crucial decisions on what was done with the website" and each one of these 14 people would have been responsible for one "piece" of the site (e.g. one person in charge of News Items, one person in charge of individual Ministry/Group sections, etc).

I don't include myself in this 14 person team, because I would have been the Chairperson. We would have met twice a month to review the site, make changes (content, theming, layouts, etc) and then I would have gone back and implement changes that the team voted on implementing.

In terms of having this team, the only person who would have been paid would have been myself and the 2-3 people who were part of the development team (a Graphic Designer, who I would be paying; and 2 Developers). The rest of the team would have been volunteers who would have been selected by their ministry/group to represent them on the communications team.

However, because my budget for web items (not including my salary) is $0, so we didn't get too far in trying to implement the above proposition. With our budget the way it is (running barely in the red), I wasn't able to get approval for an additional 3 people on the payroll for development work, so I put the entire thing on hold for at least a year (or until the economy gets better). I have more pressing issues that are more important....

If you're interested in some additional info, I could dig through some of my documents and possibly email you some info that I had put together before everything went down the drain.

Thanks, but need more!

Branjawn's picture

Thanks everyone for responding. I'm hoping even more people respond! Please email this thread to any church webmaster friends you have and have them reply please!

I work mostly for free

bdornbush's picture

I volunteered to do a new site for my church 3 years ago because the prior site was so poor. We started a committee that has become the communications team. All work I have done so far has been free. I do get a very small amount of help in entering content, but I do most of it. I update it weekly including uploading 2 sermons. The senior pastor told me he would understand if it became too much, but there really is no one else who can do what I do.

I also do 2 other sites for church related organizations, and I made it clear when I started work that I expected to be paid, and that worked fine. Initial expectations are critical.

Some paid

bdornbush's picture

I forgot to mention above that the team paid a graphic designer to design the site. It is interesting to me that they are willing to pay for some things, but if you dare volunteer, then they assume you will volunteer forever. It is clear to me that if I cease to volunteer, they will probably hire someone else to do the work I do now.

Volunteer for church w/

keith_k's picture

Volunteer for church w/ attendance in the 500 ballpark. I did a big push to get the site online, then troubleshooting/enhancements for a while after that. (Taught myself Drupal to make it happen.) Now the site basically runs itself. (Another volunteer was already doing the staff-oriented stuff PCs, printers, network storage, google apps, etc.). I got a couple of people to help with 'frontline' stuff (how do I create an account?) which helped with the load. The pastors/staff do all the content unless they need something out of the ordinary. When I moved out of state, other volunteers took over stuff like security upgrades and they'll have to find someone to do new stuff. All the church has ever paid for is the domain and hostgator.com fees.

Volunteer Web Monkey

Spark_man's picture

Our church (about 500 parishioners, http://www.schgochurch.org) previously had a web site that was developed and maintained (sort of) by one of the parishioners. But the fact is that updates were not happening in a timely manner, in fact, sometimes updates were not happening at all, because of miscommunication with the church office staff, conflicts in work schedules, etc. Primarily, what I was interested in was getting updates to the church's calendar of events so that I could figure out what was going on! The final straw for me was that His All Holiness the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I was making a stop at our church in November 2009 to celebrate his 18th year of enthronement and our church' 65th year and not a word appeared on the website announcing it! So I resolved to do what I could to provide the church with the tools to ensure that the staff was able to make updates and post information and announcements without the help of outside resources. It was a bit of a struggle in more ways than one and it has been an ongoing process, but the site is functional and my initial goal of self sufficiency has been mostly met. I still perform security updates and monitor its status on a daily basis, but at this point I am only spending an hour or two a week working on the live site. I have devoted some time the site's further development, but implementing any change within an organization such as ours is fraught with fear, delay and sometimes outright obstruction. There is often a huge disconnect between what can be done technically and what can be done with the available staff resources. For instance there has been a plan to enable the various ministries within the church to develop their own content. This is hope, but a lot of work remains before that becomes a reality, even though the capability was their from the minute the site went live.

We also host an annual community event (Greek Festival) that has a separate website (http://www.annapolisgreekfestival.com) that I developed using the same model, and it requires even less work on my part. Although that will change the closer we get to June. I have a lot of ideas on how to make that process better, but there is only so much I can do on my own.

The fact is that if the church had to pay for web development or maintenance, other than the hosting and domain fees, they simply would never have updated their web presence and parishioners would still be wondering what was going on at the church on any given day. I look at my time as a gift to the church. At this point my only hope is that someone within the community steps up to help with the monitoring and maintenance.

Sorry, no dough

DeNelo's picture

Hi,
We're approx. 200 regulars. I did the website from scratch 7 or 8 years ago, actually learning PHP in the process. It works well, but could do with a brush-up (more than a brush-up, really) and more emphasis on unchurched people.
I have offered to create a brand new site made in Drupal. I have convinced the company that I work for that we need to change to Drupal as well, so I'm getting a lot of free experience that way ;o) - which I can use on the church website.
I've never charged a cent, but with the new site I
-get a lot of hands-on experience with Drupal
-enable others to maintain the site, thus offloading me
-Also, I get another guy on the team who can do graphics.
That's enough for me, but I do have a daytime job! And being able to put "Drupal Developer" on your CV is worth a lot.
BTW - those £30-40 or CDN$40 an hour y'all are talking about - seems like very little! An experience Drupal consultant here in Denmark would charge something like £130, no kidding. For real.

renew passport

Branjawn's picture

Sounds like I need to move to Denmark! I only charge $20 an hour here, and it's still hard to find any work. I wonder if Drupal is more popular in Europe than in the USA?

Renew passport

DeNelo's picture

Would be interesting to see a proliferation map of sorts. I know of some large sites using it here in DK, at least, for instance the largest newspapers (www.berlingske.dk) and many others.
You're welcome!

I target on churches at a rate of € 55

Fonkel's picture

For my own church, I did the website for free.
But for all the other churches that I serve with web development, I charge between 40 and 55 / hour.
I know that churches in general are not used to pay for e.g. a website, but I'm convinced that when there is vision, there will also be money. And when there is no money, there is lack of vision, the church should ask herself "Why do we want a website?"
Some churches give tens of thousands of euro's for conserving old windows and buildings, but they think that 4000 euro for a website is way to much.
What if they also did this with the sound-system or the salary of the leaders of the church.

So: I want to have the initiative to give a discount, not the church.

So I can give small and starting churches small prices and big expanding churches normal prices :-)

One last tip: A website is (maybe in the first place) an outreaching tool. When there is money in the general budget, maybe there is in the 'outreach or evangelism-budget'.

What not to do

younggeezer's picture

My experience is like Spark_man, above -- church of about 800 with 500-600 in attendance any given Sunday; the old website was never updated, for various reasons (excuses?). I volunteered, unpaid, to build a new Drupal-based site. I wrote a 'how-to' guide and did training, but it remains to be seen if having a documented, easier-to-use website will get the staff to do any updating. I'm now hoping to get a web-team assembled, separate from the ministers and staff, to handle the website.

There may be something to flodo's idea of the church having a vision of how the web fits. Paying may create 'buy-in' and more commitment at some level. Certainly, if I do this again for some church other than my own, I'll be quoting a fairly hefty hourly rate, especially if they seem disorganized or passive-aggressive.

for my 2 cents... In my

keith_k's picture

for my 2 cents...

In my experience it was crucial to empower the pastors and staff to do basic website content themselves. I wouldn't advocate a separate team of volunteers to handle things like announcements that originate with the staff anyway. We have volunteers post videos and audio.

We did one or two-hour a training before going live. Pastors brought their laptops and I walked them through scenarios (e.g. What if ... "I want to add a calendar event"; "I want to add an announcement to the frontpage"; "I want to send out a [simplenews] email to the whole church").

Edit: Here's the stats for those interested. Top posters since switching to Drupal have been:

Church secretary (505 nodes)

Me, importing old site & library of audio/video (413)

Director of Administration (89)

Senior Pastor (67)

Volunteer who posts new audio/video (65)

Business Manager (62)

Pastor of Spiritual Growth (49)

you're fortunate...

younggeezer's picture

I just looked over the content to see who has done what. Since our training session (which occurred the beginning of November), I and another volunteer added 166 nodes, the ministers and office staff (five people) have done a total of 26 nodes, with most of their content being added by the youth minister a couple of days after the training.

I'm afraid in our setting, either it's going to get done by a separate team, or it's not going to happen.

Haha

Branjawn's picture

What's a Business Manager? j/k Our church of about 200 doesn't have a Business Mgr, and the senior Pastor is also the head of Administration. Overall the computer ability of our staff (both paid and volunteer) is VERY low.

I'm not sure we were that

keith_k's picture

I'm not sure we were that different. I was actually really surprised by the response. The first couple of timesthe pastor stood up on Sunday morning and say "go to the website to ...." and I'd almost fall out of my chair. I admit that something "special" happened in our case. I don't buy the argument that it's about skill/training. The shift that occurred for us was simply the staff's (probably more implicit than explicit) decision to make the website the central mechanism for church communications. However, there's no question that Drupal allowed the culture shift. The old site, the staff really couldn't do the edits. With Drupal, it wasn't too much to ask.

The business manager is the person who deposits the weekly donations. I don't remember if she is a volunteer or works part time. She racks up nodes because every week she enters the previous week's donation totals into a special Drupal node type, which I've translated into graphs and tables (available only to privileged users).

Agreed

Branjawn's picture

"I'm afraid in our setting, either it's going to get done by a separate team, or it's not going to happen."

I am in the same position. Except, it would read: "I'm afraid in our setting, either it's going to get done by ME, or it's not going to happen."

That's the position I'm in.

jmbeach's picture

That's pretty much the position that I am in right now. I actually stepped down as the chair of the communications committee for the past year so I could focus on the web site (I'm still a committee member). Between the web site and duplicating CD's of the services, I pretty much have my hands full as a volunteer and I personally can't always keep up.

I did have our Seminary Intern request web resources for use in an online bible study she was teaching. After setting up the Organic Groups, I turned the reins over to her and she actually did a good jobs of keeping things up-to-date. The problem was, while there were a number of members that signed up for the class, nobody actually participated in the online portion of the class (no blog comments, no forum discussions, nothing).

I am going to start pushing for more help in the coming year so hopefully the I can eliminate the "done by me or not going to happen" situation.

My experience

Branjawn's picture

Everyone goes "Yay! Website!". Then they lose interest. They do not participate. They do not support it.
All that is left is the volunteer who made the site who now is relegated to supporting a site that no one cares about.

That's why I've changed my mindset. I'm denying all new feature requests, because history shows they go unused or unsupported. I'm also going back and trying to go minimalist with the site so that I can put more time into work that is 1) going to pay the bills, and 2) be more fulfilling.

That's why churches pay me

Fonkel's picture

I recognize your statement, but that is why I offer payed services to churches: I can pay my bills and it is definitely fulfilling!
I think the profit for churches should be in re-use certain custom modules, do the technical management for more churches on the same server and to have a good install profile available together with some themes.

hmmm. communication?

younggeezer's picture

Seems to me that, for you and your church, all would benefit from a rather frank talk. Sit down and ask them about their expectations, and what they really want from the website. Then tell them your situation, the number of hours per week you're putting in, and that you really can't afford to continue. Offer to either smoothly transition to another volunteer (document the passwords and setup), or offer to continue at the best hourly rate you can afford. Give them a date when you need to be back to focusing solely on your business, and stick to it. Document as much as you can and hand it over when the time limit passes.

If all they want is a billboard on the web, static content with location and times for services, they really don't need your services on an ongoing basis. They and you would be better off winding things down.

On the other hand, if they really want an Organic Groups setup for organizing a small groups ministry, or CiviCRM, etc., having never messed with these my understanding is these are heavy-duty, both for setup and maintenance, and they should be prepared to support you as you support them.

It's getting better

bdornbush's picture

I do 99% of the work on our web site. Our usage as measured by Google Analytics is growing about 50% per year, so I feel like I'm doing something right. I participate in a Communications Committee who are responsible for the church newsletter and website, among other things. The staff have been very supportive, and we have had failed attempts at things like church-wide book reading forums, but we have also had successes. Photo albums are big attractions, and there are some visits to listen to prior sermons (MP3 files with a player) as well as a PDF version of the newsletter. We went on a mission trip recently, and I posted photos while we were there, which was widely viewed, although I learned on prior trips that the photos got posted only if I asked others to let me copy the photos from their camera flash chips. Our administrative assistant sends an email to those who have agreed to access the newsletter online, and we have been getting an increasing number of hits on it as well. She posts the newsletter to the web site, using a custom content type I set up, so people can read the PDF embedded in a web page as well as accessing a PDF file. We have reduced our mailed copies by over half. Our preschool now maintains their own pages, thanks to a volunteer parent. I was heartened to have specific requests to post the dates and times of our Christmas concert on our news column on the home page, as people were looking for it. Recently, I was asked to see how to make a mobile device friendly version of the web site, and that's on my list for next quarter.

In short, I have hung in there while it seemed that no one appreciated my work, but now I know they do, even if they can't pay for it. The web site is regularly referred to by pastors and staff, and some of the members as well, so I feel it is going in a good direction. If you are interested, visit http://www.fumcsantarosa.org

If I were you I would meet

jdwfly's picture

If I were you I would meet with the Pastor and let him know that the website is not being updated. Play it up that it is a big problem (it is a big problem after all). Let him know that you have everything setup to make it easy to update, but you need a commitment from him and whatever staff member that will do the updating. Tell him that you are willing to help instruct and educate but they need to keep the content of the site up to date. If they are unwilling to do this then I would let him know your intentions. If you want to ask for some compensation this would be the time. Personally I would just tell him that I no longer have time to update the website. Hopefully it won't have to come to that.

It's going to be very tough for them to pay you anything. I think you said it was a church of 200. Since I also work at a church I know that 200 is barely enough to support the Pastor and pay the bills. In my opinion if you started out doing it volunteer then you are probably going to have to keep it volunteer. I think technically if they were to pay you now they would need to backpay you for all the hours you have volunteered (don't quote me on that, but I think that's the law).

My situation is completely different so it is not a good example. I work at a church that averages around 6000 in attendance. I am paid staff and work on a Web team with 7 other guys. We have around 15 websites that we keep up to date. Working for a church, you won't be paid a competitive salary for what a web developer should get, but you must remember that your reward is not always monetary. There are also many changed lives that will happen because of the websites you create and facilitate. If that isn't enough for you I suggest working outside of the church (freelance), and only work for the church if they are willing to pay.

Just to reiterate...

Branjawn's picture

Not sure if I mentioned this, but I started wanting to just volunteer, because my business was doing so well. But, I haven't had much work since Fall of 2008, and NEED money now. Volunteering won't pay the mortgage :)
So, initially, my intent was to do work for free forever, but it just is not feasible anymore.

Just step back

twowheeler's picture

In a church of 200, there are a lot of things that are either done by a volunteer or they don't get done. Personally, I would never ask my own church to pay me for work I started to do as a volunteer. That is asking for resentment and heartache for both parties. You are either a member, or you are an employee.

Think of it from the pastor's perspective: first, there is no money budgeted for this. Second, he has a list of people who willingly give their time to the church to make various things happen. How many of them will start to say, hey I do yard work or whatever for X hours a week, and I have money problems too, so why am I not being paid by the church? Really, you don't want to be the cause of dissention in your church.

If you have to step back from your volunteer work, so be it. Have a frank talk with the pastor, so he knows that you are not just abandoning it, and then let it sit while you go earn a living. When you have the time again, come back to it.

I concur. I have just started

Jumoke's picture

I concur. I have just started to do my church site now for free and I wouldn't dare ask my church for money for the reasons you have stated. My intention is to train the church leaders / admin staff how to manage updates on the site and then step away. Once in a while, i will check up on the site to make software upgrades on my free time. And if they need additional functionality added to the site or some major changes, it will depend on the complexity/time available before I can ask for compensation and it has to be very reasonable for them to understand why they need to compensate me or whichever Drupal person i suggest to them, but I can't imagine that will happen soon or ever. They are happy with whatever I can give them and as for now, I am willing to put my best in giving my amazing church family a kick-ass drupal site.

Other thoughts...

Anthony Pero's picture

@branjawn:

Here's a thread from a few years back on Geeks and God, that dealt with this same issue. There's lots of good, biblical thoughts, as well as practical advice in here:

http://geeksandgod.com/forums/random-discussion/general-discussion/it-ok...

My church is about 200

Jumoke's picture

My church is about 200 members. They have a static-html ugliest site ever right now but that is all going to change soon when yours truly ; ) is done with it. I used to teach the 3-5 year olds at sunday school but after getting into wrestling fights with so many of them and lost -- i quit that department so fast and joined the not-so-Tech department and taken upon the task of giving my church a CMS site and drupal is my choice of course. This is solely volunteer work and I am very happy doing it because I love to. I also know that it may bring me some side-gigs from business owners in the church and if it does, that will be my compensation.

Thanks for all of the responses

Branjawn's picture

A small amount of money has been set aside for me this year as a trial. I decided that I would create several "accounts" and bill each for my time.
Some of the accounts I charge ZERO. This would be supporting visitors to the site, general member support, and basically anything taking less than 5 minutes.
For ministry support (they usually make pretty demanding requests) I charge $20 an hour. The same goes for staff training and any new developing.
As it turns out, so far this month I have put in about 7 hours (have been trying to concentrate on getting new work) of which only 1 hour will be billable. Seems like this is a good situation for both parties.