Posted by pastorjayrich on January 4, 2010 at 5:33pm
Does anyone have a good way to track metrics like attendance, baptisms, etc.?
Attendance tracking for Users or CivicRM?
Does anyone have a good way to track metrics like attendance, baptisms, etc.?
Comments
CiviCRM would be
CiviCRM would be overkill.
The simplest way would be to use the core profile module, making fields 'private' as needed.
If you need more power, try content_profile module with CCK, including CCK's Content Permissions sub-module for private fields.
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I'm talking about weekly attendance...
That seems like it would work for one time attendance, but I'm talking about weekly attendance. Trackable and all that stuff.
hmm. You're going to have to
hmm. You're going to have to be clearer on your requirements then, because now it sounds like you want to keep computer records for individual persons for each instance of service attendance, which sounds better suited to a sales presentation or a cult than a normal church.... It'd be pretty creepy to find my church was generating charts of my personal attendance record from some secret database in the pastor's blog. I hope that sounds as much like a joke to you as it does to me.... ;-)
That being assumed, you might want to phrase your objectives as user-centered requirements, e.g.,
-- All website users should be able to view...
-- Church Staff should be able to input...
-- Church staff should be able to view...
-- Event Organizers should be able to...
Something like that will get you closer to where myself or someone else can offer more useful advice.
BTW, I'm assuming your looking to do the technical work yourself. If not, you might want to put out a call for a consultant from the CiviCRM Professional Services page, or the Drupal Paid Services forum. Designing an effective & robust Constituent Relationship System is no small undertaking, both from a conceptual & technical perspective.
If you don't have clear objectives about what you want to accomplish, picking up a semi-random software solution is likely to leave you with a tangled ball of mostly useless data, and a lot of time wasted. So if this response seems like a huge step backward from my previous one, you'll understand why.
All the Best,
Matt
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Church Management System?
It's not a joke actually. I use Drupal for more than just blogs, so this isn't that creepy. For example, I have a church that runs a library system through their website. Just google "Church Management System" and you will see what I am talking about. It's not cultic, it's very common. I've worked for/with 8 churches that all do this at some level. Churches that run schools really need this!
Some of the major company's that provide this are:
-Church Community Builder
-ACS Technologies
-Fellowship Technologies
-Membership Edge
-ETC
Churches (501.c3) have to give annual reports at the end of the year that include attendance for the various ministries within the church. Google: "church annual reports" to see what I am talking about. This includes Sunday morning attendance, Sunday school attendance, Small groups, youth group, children's ministry, etc... I thought that CivicRM might be a good solution since it has contributions, events and other helpful stuff for church annual reports. I was also looking at School Reports/Administration as well.
Here are some of the requirements:
-This would NOT be something that was publicly viewable.
-It would only be something that a pastor and select board/staff would have access to in order to generate annual reports.
-It could be based on individual accounts. (though this isn't necessary)
-Classroom teachers should be able to enter their attendance for individuals if there is a K-12 school run by the church.
-Attendance for multiple venues
Yeah, adding the school
Yeah, adding the school management component is a huge piece you failed to mention. At that point, CiviCRM might be useful, as lobo mentioned.
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you might want to check the school module stuff
in CiviCRM
http://civicrm.org/taxonomy/term/26
i've built attendance tracking for my kids school extended care system
this is currently very developer centric, so u need to be familiar with PHP/Drupal etc to use it
lobo
I feel every church should be
I feel every church should be able to answer the following questions for every single one of their members:
It follows the simple mission: Experience (God), Connect (with Christians), Love (the World)
An approach popularized by the book, Simple Church.
If someone knows of a solution to collect this sort of information using Drupal, I'm all ears.
YES!!!
Philbar,
This is great information. I think that these should be a part of this discussion, so I'm adding them to the list.
-- Does he or she regularly attend a worship service?
-- Is he or she connected to a small group?
-- Is he or she involved in a compassionate ministry?
--This would NOT be something that was publicly viewable. Probably on an internal server or subdomain.
--It would only be something that a pastor and select board/staff would have access to in order to generate annual reports.
--It could be based on individual accounts. (though this isn't necessary)
--Classroom teachers should be able to enter their attendance for individuals if there is a K-12 school run by the church.
--Attendance for multiple venues.
Unrelated FYI - if you liked the book Simple Church, you should try Deliberate Simplicity.
CiviCRM sounds like the right answer for this
From my perspective, I think CivicRM is the right approach if you really want to track that kind of detail for individuals. In addition, you'd get basic contact tracking, household tracking, etc. It's a great tool for churches from my perspective.
I am trying to track weekly
I am trying to track weekly attendance for an organization as well. For my needs CiviCRM is big-time big-time overkill. I just need someone to give me some pointers for configuring flags or the gradebook module or something.
The site is for a fraternity which holds mandatory meetings each week. They also need to asses fines for people who are absent.
Thanks to anyone willing to give me some hints!
Sign-up module with some
Sign-up module with some creative views, or a custom query would probably be the most direct & light-weight solution. I'm not sure if sign-up views allow you to see users NOT registered. If not, you'll need to write a bit of code.
I'm not familiar with gradebook module, so I can't say if there's an easier approach there. Flag module does not sound like the right approach to me, but there's probably a creative way to use it here.
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