You know that feeling you get when you’re speaking with someone and you’re trying to articulate a point or message and you know that they “just get it”? They understand what you’re saying and why you’re saying it. You’ve effectively communicated to that person. It feels good.
I recently had that feeling after I visited a page on The Savior Community Church’s website. Pastor Frank, he “gets” MemberHub. If our website doesn’t do the best job at explaining what MemberHub can do for your church, than watch Pastor Frank’s video below. The page that he’s put on SCC’s website for his members is quite possibly more effective at communicating the value of MemberHub than our 6-minute product tour video.You be the judge. That page is here. The video is below.
Watch the video below tell us what you think in the comments!
We’ve made some recent enhancements to the hub Home Page and the hub Join Page that will help administrators to further customize their hubs.
Every hub in MemberHub has a corresponding public-facing Join Page. This page is where prospective members can learn about the group and either join right from that page or request to join. These pages are especially useful if you take advantage of putting a Hub Listing widget on your organization’s website. For example, you could list your small groups hubs at your church on your website. Visitors can then click on each group to learn more. The link will take them to the Join Page for that hub where the will see a description of the group, a member count and NOW a personalized group image!
While we were at it, we gave hub administrators the ability to upload an image to their hub’s Home Page too. Hub administrators can simply click the blue Edit Homepage button at the bottom of the Home Page to upload an image. We heard this suggestions quite a bit, so enjoy!
Drop us a comment below and let us know what you think. Do not hesitate to contact us over on the Support Forum if you have any questions at all. We’re here to serve!
One of the most important aspects of launching a new technology initiative is to consider how easy it is to get started. This is especially important for software platforms that involve many people. We understand that your decision to adopt an organization wide communication tool like MemberHub will affect you, your staff, group leaders and members. It’s important to have a plan and we are here to help you get started.
We are now holding weekly “Getting Started with MemberHub” webinars. These 30 minutes overviews are designed for organizations that have recently started a trial or for those that are considering the advantages of using a group communication tool and would like to learn more about our product.
Undoubtedly, the church has always lagged behind the marketplace with regards to technology. Generally speaking, it could be years before a popular new service, product, or widget becomes widely used and implemented by churches. Is this by design or does the church need to “get with it” when it comes to technology?
I recently caught up with John Saddington, aka Human3rror, who suggests that the gap between the rate at which the church adopts technology versus the rate at which the marketplace adapts technology is “God’s grace”. He went on to say “let the marketplace do their thing and when they get bored with it [new technology] let us then adopt it and use it wisely”.
I, for one find this surprising coming from John, who says that “whatever servicing the church through technology looks like; that’s what I want to do”. He is recognized as one of the industry thought leaders when it comes to technology. ChurchCrunch, John’s well-known blog, has the tagline: Exploring the Intersection of Technology and the Church. He is also the Creative Web Director as North Point Ministries, one of the front-runners when it comes to technology, media and online strategy within the church. Logic would suggest that these influences would drive a passion for faster adoption of techonology in the church.
What do you think about this? Should the church strategically place itself 2-3 years behind the marketplace with adopting technology? Even more, is the “chasm between the adoption rate of technology between marketplace and the church a movement of God?”
A huge spiritual leader in my life once said that “Gratitude always bring you back.” At the time I remember thinking “wow, that’s deep, but not really deep”. I sort of dismissed it and didn’t spend much time thinking about it. But today I found out exactly what he meant.
Today I dropped my car off a local mechanic, here in Raleigh. I’ve been to these guys three times before as we’ve gotten our Subaru Outback serviced there. Each time I’ve been impressed with their genuine kindness, timely service and what appeared to be, very honest work on my car. When I arrived today, to walk in I was greeted by this sign.
I was blown away. It’s so simple, so humble, so typical…but SO amazing. It was gratitude. And I’ll be coming back to get my car serviced with great excitement and loyalty.
In the same spirit that this simple sign was made, we want to say thank you to our readers, users community. Thanks for helping MemberHub be what it has become today!
By the way have you done this for your members, customers, or patrons? It doesn’t have to be expensive, timely or difficult. Maybe just a pen a big piece of paper will do!
The MemberHub team has deployed an enhancement that will save administrators time by empowering their members to create hubs which can easily be moved under their MemberHub organization.
After you click on the New Hub button on Your Dashboard we ask if the hub should be affiliated with an organization. If you are not an administrator of a MemberHub organization, this option will default to “No, this is a stand-alone hub”. Remember, free stand-alone hubs are limited to 25 members and 25 MB of storage. The Click here to lean more link pops up a bubble that gives you a few more details.
Clicking “Yes” to this question reveals a new section that allows you to select an organization. If you are an organization administrator this option will actually default to “Yes”.
As an example, if a member of your nonprofit named Charles needs a hub for his new committee he can create the hub without having to ask an organization administrator to create it for him. The admins of the organization will get an email that allows them to Accept/Reject the new hub.
If accepted, the hub gets pulled under your nonprofit automatically. If rejected the hub is still Charles’s, but it falls outside of the nonprofit’s organization. This means Charles won’t have access to the membership when adding members, your nonprofit logo would not inherit down to his hub and he would be limited on members and storage.
These changes should help organizations better serve their members by empowering them to get organized among themselves. And isn’t this what you want? Ministries, committees and teams that can JUST DO IT.
Please share your thoughts or questions by leaving a comment!
Last week I put up a post on why nonprofit strategies often fail. The message wasn’t ground-breaking or all that entirely original. It was designed to get you asking yourself a lot of questions. My passion for great communication was refueled this morning when John Saddington challenged technology people to put communication first, technology second.
We’ve had a quite a few posts here about “communication”, but they don’t get as much attention as other posts. Why is that?
Why is it that year after year, nonprofit members list “communication” as the number one area that organizations need improvement. Why is it that something so obvious constantly goes overlooked? Why do your members constantly tell you that “they didn’t know that” or “that wasn’t in the newsletter” or “nobody told me that”?
My challenge here is this: You’ve got talk to your members/employees/constituents. Get a discussion going. Get their feedback. Make them understand what you’re seeing. Work together. Collaborate. THAT’S what social media is all about. It opens up the channel for people to speak about something so that other people can understand it. It’s less about what tools you use and more about making sure that communication is taking plan.
Even with the myriad of social networking tools available, members still feel in the dark? Why?
I’m not quite special enough to have a one-word post, so I’ll elaborate a little bit. I am 100% certain that if the people in your organization do not learn how to effectively communicate, then your strategy will fail. So what does this mean? Here are few questions you can ask yourself.
Are you communicating to your members?
Do your members know your organization’s mission? Your purpose? If you have a mission statement, can they repeat it? Are you sharing your plans and strategies? What about your thoughts? You have so many people in your community and you’ll need them to pull off your strategy. Talk to them, make sure you’re painting a clear picture for your members. There are a vast number of tools to use for this (follow up post).
Do your members have an easy way to communicate with each other?
You have this big community…members, constituents, followers. Whatever they are if they’re gonna help they need to talk too. Are they communicating and sharing ideas? Do they even know how to reach each other?
Are you encouraging your team and your members to actually speak?
This piggy backs off the last one, but as the leader of your organization you need to encourage your ministries, committee’s teams and groups to communicate with each other. You need to empower them to make a difference. What are their impediments? Remove them.
What else have I missed? Please leave a comment. I know you have something to share.
Your organization’s website is important. You’ve spent money on it. Your members spend time on your website. Visitors go there to learn about your organization. It’s your online brochure to the world. Who are you “Church XYZ”? What is your cause really about “Mr. Nonprofit Organization?”
So when you decide to implement a private social network for your members where they can connect and communicate you might consider your website as the launching point for your new network. We recognize that it’s essential to integrate MemberHub into your existing website and we offer you a way to do this through a tool we called a Hub List Widget. You can read more about it over here in our online Knowledge Base.
Recently, I caught up with Kevin Joyce of Imagine Fellowship in San Antonio, Texas. I would call him the lead pastor but he actually goes by the title “Lead Life Changer”. And I would call Imagine Fellowship a church, but it’s more like A.A. And that’s what they want to do, duplicate the model that A.A. has leaned on since the 30’s to help people all over the country. A very ambitious and inspired vision that Kevin shared with me.
You see Kevin has a hunch that “God is trying to change the church model” and in conjunction with that leading, Imagine Fellowship has made a pretty amazing change to their model. In Kevin’s words:
We have decided that we are stopping our weekly Sunday service (starting the end of November). We will meet once a month to do a big community service project on Sunday, and will only have one Sunday service a month. What will we do the rest of the time? We will meet weekly in groups, serve our community in creative ways, and love God and people with all of our hearts.
They put “all the purposes of the church in groups.” A small group setting is basically their “main church” and through a discipleship process they call “1on1″ new leaders are raised up. Kevin commented that “most people will share their life with one person or one couple” and it’s in these settings that real relationships are built and life is really experienced. By identifying a series of ten opportunities the 1on1 process helps people and potential leaders open up and really experience change. After this 1on1 discipleship process, the new leader is encouraged to start a new group. And just like AA, they want to have groups all over the country, not just in San Antonio. According to Kevin the vision is “less about a local church and more towards a movement.”
This past Sunday was Imagine Fellowship’s last corporate worship until January 3rd. What will their members do without a church service on Christmas? My guess: love God and people with all their hearts.
What do you think about this? Do you think that God is trying to change the church model? If so, how does the church embrace this change and prepare for the future?
