Churches are complex organizations with a tremendous need for effective communication. Smaller and larger churches struggle to manage ministries, initiatives, and projects efficiently. Utilizing a church project management tool that fits your needs and can help you streamline your effort, communicate with the proper team members, and lessen stress around important work.
Church project management software can help make things easier on your team, whether staff or volunteers, by simplifying the communication process for assigning work, scheduling, tracking progress, or providing reports – all in one place. In this article, we’ll look at the best church project management options available and how they can help your team stay on track.
Why Your Team Wants To Use A Church Project Management Platform
You’re maybe thinking, “Why do I need to complicate things by implementing project management software?” Or perhaps you’ve heard or felt things like:
- Let’s keep things simple and talk directly to the people that need to be in the loop.
- We don’t have time to learn how to use a new digital tool.
- There’s too much change, and it’s confusing to introduce something else to the team.
The truth is, your church staff wants to use a project management solution to eliminate miscommunications, incomplete projects, and missing important deadlines.
Churches ministry teams are a complex mix of staff members and volunteers. This dynamic, often paired with limited time and resources, creates pressure to ensure adequate communication. This effort usually means sorting through group text conversations, long email threads, or even someone’s memory to make sure every detail is covered.
To meet the ever-growing demands of ministry, church leaders need tools that help them work smarter, not harder. That’s where project management software can benefit your team.
4 Reasons Your Team Wants To Use A Church Project Management Software
1. Live, Up-To-Date Communication
Rather than email or other messaging tools, your church staff can update concerning projects with a system that allows them to communicate in real-time. Having all of your communication related to a specific project will help your team save time and stress by improving workflow.
Great communication is the bridge between great teams and great outcomes. – digitalteamcoach.com
2. Simplifies Delegation & Responsibility
Using project management software for churches can create lines of responsibility and will help team members quickly identify who they need to communicate with concerning specific tasks.
Additionally, team members can worry less knowing that the platform contains all the shared information and details concerning the project in one consolidated location. This aspect allows people to check their responsibilities if they forget and have a quick reference point if a question arises.
3. Increases Accountability & Support
With effortless delegation also comes accountability. A church project management tool can help leaders keep the team accountable, on track, and on time.
When you delegate tasks, make sure the task owners understand their responsibilities. Periodically check in with them to offer help or feedback, and make sure they’re staying on track. – projectcentral.com
Providing your team with helpful tools, proper communication, and clear expectations makes addressing delays or accountability issues easier for the team lead. A project management tool can help leaders understand precisely where everyone stands on the big projects and quickly identify delays or problems to solve.
4. Improves Collaboration Among Team Members
Church project management software can support your team to discuss solutions and ideas creatively. Team members can work together fluidly and effortlessly by giving everyone access to the same information.
When employees work together on a project, they have the added benefit of being able to share input, brainstorm, and bounce ideas off each other. As you might expect, the social aspect of collaboration can improve the quality of ideas and make it easier to solve problems that might get in the way of reaching an end goal. – axerosolutions.com
Project collaboration is essential on significant projects with multiple moving parts. When everyone clearly understands the work and who is responsible for each task, team members can reduce error because they have time to think and communicate in advance.
Complete More Projects Efficiently And On-Time
Another critical component of church project management software is deadlines and task tracking. All team members will be aware of the status of their projects, which helps remove any ambiguity about where work stands at a given moment in time. Also, teams can efficiently work together by improving communication and team collaboration.
4 Helpful Church Project Management Software Options
To make the most of your church’s project management, consider the needs of your church and the options available before investing in a software platform. To help you start the process, below are four helpful project management tools and a breakdown of features and pricing.
Trello
Trello is an excellent choice for churches that need a lot of flexibility in their project management. It’s perfect for managing tasks and coordinating with team members out of the office or remotely.
Some of Trello’s top features include:
- Easy drag and drop editing
- In-line editing
- Detailed and quick overview of front and back of cards
- Card records archive
- File attachment
- Easy upload (Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, Local Devices)
Trello has four pricing plans, each with unique features and limitations.
- Free – $0
- Standard – $5 user/month
- Premium – $10 user/month
- Enterprise – $17.50 user/month
If you’re looking for affordable project management software, you won’t go wrong with Trello. It’s among the most budget-friendly options on the market. To compare features and pricing tiers, click here.
Asana
Asana is another good option for churches that want to keep track of deadlines and progress. It offers a lot of features, such as:
- Workflow management
- Team collaborative
- Team communication tools
- Robust app integration
- Deadline reminders
- To-do list features
- Project and team calendar view
Asana offers four pricing plans, including a free trial with a competitive list of features. These include:
- Asana Basic Plan – Free
- Asana Premium Plan – $10.99 user/month
- Asana Business Plan – $24.99 user/month
- Asana Enterprise Plan
You need to contact Asana for the Enterprise Plan pricing to discuss customization and exact needs. To compare Asana’s features and costs, click here.
Basecamp
Basecamp is a popular church project management tool for teams that work remotely or have a mix of paid staff and volunteers. This software provides a perfect combination of features that set your team up for success. Some of its features include:
- Messages
- Real-time chat
- To-do lists
- Schedules
- File storage
- Documents
- Check-ins
Basecamp offers a 30-day free trial and a business plan for a flat fee of $99 per month, regardless of how many users you add. They also offer a 15% discount when customers pay for a year in advance. To review common pricing questions and other features, click here.
Monday.com
Monday.com helps ensure your team can effectively communicate together and with senior leadership. Some of the things you can do with Monday.com include:
- Visualize your entire project with Gantt charts
- Get an overview of all your data with dashboards
- Enjoy robust software integration
- Enjoy unlimited project management tools
Monday.com offers pricing plans. These include:
- Individual – Free
- Basic – $8 seat(user)/month
- Standard – $10 seat (user)/month
- Pro – $16 seat (user)/month
- Enterprise
You need to contact Monday.com for the Enterprise Plan if your team requires this level of service to discuss customization and tailored onboarding. To compare additional features and price points, click here.
3 Benefits Of Using Church Project Management Software
There’s always a project to work on in a church. Whether it’s raising funds for an outreach program, planning an event, or simply planning how services will run on Sunday, one thing is sure; it’s better and more effective to involve a team for a successful outcome.
However, if you’re not utilizing church project management software, the process can be more complicated than it should be. Proper church project management ensures efficient workflow and clarifying assignment of responsibilities.
Churches decide to use project management tools to consolidate information, communication, and workflow into one location to help complete important work.
1. Church Project Management Tools Can Help Break Down Ministry Silos
One of the significant challenges churches face in project management is that ministry teams tend to work in silos. This isolation can be detrimental to the health and culture of your team. If teams are unwilling or lack the resources to share information or work with others, it will result in subpar performance and poor output.
You can help ensure these issues do not hinder your team by implementing a project management tool to help your church. Project management for churches helps break down communication barriers among teams by providing a tool to help, regardless of their positions within the organization.
2. Church Project Management Improves Planning
Ministry leaders can use church project management tools for initial brainstorming ideas, forecasting budgets, and providing team members with pending timelines.
Scheduling will eliminate last-minute scrambles, allowing the final moments of completing the project to be a time of celebration, not stress. – resourceumc.org
Pre-organizing tasks can make it much easier for team leaders to consider the strengths and weaknesses of individual team members and assign responsibilities accordingly.
By planning assignments in advance, you can also avoid overloading specific individuals by assessing the necessary work and each person’s workload. A church project management tool makes it easy to draft an initial plan and apply forethought concerning the project’s finer details.
3. Project Management For Churches Increases Effectiveness
Project management software can help ministry leaders align their teams around a project with specific goals and expectations. Assigning tasks with clearly defined responsibilities helps everyone understand their role and be open to accountability.
When leaders simplify expectations and provide tools for their team to help manage their workload, accountability and efficiency become organic to the culture.
With everyone aware of expectations, individuals are less likely to forget their responsibilities or put forth a minimal effort. And if someone does not meet their assigned goal, they can be easily held accountable by their peers or leaders in real-time, in some cases before it’s too late.
Church Project Management Summary
Church project management tools can go a long way in helping you keep your team on the same page, accountable, and on track. This software can also help you manage projects from start to finish and keep track of everything, even minute details.
If you’ve not already, consider the options above to determine which one is the best fit for your church. Use the links above to visit the sites and compare the features to help decide which service will help your church the most.
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