Allow only a select group of people to create or edit Programs. These individuals should understand Donation processing implications and best practices and conventions your church uses regarding Programs.

Name your Programs so that the staff easily understand what Program to use for what Group or Event. Associate each Program with the correct Ministry and Congregation.

If you can connect a Program to a ministry effort, you should. Avoid creating a Program for the sole purpose of offering or tithing when there is an appropriate, corresponding ministry endeavor to associate it with.

For example, DON'T create a Sunday Morning Children's Offering Program for giving only AND a Sunday Morning Children's Worship Program for events only — those should be the same. However, DO create a VBS Offering Program (Tax-deductible) AND a VBS Registration Program (Non-Tax-Deductible) since you need to keep those funds separate. Use the Statement Title of a Program to indicate "General Fund" or "Tithes & Offerings".

For some Ministries (like Children's, Youth, or Women's), you may easily identify the Programs because they have brand names like "AWANA", "MOPS", or "SURGE". For other Ministry Departments, you may need to create a Program. For instance, "Counseling" may be a department and it may have only one Program called "Counseling Activities". Over time, that single Program may separate into "One-on-One Counseling" and "Celebrate Recovery".

For example, say you have a Downtown and East Side campus, and a Middle School Ministry department and an Adult Ministry department. You'd set up the following Programs:

• Middle School Ministry Activities (Downtown)
• Middle School Ministry Activities (East Side)
• Adult Ministry Activities (Downtown)
• Adult Ministry Activities (East Side)

In a multi-site church, some ministry departments operate only on one campus. For example, the Christian School may only happen on the main campus. At other times, a Program may serve the entire church (all campuses), but be based on a central campus. For example, you may need to assign "Counseling" to the "Church-wide Activities" Congregation to indicate that it serves all campuses.

Do not create a "Church-wide" Program for a specific ministry, unless that ministry has a clear history of doing a specific Program church-wide.

When a real-life Program does ministry and accepts donations, you may use the same Program for both. If a Program requires registration fees (non-tax deductible) and donations (tax-deductible), you may need two programs, especially if your church uses different account numbers for the various incomes.

For information on Program Groups, see Events & Programs.