• This page lists Participant or Member records, which hold information about how people participate in your church. Each person at your church should have one Participant/Member record.
• This record is an extension of the Contact record. It allows for church-specific involvement information to be emphasized and separately secured from generic contact data.
• When a Participant record is created, a reciprocal link is automatically added to the corresponding Contact record. This information can be edited using the Add/Edit Family Tool.
• Participant records are created automatically by various applications, including the Add/Edit Family Tool, Assign Participant Tool, Check-in, and Batch Manager Tool (if you opt to create one).
• Many users can work primarily from the Participant record.
• Use the Add/Edit Family Tool to add a participant if you believe the individual is new and not already in the system.
• Deleting a Participant record is extremely rare. Instead, you should remove a Participant record using the Combine Contacts Tool.
• For the Attendance fields on the Participant record, the routine looks at Event Participant records with a status of 03 Attended or 04 Confirmed and chooses the first three records to populate the Attendance fields. These records may or may not have the same date.

The Participant record is one of the most customized forms in MinistryPlatform. Churches often add fields to this form to assist with key processes like Guest Outreach & Follow-up and the Membership Process. To customize your Participant page, a SPoC can contact Support.

Red Flag Notes

Any notes that are needed to flag this participant for awareness among your staff. For example, not cleared to volunteer with children. Also see Record Facts to learn how to visualize data about a person.

Contact

The Contact record associated with this participant.

Participant Type

The relationship of this Participant to the church. Values might include items such as guest, attendee, member; this drop-down list can be customized by a SPoC in Lookup Values > Participant Types. See Participant Tracking for details.

Member Status

A formal categorization for your church family, such as member, registered, former member, faithful non-member, and so on. Engage a coach to ensure this list is not redundant with the other lists and that it reflects the categories needed for your denomination or church polity. See Participant Tracking for details.

Participant Engagement

How engaged someone is with your church. For example, Fully Engaged, Observing, Lapsing, and so on. Do not edit. Set and updated automatically by a nightly routine. See Participant Tracking for details.

Participant Start Date

The date this person started to participate at the church.

Notes

A generic text field allowing for the church to explain changes to the participation of this individual over time.

First Attendance, Second Attendance, Third Attendance, and Last Attendance

A read-only field that is populated every evening and used to create views.

Background Check Type and Background Check Status

Read-only fields that are updated real-time from the most recently started Background Check record for the Participant. This field is used to create views. Status values include:

• Needed: The Background Check Status field on the Participant record is blank, meaning no previous Background Check record exists for the Participant and the Participant is currently serving in a role where a background check is required (in a Group with a Group Role that has Background Check Required set to Yes).
• Still Needed: The Background Check Status field on the Participant record is "Expired", meaning they have a previous Background Check and the Participant is currently serving serving in a role where a background check is required (in a Group with a Group Role that has Background Check Required set to Yes).
• Clear: The latest Background Check record for the Participant has a status of All Clear set to Yes.
• Not Clear: The latest Background Check record for the Participant has a status of All Clear set to No. This value can be customized using the COMMON, BackgroundCheckNotClearStatus Configuration Setting.
• Expired: The latest Background Check record for the Participant has expired based on the date of the Background Check as compared to the value set in the COMMON, MonthsTillBackgroundCheckExpires Configuration Setting.
  Note: A Not Clear status takes precedence over Expired. A Not Clear status will remain even after the Not Clear Background Check is expired.
• Incomplete: The latest Background Check record for the Participant has been initiated but is not yet complete. The All Clear flag is not yet set.

Background Check Date

A read-only field that is updated in real-time from the most recently started Background Check record for the Participant. This field is used to create views. If the date the last Background Check was returned is incomplete, the date it was most recently started will be used instead.