Create a Program
- In the navigation menu, click .
- Click New.
- Enter the Program's information.
- Click Save.
Program Fields
- Program Name
- A short and friendly name that describes this Program. Multi-site churches should start the Program name with the name of the Congregation.
- Congregation
- The Congregation where this Program takes place.
- Ministry
- The department of the church that oversees this Program.
- Start Date
- The date this Program began at your church.
- End Date
- The date this Program ended at your church.
- Program Type
- An internal informational field that indicates the main purpose of the Program. It has no impact on any MinistryPlatform report or software applications.
- Leadership Team
- An internal informational field that indicates the main Group that oversees this Program. It has no impact on any MinistryPlatform report or software application.
- Primary Contact
- The person who answers questions or follows-up with things entered into the database and coded against this Program.
- Priority
- An internal informational field that indicates the church's primary purpose for this Program.
- Tax-Deductible Donations
- If set to Yes, Donations distributed to this Program display on a Donor's contribution statement for tax purposes.
- Statement Title
- The text you want the public to see when they make Donations towards this Program. This text displays on many reports and some contribution statements.
- Statement Header
- Many Donor statements and reports organize Donations into columns. If two Programs have the same statement header, then their Donations list in the same column on several columnar Donor statement formats. For example, "Missions" is a common Statement Header, and you'd expect that all Programs related to Missions to have this statement header regardless of the Congregation.
- Allow Online Giving
- If set to Yes, this Program displays in the list of online giving active Programs.
- Online Sort Order
- If available online, the number indicated here determines how this Program sorts in relation to other Programs. If you do not set a sort order (or two programs have the same sort order number), the Programs list in alphabetical order. We recommend you number programs as 10, 20, 30, and so on so you can add or move Programs later without having to renumber all of them.
- Pledge Campaign
- The Pledge Campaign this Program is a part of, if applicable. This ensures that the system attempts to credit a Donor's pledge to this campaign when the Donor's donation is designated to this Program.
- Account Number
- The Accounting System's account number:
- This field for Shelby v5 Financials churches is often used to store the historical Purpose Code from Shelby v5 Contributions, which is typically used to match values imported from third-party systems like SecureGive and ServiceU.
- On Connection Card
- If set to Yes, you can credit Milestones, Responses, and Prayer Requests to this Program with the Connection Card Tool.
- Default Target Event
- Select an Event (generally one where On Batch Manager Tool is set to Yes). The system automatically assigns this target Event to Donation Distributions when you Batch selected Donations or Deposit selected Batches.
- On Batch Manager Tool
- If set to Yes, you can distribute Donations to this Program when you process check and cash donations through the Batch Manager Tool.
- Available Online
- This field is no longer in use.
- Omit From Engagement Giving
- If set to Yes, the Participant Engagement routine does not consider this Program.
- Accounting-specific fields
- Depending on your Accounting System, you may have custom fields on this Page that are unique to your accounting system. For example, Shelby v5 Financials churches have:
- Shelby Fund
- Shelby Department
- Shelby Account
Sub-Pages
The following Sub-Pages are available for all churches with the default MinistryPlatform implementation. Records on these Pages directly relate to one Program record:
- Events
- The list of Events connected to the Program.
- Groups
- The list of all Groups connected to the Program.
- Prayer & Feedback
- The list of all Feedback Congregation members provide about the Program. Usually in the form of comments or prayer requests provided on Connection Cards.
- Milestones
- Milestones attributed to the Program. Milestones usually track life events or church events, such as receiving Christ, new believer classes, or baptisms.
- Opportunities
- Opportunities for individuals to respond to that are attributed to the Program.
- Donations
- Any donations given to the Program. This only displays to Users with rights to Contributions.