Programs Best Practices
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.
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.
- When you create an Event or Opportunity (or other things that use Programs), the Program should be the ministry or location that hosts or carries out the initiative.
- For example, a Middle School Ministry large group event that takes place at the Downtown campus would get a Program of Middle School Ministry Activities (Downtown). Even if other campuses can attend the event, the Downtown campus is still the host.
For information on Program Groups, see Events & Programs.