Visitors

[jherring]

Is there a way to track a visitor's attendence without clogging up the personal profiles and family mailing list modules? We are in an area that is constantly growing and we have visitors to our Sunday School classes. However, a good percentage of visitors will attend for several weeks and then decide to attend a different church, plus we have several children that bring their friends to Sunday School with them. It would be helpful to be able to record their attendence for use in the graphs and attendence numbers reports without adding them to the other modules. Is there a way to record their attendence without adding them to the Personal Profiles and Family Mailing List modules? Perhaps recording only first and last name, activity number and date. Have this information is a seperate database from Personal Profiles and Family Mailing List and be able to move or merge the data with a profile should the person become a more permanent member. Thank you!

[NeilZ]

Is there a way to track a visitor's attendence without clogging up the personal profiles and family mailing list modules? We are in an area that is constantly growing and we have visitors to our Sunday School classes. However, a good percentage of visitors will attend for several weeks and then decide to attend a different church, plus we have several children that bring their friends to Sunday School with them. It would be helpful to be able to record their attendence for use in the graphs and attendence numbers reports without adding them to the other modules. Is there a way to record their attendence without adding them to the Personal Profiles and Family Mailing List modules? Perhaps recording only first and last name, activity number and date. Have this information is a seperate database from Personal Profiles and Family Mailing List and be able to move or merge the data with a profile should the person become a more permanent member. Thank you!

No there isn't, Frankly, having a separate database defeats the purpose. You could keep them on an Excel spreadsheet and do the same.

The reason the system is setup in this way is that you really would like to have these people move from visitor to member eventually. OK, people Church Shop, but what I did when I was in a 'growing' area of Northern Virginia was track the visitors in the normal way. However, every six months we purged those shoppers who only came once or twice.

Now for the kids who come to Sunday School, you really want to have all the family information to protect the Church from any issues if something happens to the child. Again, you have to be proactive and clear out names on a regular basis, but it works quite well.

The area we lived in at the time around Ashburn VA and Loudoun County was, at one time, the fastest growing area of the country. We went from an 110 member church to over 500 in little less than 5 years. We moved to Powerchurch at that time in order to be able to track visitors, along with follow-ups and so on.

And of course, if a visitor dropped a check in the plate, you had to maintain that information if the total was over $100, with Powerchurch we were able to track the visitors, maintain their records if necessary, but cull out the Shoppers.

[jherring]

Thanks! I appreciate the suggestions for purging the database. But, that brings up another question. When you delete a profile, don't you also delete that person's attendence data? If so, what do you do to track growth or decline over several years? Are the shoppers numbers generally irrelevant to the church? Thanks again for the help!!

[NeilZ]

Thanks! I appreciate the suggestions for purging the database. But, that brings up another question. When you delete a profile, don't you also delete that person's attendence data? If so, what do you do to track growth or decline over several years? Are the shoppers numbers generally irrelevant to the church? Thanks again for the help!!

Yes, it does get rid of the attendance, however, growth is not tracked by 'visitors' but by 'members' or 'Friends of the Congregation', who may not become members, but attend regularly.

You want to turn those visitors into members, preferably then into disciples, but that's a whole 'nuther conversation

[jherring]

Thanks!