Planning for 2008

The man who had received the five talents went at once and put his money to work and gained five more . . . His master replied, 'Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master's happiness!' - Matthew 25:16 & 21

As we at ParishSOFT consider our opportunities and challenges for 2008, the Parable of the Talents came to mind. It's noteworthy that Jesus uses a business context for the Parable - what we do "on the job" is important, even in a spiritual sense. We deeply appreciate that the Lord has entrusted resources and talents to us here at ParishSOFT. We try to use them wisely, and we have experienced great blessings in return. As we continue to build our business, with your help, our vision for the future has become clearer to see what's needed. It's a little like the verse says: "I will put you in charge of many things." I also think we've experienced growing closer "sharing in your master's happiness" as we've proceeded along the way. May we continue to listen and respond to what our users tell us!

ParishSOFT recently concluded our formal annual planning process for 2008 with a series of "Kick-Off" meetings with our staff. We accomplished a lot in 2007:

• Software. We updated our software to be Vista® compliant as well as to work well with Citrix®. We released new Duplicate Checker and Status Animarum products as well as enhanced almost all of our church and diocese software modules.
• Service. We improved our service levels. During the past six months, we've consistently averaged over 60% of technical support calls being answered directly by a professional support rep (with no time "on hold"). We've also added many popular online resources including videos and how-to guides. As a result, we received fewer support calls than in 2006, even though our user base increased by more than 20%!
• Sales and Marketing. We added 991 churches and 7 dioceses to the ParishSOFT family! Many of these were recommended by current users of our software.

That said, we continue to face challenges. In recent weeks, I received many calls and letters from people both praising our software and staff and also expressing concerns about an aspect of our software or service. Our staff is amazingly responsive to these calls for help, but issues can take time to resolve. Some never quite seem to make it to the top of the priority list. These are frustrating! It's times like these that we draw on the encouragement that we receive to persist until the end. Of course, in the software business, there is no end . . . software can always be improved!

Strategy. As we look forward, new technology will make ministry more effective. You will be able to send information, personalized to your parishioners, and interact with them online. They will register for parish classes and events, sign up for volunteer opportunities, review giving history and make a gift — all online. Your management software will work interactively with your public website. Ministry groups and small community groups will meet on the web and share resources. These examples just scratch the surface of what will become commonplace in the next couple of years. ParishSOFT has been working on these kinds of things for the past couple of years and 2008 will see several initial releases.

ParishSOFT plan. 2008 is a very exciting year for ParishSOFT! We'll launch our Online Church Accounting products! First, Ledger & Payables followed by Payroll later this year. MyOwnParish parishioner portal. Online giving. Parish IQ (making it easy to pull just about any information from your ParishSOFT database) and a new easy-to-use reporting system. Our first, annual Users' Conference. More training classes and online resources. We will continue to enhance our existing products as well.

In the early 1900s, Fr. Bob Schaller's grandparents Frederick and Delphine Kriesel lived on their farm near the Norwegian, and predominantly Lutheran, settlement of Holmen, Wisconsin. On Sunday mornings, they drove their children the 12 long and bumpy miles to attend Mass at their nearest Catholic church in La Crosse - quite a distance in a time when transportation didn't come with shock absorbers or heat.

Today, this grandson of Frederick and Della still calls Holmen his home, and as pastor of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton parish, his close ties with the region have given him a unique perspective and understanding of how the work of the Church has evolved with the growth of the community.

St. Elizabeth was founded in 1983 as a response to economic growth in Holmen and its surrounding areas. The parish grew from 299 registered families in 1983 to nearly 900 registered families in 2007; and the total is still climbing.

"I remember seeing the sign at edge of town in the sixties: Holmen: Population 535," recalls Fr. Schaller. Today, Holmen has about 7,500 residents and remains a nice, quiet middle-class town.

The demographics within St. Elizabeth's census data show that more than half of its 900 families have been registered with the parish for fewer than 10 years, yet Holmen's growing population sees a high turnover as families move in and out of the community due to job changes. An inevitable result of being a relatively young parish, this turnover presents St. Elizabeth parish with some considerable challenges, which they meet head on with great planning, processes, and technology like ParishSOFT's, which allows them to keep track of people better than they could in the past.

Active participation and crucial ministry leadership comes primarily from the smaller population of people who have been there the longest (this, in fact, is a common issue for many parishes). In response, Fr. Schaller has given priority to welcoming new families—personally. One Sunday per month is designated as a Welcome Weekend, when families are invited to meet with Fr. Schaller after Mass. During this gathering, Sr. Bridget Donaldson takes their photo for placement on the Welcome bulletin board in the gathering space to help the greater parish community place faces with names.

"I greet each family member personally and encourage them to experience and share their faith more fully through participation in the parish ministries," said Fr. Schaller.

The simple act of asking for participation has worked. St. Elizabeth's largest and most fundamental ministry, its Religious Education Program (REP), has the greatest participation of any other ministry in the parish with 540 enrolled children. Essential to the program are the minimum 100 volunteers. Why so many? St. Elizabeth currently has no onsite facilities to hold classes, so the children use 28 classrooms at Holmen Middle School, located just across the street.

While the middle school space is a blessing, it presents its own set of challenges. Crossing guards must ensure that 540 children safely navigate the weekly trip across North Main Street. Classrooms have no permanent bulletin boards, spiritual décor, or Bibles...everything must be carried across the street and back again for each session.

Yet this program absolutely thrives because of great leadership. St. Elizabeth's Directors of Religious Education (DREs) and their army of volunteers organize the weekly classroom provisions into totes and provide enough hands to manage the logistics of their offsite REP classes so well that no one volunteer is ever overwhelmed.

Before St. Elizabeth staff began using ParishSOFT in 2005, programs like REP were more difficult to manage because of the antiquated technology that stored family and member data. "Our staff members didn't all have access to the data in the old system," explained Fr. Schaller. "Everyone had to go through Mary, our parish secretary. Now, all staff has the same information. Our DREs can manage their own class lists and accomplish in a single morning what used to take two full weeks."

The popularity of email among the older parish youth has further enhanced the youth ministry program run by Patrick Brueggen. "I email the youth through their parents—that way, the parents are aware of events and can, with enthusiasm, send their children to our programs."

"It's so much more effective to communicate with youth via email," added Fr. Schaller. "We still use mail, we still use the phones; but this technology communicates with youth on their terms and increases the likelihood that the message is heard and understood."

St. Elizabeth launched a new program in Fall 2007 to photograph all of their religious education students and add their pictures to their ParishSOFT member records. With 540 children, it's sometimes hard for staff to connect the many names and faces. The photos will help everyone recognize the children, adding a more personal dimension to their faith formation ministry.

St. Elizabeth is managing this project by grade level, photographing children in grades 1, 3, 5, 7, etc. this year, and photographing the new group of students in those same grades the following year. In this system, each child's photo will be updated in the database every two years. Photos can be imported one at a time from each member's record, or staff can create a spreadsheet that maps the photo file name to each student's unique Member ID and then run a simple query to import any number of photos into the database all at once.

In the Diocese of La Crosse, St. Elizabeth was the first parish to use ParishSOFT. "The diocese was investigating new technology," explained Fr. Schaller, "but we needed software for our own parish, and when our staff all agreed to make the switch, we implemented ParishSOFT not knowing whether the diocese was going to make us change to another software product. It was a leap of faith, but everything works out according to God's plan."

As a member of the diocesan technology committee, Fr. Schaller objectively reviewed other software products and was pleased when 100 other pastors and secretaries who attended ParishSOFT's diocesan presentation agreed that ParishSOFT was the way to go.

"Compared with other products, especially the non-Catholic software, ParishSOFT makes more intuitive sense, and it flows with the way a Catholic parish operates," stated Fr. Schaller.

The Diocese of La Crosse has adopted ParishSOFT's Family Directory for all 164 parishes. Nearly 75% of those parishes are now using ParishSOFT, with the remainder scheduled to make the transition in the coming months. Parishes will soon begin synchronizing their records with the diocesan database, allowing diocesan staff to be certain that their records for parish staff and family and member records are always current. Staff changes will be updated in real time—an improvement over the old system, where diocesan lists were known to include a parish staffer or two who had retired years ago.

St. Elizabeth's next challenge involves the sale of its existing site so that it can begin construction of its new church, classrooms, and gathering space. With the number of registered families expected to grow from 900 today to 1,500 in 2018, St. Elizabeth is focused on patience and prayer during this process that could take years.

As a parish that sprouted from an economic and population boom, St. Elizabeth is prepared to renew and adapt to continued growth with a sense of purpose and a heart full of grace. Their ParishSOFT technology makes it possible for staff to keep track of their families and members, as well as provide rich religious education programs to ensure a strong and vibrant parish for many years to come.

Visit St. Elizabeth Ann Seton online at: stelizabethas.org

Our outstanding development team has packed our v3.6.20 release with new features suggested by our users and Focus Group members. Update instructions, the full list of enhancements, and step-by-step instructions on using these new features in your parish are available on www.parishsoft.com/support, under the User Guides for Parish link.

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