Church Background Check Trends

Ministry Brands is the parent company of ParishSOFT and the leading provider of church management software solutions. Ministry Brands recently released data showing that churches are utilizing background checks at an increasing rate.

Of the over 30,000 churches that have partnered with Protect My Ministry, a Ministry Brands company and a ParishSOFT partner, background checks on church employees and volunteers have increased by 12% year-over-year.

Critical gaps remain in churches performing background checks on their volunteers. Data spanning 29,768 churches and ministries, representing more than 1.6 million individual background checks, shows that just 60% of churches are utilizing background checks with the proper level of advanced searches that employ multiple real-time sources of data and thorough alias searches.

This leaves 40% of churches using a screening product that potentially could result in allowing a bad actor to infiltrate the church. Additionally, the data shows that less than 10% of churches are actively rescreening their volunteers and staff annually. In comparison, Ministry Brands found that youth sports and little league teams recheck 99% of staff and volunteers every single year.

Here is a helpful infographic with the stats:

Please contact ParishSOFT’s sales department at 866-930-4774 x6 for more information about Protect My Ministry and how they can help make your parishioners’ safety a top priority.

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