By: Portable Church Industries

Source: Campus Planning Dashboard

The post Campus Planning Dashboard appeared first on Passion for Planting.

by Patrick Bradley: The US government has approved a stimulus package to help small businesses and nonprofits across the country. And it’s OK to use the Payroll Protection Program for church plants.

Have you seen the daily webinars about this? It’s been a fast moving target since the government wrote it, approved it and enacted it in about a week. Everybody’s scrambling to interpret and understand how it works and what to do.

Part of the larger CARES Act (Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security), loans are offered to small businesses, nonprofit and churches to help prevent layoffs and pay cuts. And the loans may be forgiven up to 100%. Others have done a better job of explaining the ins and outs of the Payroll Protection Program for church plants (see below), so I won’t duplicate that here.

It feels a bit like the California Gold Rush. The government has funded $350B, but that’s not nearly enough to provide relief for all the businesses, nonprofits and churches that will be applying. So it’s going to be a first come, first served situation.

After much watching and reading, here are my…

Tips & Tactics

Finish your research yesterday

This all happened so fast, but many fellow believers have already put together some great resources. Here are resources that helped me:

Vanderbloemen’s various Live events and free resourcesECFA CARES Impact on ChurchesUS Chamber of Commerce Emergency Loans Guide & Checklist

Talk to your bank on Thursday, April 2

They are scrambling to be ready same as everybody else. And you want to deal with a banker that’s up to speed and ready to go when the program opens on Friday, April 3.

The program is backed by the US Small Business Administration (SBA), but administered by banks and other lenders.

Make an appointment to come back with your application Friday morning.

Have your paperwork ready on Thursday, April 2

Download and complete the Paycheck Protection Program Application Form and get it filled out. They only just made it available Tuesday evening, March 31.

Dig up all of your payroll expenses back to February 2019. To help compile everything, here is a free spreadsheet from my friend Sean Havera at Unite Community Church. He built this for the Payroll Protection Program for church plants and offers it as-is and on condition that you consult with your accountant and/or lender on all final calculations.

Download free PPP calculation spreadsheet

You’ll be averaging your payroll from last year. Common opinion is that if you haven’t been running payroll that long, you can average the months that you did have payroll expenses. That’s great for the newest church planters!

Apply at your bank Friday Morning, April 3

Seriously, you want to be at the front of the line.

If you’ve decided to apply, I hope these tips & tactics help with applying for the Payroll Protection Program for church plants.

The post Payroll Protection Program for Church Plants – Tips & Tactics appeared first on Church Planting Tactics.

Source: Payroll Protection Program for Church Plants – Tips & Tactics

The post Payroll Protection Program for Church Plants – Tips & Tactics appeared first on Passion for Planting.

by Patrick Bradley: Save a ton of time and data entry when you scan business cards with your smartphone. Your new friend’s contact info goes straight from their card into your address book.

As pastors and church planters, you should be out in your community meeting with civic leaders and community influencers. Imagine a successful week of meeting with a half dozen leaders individually. Or maybe you went to a networking event and met a couple dozen.

Now imagine sitting down afterwards with a stack of business cards to type all the contact information into your contacts app. What you’re feeling is something like dread, right?

No planter I’ve ever met relishes the idea of sitting down and slogging through data entry like that.

So I offer you this power networking tip that saves you all the heavy lifting.

Install the CamCard App

There are several apps like this to choose from, but CamCard is free, well-designed and easy to use.

So easy to use that I recorded these quick how-to videos that are each only about 1:00

I bet that once you get past the very short learning curve, you’d be able to scan business cards in :10 or less. Each.

CamCard is published by the same shop that did the app I recommend for solving portable church offering data security issues…

The post Use this Free App to Scan Business Cards with Your Smartphone appeared first on Church Planting Tactics.

Source: Use this Free App to Scan Business Cards with Your Smartphone

The post Use this Free App to Scan Business Cards with Your Smartphone appeared first on Passion for Planting.

The following is a guest post by Holly Goff, production manager at d2design, which specializes in direct mail solutions tailored to churches and their goals.

Chances are, you’re planning to use direct mail at some point in your church’s marketing plan. It’s cost-effective and maintains great response rates:

Once again, direct mail response rates rank stronger than digital channels, sometimes exponentially: at 5.1% for house lists and 2.9% for prospect lists, mail response rates consistently exceed the 2% response rate of all digital channels combined.” – IWCO Direct

The fact is, a significant percentage of millennials like mail. It has a built-in emotional response factor. Gallup reported that 36% of people under the age of 30 look forward to checking their mailboxes every day. What’s more, 95% of 18-to-29-year-olds have a positive response to receiving personal cards and letters.” – Forbes

But while direct mail is relatively inexpensive for anyone, churches can file online for USPS nonprofit pricing and lower postage costs even more.

Church Nonprofit Authorization Number

A nonprofit authorization number (NPA) allows an organization to send standard bulk mail (a large quantity of identical pieces, such as a direct mail postcard) at a lower postage price. NPA numbers are FREE, applied for through the post office, and kept on file in a national USPS database. But while useful, it’s sometimes hard to get consistent information about these numbers even at the post office, depending on the branch’s size or the particular clerk you encounter.

Most importantly, an NPA number is NOT the same as a tax ID or a bulk mail permit number. An NPA number proves that your organization is a nonprofit entity and can mail at a lower postage rate. (Note that if you’re mailing on your own, you’ll also need a bulk mail permit, for which you’ll pay an annual fee. However, marketing firms such as d2design typically use their own bulk permit number for your mailings.)

Established Churches: How to Find Your Church’s NPA

If you are an established church that might have done mailings in years past, you may or may not have an NPA number. It depends on whether any of your predecessors applied for one. Call the post office to check. If you are a brand new church plant, you don’t automatically have an NPA number.

Verify Your Information on File

If your post office confirms that you do have an NPA number, verify the church name and address associated with it. This is important because the name and return address on your postcard MUST match exactly what’s on file with the post office.

For example, did you brand yourself as “XYZ Church” in your community, but your legal corporate name is “XYZ Church of the Presumptuous Assumption”? The post office will only use your church’s full legal name as it appears on your Articles of Incorporation that you submit to them.

If you’ve changed your church’s name, you’ll need to complete a 6015 form to update the national nonprofit database, even if you’ve already told the rest of the USPS about your name change.

A Warning

Church plants sometimes try to use their sending church’s NPA number. This works sometimes, but it’s risky. First, your card’s return address will be the other church’s information. And let’s say your sending church is in Wisconsin, planting your new church in Arizona. That’s confusing.

Second, this discrepancy could cause your cards to be rejected. That’s money down the drain to reprint thousands of postcards. And since your cards are time sensitive, you may not have enough time for the reprint, so you risk missing the window of opportunity altogether.

Get your own number to use when you need it.

Church Plants: Now You Can File Online for Your Church NPA

If you’ve determined that you need an NPA number, file your application and expect to receive it back in 2 to 6 weeks. You can take a completed hard copy of the 3624 application form to your local post office or file online for USPS nonprofit pricing by taking the following steps:

Register for a free Business Customer Gateway account
Once you’re registered and logged in, select Mailing Services from the left nav bar
Select Postal Wizard
Select 3624 under Complete Customer Service Forms
Complete the application

You just saved a trip to the post office!

More on Church Plant Postal Permits

How Much Money CAN Church Plant Postal Permits Save You?
How to save $450 by not applying for a bulk mail permit but still getting all the benefits
If you’re going old school, Which USPS paper forms to file, plus filing tips

The post How to Get a Church Nonprofit Authorization Number and Save Thousands appeared first on Church Planting Tactics.

Source: How to Get a Church Nonprofit Authorization Number and Save Thousands

The post How to Get a Church Nonprofit Authorization Number and Save Thousands appeared first on Passion for Planting.

by Patrick Bradley: Ever notice that your church management software asks for your people’s mobile number and their carrier? Here’s why they do that and how you can look up mobile carriers to get past the roadblock.

Has this happened to you? You build your guest followup system in your church management software. It includes emailing or texting people a welcome message or a invitation to come back the next Sunday. You’re all set. Then you get the stack of connection cards after the service and discover that some of your guests gave you a mobile number but no email address.

Now you can’t email them or text them. I suppose you could pull out your phone and start texting them one at a time. But you can’t otherwise send them a message. Why won’t the church management software work without knowing the carrier?

It’s a Simple Hack

That’s because the app isn’t actually texting your people – it’s using a free email-to-SMS hack. It’s actually pretty cool – I just tried it by sending an email to my kid’s mobile number and I got a quick reply.

Every US mobile carrier has a way to convert a brief email into an SMS message. For instance, if your guest’s mobile number is (123) 456-7890, then you just email your message to some version of 1234567890@mobilecarrierbrand[dot]com.

But there’s the rub. If you don’t have their carrier’s name and configuration, your message will never get delivered.

Now You Can Look Up Mobile Carriers

I’ve found various lookup sites, but my favorite so far is freecarrierlookup.com. Not only do they give you the carrier, but they give you the email configuration for that carrier so that you can use the email-to-sms hack right from your own inbox.

But what about the stalker factor? My bottom line is that if they offered their mobile number on a connection card, that’s at least implicit permission to text them. And knowing someone’s carrier doesn’t violate their privacy or put them at risk.

So if you’re using one of the many church software apps that require knowing the person’s carrier, now you can quickly look up mobile carriers to get through to them.

The post How to Look Up Mobile Carriers so Your Church Software Works appeared first on Church Planting Tactics.

Source: How to Look Up Mobile Carriers so Your Church Software Works

The post How to Look Up Mobile Carriers so Your Church Software Works appeared first on Passion for Planting.

by Patrick Bradley: If you’re sending out direct mail to announce the launch of your weekly services, save $450 and don’t open a church bulk mail permit (but still get all the benefits using this secret).

There are two permits required to get the lowest postage rate for your church plant’s mailing:

the church bulk mail permit
the nonprofit pricing classification

Any business or organization can open their own bulk mail permit (account), but it costs $225 to apply and another $225 each year (find current pricing here).

The secret trick is that the bulk mail permit doesn’t have to belong to you.

Pros of Not Having a Church Bulk Mail Permit

There are several direct mail vendors that specialize in helping churches. They each have their own bulk mail permit, so you just piggyback on theirs. You still need your own nonprofit pricing classification, but they’re already paying their own $225 a year so you don’t have to.

This is a no-brainer. You don’t want to print and prepare your own direct mail anyway. It requires way too much work and industry knowledge that you don’t have time to learn. The only thing the $450 really gets you is your own indicia (keep reading).

Let a vendor that specializes in church mailings do all the work. You’re already $450 ahead if you do, not to mention all the meetings you can have with people because you weren’t spending your ministry time preparing the mailing yourself. You have way more important things to be doing!

Cons of Not Having a Church Bulk Mail Permit

There is only one minor drawback that I’m aware of: the indicia (that non-stamp stamp thingy) has to be the vendor’s.

So instead of:

[your town] permit ##

…it would read:

[vendor’s town] permit ##

If you’re planting in Wisconsin but the vendor is in Hawaii, some recipients might get confused, but probably only the few detail-oriented people who will actually notice.

The good news is that the return address on the cards will be your church’s. In fact, it has to be.

If you can live with using their indicia to save $450, go this route. But remember, you still need to file for own nonprofit pricing classification.

More on Church Plant Postal Permits

How Much Money CAN Church Plant Postal Permits Save You?
How to Get a Church Nonprofit Authorization Number, including how to apply online (coming soon!)
If you’re going old school, Which USPS paper forms to file, plus filing tips

The post How to Save $450 by NOT Getting a Church Bulk Mail Permit appeared first on Church Planting Tactics.

Source: How to Save $450 by NOT Getting a Church Bulk Mail Permit

The post How to Save $450 by NOT Getting a Church Bulk Mail Permit appeared first on Passion for Planting.

by Patrick Bradley: Filing expense reports used to be a painful, manual process. Thanks to free mobile expense report app options, it’s now a lot faster and easier.

Ever lost a receipt before turning it in for reimbursement? Worse, ever had to tape original receipts three to a page on a blank sheet for submission? I have suffered both.

Now, of course, you can use your smart phone to snap a picture of your receipt before you even leave the checkout.

Better yet, these free mobile expense report app options can take the picture in-app and recognize the characters in the image. And some can even extract the information from the receipt and get it in the right boxes in the expense report automatically!

Submitting an expense report becomes a matter of assigning expense categories and pressing ‘send’. Easy!

There are now dozens of paid and free mobile expense report app options. Here are my 3 top freemium app recommendations:

Honorable Mention

smartreceipts.co
I’d not heard of this one before now. It’s a free, open-source app (like Firefox browser). It has basic functionality and keeps things simple.

Free Version

PRO: unlimited reports, unlimited receipt upload
CON: individual use only, ad-supported, 10¢ per automatic scan (OCR)

Premium Version

$5/user/year
PRO: no ads, automatic backups, very low-cost
CON: no teams, still have to pay for automatic scans

Runner Up

expensify.com
“Expense reports that don’t suck.” Gotta love that tag line. This was my go-to app for a long time, but you don’t get as much on the free version any more.

Free Version

PRO: unlimited reports, unlimited receipt upload, 10 free SmartScans per month, import transactions from your credit card account
CON: individual use only (everyone on your team would have an independent account)

Premium Version

$60/user/year
PRO: teams, approval pathway, next day ACH reimbursement, unlimited SmartScan, QuickBooks integration
CON: not free

Paid Apps

These competitors have what look like great apps. But they have no free version (that I could find):

Certify.com ($8/user/month)
Xpenditure.com ($50-$70/user/year)
Concur.com (no pricing available; if you have to ask, you probably can’t afford it)

And the Free Mobile Expense Report App Winner Is…

Zoho Expense

I continue to be impressed by Zoho’s freemium offerings – they have a whole suite of apps. There’s a lot you can get done with their free versions before having to pay. Their free expense app includes almost every feature that their competitors charge for.

Free Version:

PRO: unlimited reports, 5GB receipt storage, 100 Autoscan receipts per month, import transactions from your credit card account, 3 team users, QuickBooks integration, plus more..
CON: limited receipt storage (but it will take you quite some time to use it up)

Premium Version

$150/year for up to 10 users
PRO: approval pathway, ACH reimbursement
CON: not free

Your church plant has to have a reimbursement process to maintain its tax-exempt status. Make it easy for yourself and any staff you may have by using a free mobile expense report app.

The post Use this Free Mobile Expense Report App to Save Time appeared first on Church Planting Tactics.

Source: Use this Free Mobile Expense Report App to Save Time

The post Use this Free Mobile Expense Report App to Save Time appeared first on Passion for Planting.

by Patrick Bradley: You need to claim your online church listings so that you can control what is displayed and moderate ratings and reviews.

Sooner or later, your church plant will show up in online directories like Yelp and Google Maps. Where does that information come from? How do they decide who is the rightful representative of your church? How do you claim your online church listings?

In one instance I read recently, a disgruntled person wanted to leave a scathing review about a church on Yelp, but the church had not yet created a listing there. So that person created a listing for the church and claimed control of it. Then they left their rating and negative comments.

When the church got around to adding themselves to Yelp, they discovered this other listing and found themselves with a mess to clean up. Ultimately, Yelp got involved and reached out to the other person, and it was amicably resolved. Shwew!

Which Listings to Claim

These listings are the metaphorical big kids on the block. Not only are they the most used, but when you claim your online church listing there, it helps boost your church website rank.

Google My Business

Create or claim your listing here and it feeds into Google Maps. That’s important when a google search includes local geography: top search results show up as map listings (try googling “churches in sheboygan“).

How to create your listing:

Visit Google My Business
Click the Start Now button
Follow the directions to input all of your listing information
Since it’s a map listing and people would be using it to get directions to your worship gathering, use the physical address of your worship space; that presents a special challenge if you’re renting a school or movie theater
Google mails a postcard addressed to the church but mailed to the address of your (probably rented) facility; give your school admin or theater management a heads up that the postcard will be coming
Get the verification code from the postcard, log back into your My Business account and verify your listing

Bing Places

This is exactly the same, but for people who use Bing as their search engine.

How to create your listing:

Visit Bing Places for Business
Click the Get Started button
Follow the directions to input all of your listing information
Since it’s a map listing and people would be using it to get directions to your worship gathering, use the physical address of your worship space; that presents a special challenge if you’re renting a school or movie theater
Bing mails a postcard addressed to the church but mailed to the address of your (probably rented) facility; give your school admin or theater management a heads up that the postcard will be coming
Get the verification code from the postcard, log back into your Places for Business account and verify your listing

Apple Maps

Specific to Mac and iOS users, this is an important listing to claim.

How to create your listing:

Visit Apple Maps Connect
Click the Sign In button (requires an Apple ID)
Agree to their terms
Use the search box to find your church’s listing
Either click on the listing or click on the Add New Place link
Since it’s a map listing and people would be using it to get directions to your worship gathering, use the physical address of your worship space
Click Call Me Now and they’ll call you with a special code to verify you listing

Yelp

This is primarily a rating and review site, but it is highly trusted and a church’s listing often shows up in top search engine results.

How to create your listing:

Visit Yelp for Business Owners
Enter the physical address of your worship space and your church’s name, and then click the Get Started button
If your church already appears on the list, click the claim listing link next to it; if not, scroll down to the bottom of the list and click the add your business to Yelp link
Fill in your particulars
The listing will be submitted to Yelp for review, but no postcard gets mailed
Typically you’ll get approval back with a few days, at which point your listing will be live

Keep Good Records

Keep track of every site, login and password you used. When the day comes that you change anything on the listing, especially the worship gathering address, you’ll need to circle back and update each listing. If you don’t, the old information will continue to show up in search engine results and send people to the wrong address until you do.

Use these instructions to claim your online church listings before someone else does!

The post How to Claim Your Online Church Listings appeared first on Church Planting Tactics.

Source: How to Claim Your Online Church Listings

The post How to Claim Your Online Church Listings appeared first on Passion for Planting.

by Patrick Bradley: Having your team post online church ratings could make the difference between whether someone decides to visit your church gatherings or not.

Have you ever looked up ratings for restaurants or contractors online? I have. I want to know something about the reputation and track record of that establishment before I go any further.

Why to Post Online Church Ratings

If you’re someone with little or no church background and something ignites your spiritual curiosity enough to visit a church, wouldn’t you check out the church first? And in today’s social media & democracy-of-the-internet world, the public’s reviews and ratings carry more weight than an institution proclaiming its own greatness.

But there’s an added bonus to having your people post online church ratings – it will increase the church’s website page rank when people are searching online for churches in your area. Your team’s reviews help legitimize the church plant’s new website and your church’s listings on important directories that people use to find stuff.

Lastly, you need to load up the positive ratings to offset the inevitable bad review. As much as possible, respond promptly to negative reviews with grace and love. Those reviews can’t be removed, but it goes a long way to let people know you’re listening and that you care.

I recently heard of an established church that have never though to post online church ratings. They discovered that on Yelp there was already (and only) one review that had been posted at least 2 years prior. And it was a nasty thrashing of a review. How many people decided not to come to their worship gatherings because of that review?

Where to Post Online Church Ratings

There are probably dozens to choose from, but I’d concentrate on the following review/rating sites. You’ll get the most bang for your buck:

Google Maps
Bing Maps
Yelp
Your church’s Facebook Page
ChurchFinder

Is your church plant not already listed on these sites? Stay tuned for some tips on how to get that done quickly and painlessly!

What to Post

When you invite people from your Launch Team to post online church reviews, encourage them to rate the church and leave a brief, honest story about their experience so far.

But also encourage them to focus on the relational dimension: friendships, welcoming environment, felt right at home, etc. By and large, people considering visiting a new church are looking for human connection and community.

Be cautious about having the same 5 reviews by the same people on each of the sites above. That would appear obviously stacked. And a little creepy.

Keep leaning on this until you have at least 5-6 reviews on each site above. It could make all the difference in the world to someone who’s on the fence about coming to your church worship gathering!

The post Get Your People to Post Online Church Ratings appeared first on Church Planting Tactics.

Source: Get Your People to Post Online Church Ratings

The post Get Your People to Post Online Church Ratings appeared first on Passion for Planting.

by Patrick Bradley: Third in a series of posts about community mapping tools, here’s another free tool to help you learn your community: postal carrier route maps.

One of the challenges of getting the word out in your community is planning time & resources to let every household know about the grand opening of your worship gatherings. Knowing how many households there are is key to your outreach and marketing plans.

…

The post Free Community Mapping Tools, Part 3: Carrier Route Maps appeared first on Church Planting Tactics.

Source: Free Community Mapping Tools, Part 3: Carrier Route Maps

The post Free Community Mapping Tools, Part 3: Carrier Route Maps appeared first on Passion for Planting.