Getting Started

Welcome to ChurchConnect! This platform is designed to equip your church with powerful tools to manage your congregation, monitor growth, and automate engaging communication.

Dashboard Basics

Once you are logged into the Administrative Portal, your Dashboard provides a bird's-eye view of your church's total operations.

  • Overview Metrics: Near the top, instantly view your Total Members, Total Visitors, Total New Converts, and Total Departments.
  • Growth Charts: Interactive Bar and Line charts automatically render your Member Inflow and Zoom Attendance trends over the current year.
  • Quick Actions: Utilize the floating action buttons to rapidly spawn new Mass SMS Campaigns, add New Members, or view your Wallet balance.

Subscriptions

Important: You must maintain an active subscription plan to fully access all platform features beyond the 30-day Free Trial.

To safely manage your billing lifecycle or view your current plan details:

  1. Log in to the administrative portal using your restricted Church Admin credentials.
  2. Securely navigate to your Profile Page.
  3. Scroll down precisely to locate your Active Subscription Details panel.
  4. From this dashboard, you possess the full administrative clearance to natively Cancel, Upgrade, or thoroughly review the feature capacity limits of your current subscription tier.

People Management

Efficiently tracking and organizing your congregation is the core capability of our platform. From first-time visitors to committed members, ChurchConnect scales with your growth.

Members

The Members module allows you to store detailed demographic data.

  • Adding Members: You can add a member manually utilizing the "Add Member" button or bulk-import members flawlessly using our structured CSV importer.
  • Exporting Data: Your membership tables can be securely exported to both localized PDF reports or CSV spreadsheets with one click.
  • Demographics: Easily review visual distribution pie charts tracking gender imbalances, age brackets, and marital statuses from your Analytics panel.

Visitors & Converts

Our platform separates non-members into Visitors and New Converts to assist your localized follow-up teams.

  • Conversion Workflow: Viewing a Visitor's profile reveals a "Convert to Member" action. Once a visitor successfully completes your internal integration process, click this to permanently migrate their record into your Members database.

Departments

Segment your church into specific Departments (e.g. Choir, Ushers, Youth Ministry) and Church Services (e.g. Sunday 1st Service, Mid-week Service) to allow precision-targeted messaging campaigns later.

Communication

Keep your congregation engaged and responsive with our deep Vonage-powered communication suite covering bulk SMS texts and Voice call broadcasts.

Wallet & Funding

Credit Required: SMS and Voice broadcasts cost money to process. Your Church Wallet acts as your prepaid balance for these services.

Before launching a campaign, ensure your Wallet has sufficient funds. You can top-up instantly using Paystack or Stripe via the Wallet section in your sidebar. Our automated routing will reject campaigns attempted with an insufficient balance.

Sending Campaigns

When creating a New Campaign, you have powerful targeting capabilities:

  • Choose a target audience: example- Specific Departments, or simply All Members / Visitors, use the filter to drill down to your target audience.
  • Choose a Broadcast Type: SMS Text or Voice Call or Both.
  • For Voice Calls: Upload an MP3 audio file (Max 5MB) of your recorded message. Ensure your audio is clear before queueing.

Automations

Let the platform work for you automatically on holidays and important dates!

Under Broadcast Settings, you can enable:

  • Weekly Welcome: Triggers every morning automatically sending your personalized Voice Note or SMS to newly captured visitors from the weekend.
  • Birthday Wishes: Runs daily at 8:00 AM, automatically calling or texting any Member whose birth date matches today.
  • Wedding Anniversary: Automatically congratulates married couples on their special date exactly when it arrives.

Integrations & Onboarding

Onboarding Meetings

Seamlessly onboard and graduate new converts utilizing rigorous tracking metrics built directly into your workflow:

  • Platform Flexibility: Easily connect schedules using Zoom or any other equivalent virtual conference platform for onboarding sessions.
  • Structured Progression: Intelligently track a specific new convert as they advance systematically and attend different comprehensive levels of your Beginners Class.
  • Performance Analytics: Progress metrics are robustly tracked individually to empower administrative oversight and structural follow-up procedures.
  • Automatic Graduation: Upon the successful completion of the onboarding progression, confidently update the convert’s status and officially mark them as a foundational Member!

Custom Sender ID

By default, outbound SMS messages arrive at your members' phones bearing the first 11 characters of your Church Name.

If you wish to change what the Caller ID looks like, a `Super Admin` can access the Profile Settings located at the top-right corner dropdown. Edit the Custom SMS Sender ID field to an alphanumeric string up to 11 characters, and all future texts instantly adopt that branding.

Custom Call Number

By default, outbound Voice Broadcasts and Automations are dispatched from the platform's primary Vonage routing number.

Similar to the SMS Sender ID, if you want your congregation to receive voice calls originating natively from your Church's dedicated callback line, navigate to Profile Settings. Update the Custom Call Number field (up to 20 numeric characters). If left blank, the system safely falls back to our default broadcast number.