Examples of Wufoo forms in action (plus video resources)

July 10, 2009 in for Churches, Outreach, Pastors

Yesterday I outlined some of the ways my church has been using Wufoo to encourage church members to share how God has been at work in their lives. There are lots of other ways to apply Wufoo for ministry – here’s some forms I’ve found around the internet:

The Gate to Create website also uses Wufoo to create forms to support ministries. For example:

If you’re stuck and need help learning how to use Wufoo, here’s a video explaining how to create a form (and more tutorial videos from Wufoo can be found here):

  • Ashley

    Thanks for the post – certainly a powerful tool to enable ministry. I’m curious about two aspects of this application:

    1. Any comments on how it compares with Google forms? One of the nice things about Google is the slick integration with the rest of the app platform.
    2. More importantly, how do you integrate information collected from Wufoo into the corporate member database? For example if the Wufoo output is a csv file (or similar) how is this linked back into a backend database for management purposes? Having the output as a disparate standalone file would appear to encourage data duplication and can lead to headaches when managing this information. Also you need to be able to link to your member database to know who has/hasn’t RSVP’d or responded.

  • Steven Kryger

    Great questions Ashley.

    1. I haven’t spent much time in Google Forms – Wufoo has served most needs well for the last 5 years, I haven’t needed to look for alternatives!

    2. Unless the church database had this functionality built in, I think the issue of bringing data back into the database is going to be a problem with any form/survey application. For the forms I’ve created so far, I haven’t needed to worry about who has or hasn’t responded – can you think of particular instances where this would be required?

  • Andrew Gosnell

    Thanks very much for the kind words and informative posts, Steve. I’m glad Wufoo has been useful to you!

    Ashley, in addition to csv or excel export files, you can create nice-looking web-based reports in Wufoo from your data (useful for keeping track of data from standalone forms.) We also have an API available for more heavy-duty data management. It would, however, require some code on your end to query your Wufoo account database. (wufoo.com/docs/api)

    Feel free to send a request at wufoo.com/support if you have any other questions. (We also have free accounts available if you’d like to see for yourself how it all works.)

  • Ashley

    Hi Steve,

    I guess one scenario where tracking responses would be helpful is event management, being able to answer questions like:
    1. who has responded to the event invite?
    2. sending a followup email to people that haven’t responded
    without being able to integrate the responses into a single database and match this against the overall member list this would be difficult to address.

    Maybe I’m expecting too much, the ‘sweet spot’ for Wufoo (and other apps like this) seems to be quick & easy data collection. I have experimented with this sort of communication channel for gathering feedback from our small group at church & I’ve noticed that the rate of response is very high. There seems to be something quite ‘sticky’ about this type of medium.

    Also the availability of an API (thanks for the heads up Andrew!) allows for a very tight integration, making this a very flexible overall solution.