Thanks to all who attended my seminar at the recent Create Conference ‘I’m not cheap, I’m entrepreneurial!’. As promised, below are the links to the applications I mentioned, most of which are free (or very cheap) and web apps (meaning if you have an internet connection you can access them). If you can recommend other apps, I’d love to hear from you.
Also, before the conference I also asked readers of Communicate Jesus ‘What web apps for ministry do you use?‘. This post includes their responses.
Surveys, polls & sign-up forms
- Wufoo (personal favourite! I’ve also written about its applications for ministry several times here.)
- PollDaddy (great Twitter integration available)
- Micropoll (untested but recommended here)
Organising meetings
- When is Good (its beauty is in its simplicity!)
- TimeBridge
- Doodle (I haven’t tried it, but it looks promising)
I’ve also written about these tools and others in ‘Find a time that suits everyone‘.
Reputation management
- Google Alerts (personal favourite)
- BrandsEye
- SocialMention
- YackTrack
To read a guide to using Google Alerts, check out ‘What’s your community saying about you?‘
To learn more about SocialMention and YackTrack, check out ‘A new type of search engine emerges‘.
Mass communication
- CoTweet (great for team tweeting)
- MailChimp
- Campaign Monitor
- Toodle
- Breeze
Asset management
Website analytics
- Clicky (personal favourite)
- Google Analytics
- CrazyEgg
Collaboration
- Google Docs
- Google Calendar
- Zoho (personal favourite)
You might also be interested in ‘10 reasons to throw out your paper diary‘, ‘Will your church join LA city council?‘ and ‘Planning the year ahead with Google Calendar‘.
Password management
- Passpack (untried, but recommended)
- Pastor (not a web app, and for Mac only, but my personal favourite)
- Clipperz (untried, but recommended)
- KeePass (again, untried, but recommended. This is for Windows only)
Task management
- Things (not a web app, and for Mac only, but my personal favourite)
- Remember the Milk
Collecting and organising notes
- Evernote (personal favourite)
- Shovebox
- Google Notebook
People management
This is still a work in progress! My trialling of church databases has gone on the backburner recently (my apologies), but I do intend to finish this series by the end of the year. To see what’s been said so far, check out ‘Search for the ideal church database – Part 1‘, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4. Also see ‘The list: 32 church database solutions‘.
Is there anything I’ve left off this list that you think should be included?
Thanks, Steve. Would love to hear your thoughts about how to use these various sites in an integrated/aesthetically pleasing way… sometimes using a lot fo different web apps can be a bit warty and blotchy, don’t you agree?
Good call Mikey, that could be best suited to a separate post. A number (probably the majority) of these apps don’t really have public exposure though – they’re more back-end administrative support to ministry.
Sure… although even on that level, it’s nice for everything to be nice and smooth… or is that just be being pedantic?
Might be a little pedantic
In the absence of a team of developers who can create an integrated system, ministries are on the whole reliant on using lots of cheap but often unrelated tools. A bit messy, but very useful!
Here’s a site that offers a very sweet online whiteboard app – http://www.dabbleboard.com/ I’ve only ever used it to whip up a couple of rough flowcharts but it seems to suit this purpose well.