30 web apps to do ministry on the cheap

November 22, 2009 in Christian Living, for Churches, Outreach, Pastors

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

Screenshot_Wufoo

Organising meetings

I’ve also written about these tools and others in ‘Find a time that suits everyone‘.

Screenshot_WhenIsGood

Reputation management

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

Screenshot_CoTweet

Asset management

Screenshot_Dropbox

Website analytics

Screenshot_CraztEggHeatmap

Collaboration

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‘.

Screenshot_Zoho

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)

Screenshot_Pastor

Task management

Collecting and organising notes

Screenshot_Evernote

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?

  • http://xnreflections.blogspot.com Mikey Lynch

    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?

  • Steven Kryger

    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.

  • http://xnreflections.blogspot.com Mikey Lynch

    Sure… although even on that level, it’s nice for everything to be nice and smooth… or is that just be being pedantic?

  • Steven Kryger

    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!

  • Ashley

    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.