Hayley Whitworth • Sep 25, 2023
This month’s New Features webinar is devoted to recapping some of the Summit highlights, recapping the roadmap lookback, and sharing a glimpse into what’s on the roadmap for 2024. Be sure to tune in this Thursday at 2pm Central!
Hayley Whitworth • Sep 25, 2023
For those of you who have done it, you know that the journey to landing on a new logo is no simple task. A lot of brainstorming went into selecting the right design that represents who we are as a company, our values, and how we want to be perceived in the church tech space. Here’s the why behind our new logo:
The overall “pin” shape represents an individual’s journey with Christ. We pride ourselves on offering solutions that will help keep a finger on the pulse of your congregation to know when someone is a first-time giver, connected, serving, disengaging, etc. Christ teaches us to go after the one, and TouchPoint’s shepherding tools help you measure individual engagement to encourage your churchgoers in their faith walk. This is the heart behind what we do.
Lastly, as we are a data company and some of TouchPoint’s tools for knowing your people lie in the reports, the three sections created by the “T” in the logomark symbolize a pie chart. We were founded inside of Bellevue Baptist Church, and much of our team is comprised of former church staff members or (current) volunteers. We have a passion for helping churches and ministries succeed, and it’s hard to plan for growth without first evaluating where you’ve been.
What do you think of the new logo? What does it mean to you? (Does the shape make you think of quotation marks, representing our communication tools?) We’d love to hear your thoughts! Feel free to reach out to [email protected] to share!
Hayley Whitworth • Sep 13, 2023
Chris Dolan and Mike Smith had the pleasure of connecting with several finance team members yesterday to talk about TouchPoint’s recent finance enhancements. Check out the video below!
Sep 11, 2023
The world is changing. As 2020 was a highly difficult and unique time for everybody, the state of our society has emerged in a different place. Churches are not immune to the pushing and pulling of what’s going on in the world around us.
People are becoming more and more polarized and disconnected.
Now more than ever, churches need to be a beacon of light in the darkness–a city on a hill–to bring people closer together and restore broken relationships between God, people and each other. The cornerstone of a healthy church is engaged and connected members.
This is where we believe texting is of paramount importance. Texting is now the preferred method of communication and the best way for churches to engage their people.
Our mission is to cultivate connections between people to create infinite impact. When we partner with churches, and seek to create impact with people through texting, a natural byproduct is church growth.
Part of the Ministry by Text blueprint is helping churches drive growth with proven strategies we’ve developed over two decades. We want to make sure no one slips through the cracks as people visit and participate in what’s going on at your church.
Let’s discuss the top three workflows that combine Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) with standard message campaigns to help churches stimulate engagement and connect people
Workflow #1: Automating Guest Follow-Up
When you combine the preference for texting and the functionality of the mobile device, simply inviting your guests to connect by text is a highly engaging workflow.
The recommended keyword for this workflow is CONNECT and churches should incorporate this tactic into their weekly service announcements, like this church did.
The response message in the CONNECT workflow should include a welcome video from the lead pastor and a digital guest form. This tactic combines convenience with efficiency.
The use of the keyword CONNECT also triggers a series of automated MMS text messages that combine plain text with video to introduce your staff and connect guests to church beliefs, sermon library, ministry services and membership registration forms on your website.
This automated process allows guests to gather the information they’re looking for, consistently connects them back to the website for more information and dramatically improves registration for new membership programs.
“Because of the CONNECT message series for guest followup, I’ve never seen a greater population in our new member class in my 14-years at Prestonwood.” – Dr. Jason Snyder, Prestonwood Baptist Church
Automating guest follow-up is an important strategy as it’s the introduction for guests to your church and your texting service. It creates awareness of your greater keyword strategy and allows for self-discovery for finding a small group, service opportunities, sub-ministry services and other involvement opportunities at your church.
Workflow #2: Executing Churchwide Cadence
A staple of the MBT blueprint is the delivery of your regular churchwide message cadence.
Best practice is a Monday campaign that includes a link to your pastor’s sermon from the previous weekend to accommodate those who were unable to attend and allow recipients to watch and share. This will also stimulate engagement with the larger library of sermon content. This message should also include a secondary call to action like links to finding a small group, introducing keywords to sub-ministries, links to service opportunities and much more.
The next step to the church wide cadence is a Saturday message campaign that includes an MMS video from the teaching pastor encouraging people to continue the study of the message series, combined with notes and your digital worship guide for the upcoming weekend services.
The digital worship guide is a great self-service solution for all that’s going on at your church. The cost savings of switching from print guides to digital in many instances exceeds the total investment in the MBT texting services.
Trackable URLs featured in our MBT Analytics dashboard provide insight into utilization as you see click activity on the weekends and throughout the week.
Workflow #3: Providing Reading Plans
A great way to connect your members to the church and to each other is by providing digital reading plans.
Reading plans can be daily, weekly or monthly devotionals that you create and host on your website. Common reading plans like 30-Day New Year Challenge, Walk with Christ Easter Plan, and Christmas Advent Plan are great options to engage your people with consistent digital content.
This reading plan workflow starts with creating a text message in the time sequence you decide that includes a unique URL, which delivers the recipients directly to that content on the web. After they access that content, this also provides the opportunity for participants to browse additional content on your website as well as inviting others to text a keyword and participate.
Once again, the trackable URLs in your message campaigns will provide key analytics as to the consistency of participation from your message recipients.
Keep in mind, members are invited to opt into the reading plan campaigns using a keyword. So, they have requested and are anticipating the devotional content and the trackable URL will confirm participation rates.
The secret ingredient to keeping your members engaged for longer reading plans, like 30-day reading plans, is MMS attachments. Short, 30-second encouragement videos that tease the content behind the link keeps the recipients engaged and increases participation.
We believe texting is the best way to create powerful connections in your communities. With all of these workflows and strategies, our hope is we can bring people closer together with each other, your church and God. By doing this, together we can make a great impact in the world!
Join us!
Come to our breakout session at the TouchPoint Summit and hear from our CEO Brian Audia about the exciting impact you can make when partnering with us. Also, you’ll hear great success from TouchPoint churches just like yours who successfully implemented these best practices.
Text TOUCHPOINT to 77007 to learn more about MBT and our integration with TouchPoint.
Watch the recent TouchPoint & MBT webinar recording below:
Chris Dolan • Sep 07, 2023
The highly anticipated Finance Enhancements (Phase II) have officially been rolled out.
As previously mentioned, this should make your reconciliation with the bank and your GL super easy, but we all know change can be hard and you likely have questions.
Join Chris Dolan (Head of Product) and Mike Smith (Finance Guru) for a one-hour roundtable next week, Tuesday, September 12 at 12:00 PM Central, to get your questions answered and figure out how to save your team time by simplifying the reconciliation process.
Sep 01, 2023
With the release of Phase II of our Finance Enhancements, there will be a period of a few days when batches may need some adjustments.
Since the release on August 30th, you may see the following scenarios occur:
1. Transactions may have moved from one batch to another batch, even if the batch was already closed. This should have only affected very recent batches within the last few days prior to the release. This would be batches involving transactions that had not yet settled. Going forward, transactions will be moved to the appropriate Online settlement batch automatically.
2. There may be one or more Online batches with no transactions included. These batches are a result of registration transactions that occurred prior to the Phase II deployment, since they did not have a corresponding batch entry. These empty Online batches will stop being created once all of those registration transactions have settled next week. We will then delete the empty Online batches for you.
If you have any questions or need assistance with batch transactions, please send in a Support ticket and our team will be happy to help!
NOTE: A blog outlining the recommended reconciliation processes will be coming soon!
Aug 30, 2023
We’re excited to announce that PHASE II of the Finance enhancements in TouchPoint will be deployed tomorrow (Wednesday) night, August 30. Watch this brief video for a quick overview of these changes.
Read below for a full list of the included changes:
1. All online transactions will now display in Batches.
a. Online registration payments will have a type of “Non-contribution”.
b. The account code listed on the registration Involvement will display in the Fund/Code column.
i. NOTE: if your church has not set up account codes yet, we encourage you to do so. This will make reporting and reconciliation easier. If you have a registration that accepts payment and no account code is entered, it will be possible to select one on the Batch page.
c. If a person makes a registration payment and a donation at the same time, it will record as one entry, but with a split.
d. Online entries will not allow editing the date or amount since those are set by the donor/registrant.
2. Online transactions will be in a Pending ACH or Bankcard Batch, depending on the transaction type, until they have settled. The two Pending Batches will be highlighted in yellow and pinned at the top of the page.
3. When transactions settle each night, they will be entered into a Batch with the settlement date set as the deposit date. The daily Batches will be automatically balanced and (optionally) automatically closed by changing the Auto Close Online Batches setting (Admin > Settings > Finance > Batches) to True.
4. The Deposits Totals report has been removed as it is no longer needed.
5. The Settlements report is temporarily still available for you to reconcile transactions prior to the release of this update. The report should not be needed moving forward since the settlement Batches will match the Batch entry page now.
6. A new Soft Credit option is now available when creating a Batch entry that allows you to give credit to a person for a contribution from another entity.
a. The Giving tab on a person’s record will now show a Soft Credit Detail section if they have a soft credit.
b. Soft Credit Summary by Fund (Non Tax Deductible) and Soft Credit Contributions (Non Tax Deductible) sections have been added to the default statement template and can optionally be added to a custom contribution statement, if your church uses a custom one.
c. The Contribution Search page will show a Soft Credit option in the Contribution Type dropdown menu. This will be unchecked by default.
d. The Pledge page will count Soft Credits as a gift given to a pledge, not a gift given not to a pledge for pledge calculations.
e. Any gift that has a Soft Credit associated with it will not show on the Pledge Fulfillment Report to avoid being double counted.
f. To make it easy for you to associate soft credits, anytime a soft credit is associated with to a donor, the next time you check the box to associate a soft credit the system will remember and recommend the previous associate person(s).
i. Note: if you would like the association to happen automatically (without needing to check the box for future gifts) we have a new admin setting named Auto-check Soft Credit if Associated (Admin > Settings > Finance > Batches) that can do this for you if you set it to True.
7. The setup for Fund Sets has been reworked to be easier to manage. You can now view and manage fund sets on a tab of the Fund Management page. We also have an optional new admin setting (User Sees Fund Set on Giving Tab setting, found on the Admin > Settings > Finance > Giving Tab) that when enabled will cause any user who does not have a Finance role to see the name of the Fund Set on their Giving tab and Contribution Statement, instead of the fund name.
As always, we are here if you have questions. These changes should make the reconciliation process with your bank and general ledger super easy and reduce several steps. Thanks to many of our partner churches for your feedback as we’ve enhanced this important area of the system for you.
Aug 29, 2023
Join us for TouchPoint’s To The Point Webinar on Thursday, August 31st at 3pm CT, where we will deep dive the advantages of Ministry By Text.
Aug 24, 2023
We recently released several updates related to the Finance – Phase I changes based on feedback from our partner churches.
1. The number pad on the keyboard can now be used to quickly enter contributions without needing to use your mouse. The Enter key performs the same function as the Tab key.
2. Contribution notes now display in Batches the same way they did in Bundles. This means that staff-entered notes will be visible on the Batches page. Donor-entered notes can be viewed on the Contribution Search page by checking the “Filter by Donor Notes” checkbox.
3. Save & Next button has been added to the Batch entry box that allows you to save that entry and automatically go to the next entry.
4. In line editing is now available within a Batch for the following:
a. Source
b. Fund / Code
c. Type
d. Amount
e. Check/Last 4
f. Notes
5. Split entry icon has been added between the delete and edit icons for each entry. This will open a popup window to set the “Split Amount” and “Split Fund”.
6. The Reference # will now show in unclosed Batches.
7. A link to the Batch report is now available on the Batch page itself, in addition to the Batches page.
8. The Pledge Fulfillment Report link has been added back to the Fund page.
9. Deceased people no longer show up in the dropdown when attributing a check.
10. The new Pledge page calculations now include joint giving if the person has joint giving with their spouse.
11. The Donor Totals by Range report now includes non tax deductible contributions.
Thank you to the churches that provided feedback and helped make the system better for all churches. Our goal is to make these pages easy to use and reduce the time needed to manage your contributions.
Finance – Phase II is just around the corner. Keep an eye on the blog for more details soon!
Aug 14, 2023
Hey there, fellow finance superheroes!
We have been working hard behind the scenes on Phase II of the Finance changes and there is a tweak to how we will handle imported online contributions from 3rd party platforms moving forward.
Starting Tuesday, August 15th, the “Online” batch type will be reserved exclusively for online contributions processed through TouchPoint using one of the integrated payment processors. This is because we do not want you to have to move those manually or to co-mingle these transactions, which will make reconciliation more difficult.
This means any contributions imported online from 3rd party services will now be placed in a different batch type. Fear not! We have made the change super easy for you. Simply follow the instructions based on the various 3rd party platform(s) you might use:
If you are using a 3rd party, our recommendation is to create a whole new batch type for those contributions. This way, you will be able to filter, sort, and report on them in the future with ease. Creating a new batch type is simple. Just head over to Admin > Advanced > Lookup Codes > Batch Types and work your magic. Abracadabra!
If you’d like us to help you mass update legacy batch types, please contact support.
So, to recap: Online contributions from 3rd party services will no longer import into the “Online” batch which will make the reconciliation process easier once Phase II is released.
REMEMBER: You can save even more time (and money $$$) by using our fully integrated payment processing called TouchPoint Giving. To learn more, email Morgan Mudge today.
Aug 13, 2023
Excerpt from the email:
Hey, friends!
With two kids in high school and one in college, Kara and I decided to throw caution to the wind and take a family trip of a lifetime! All five of us went to Europe and hiked 125 miles through the Alps (Italy, Switzerland, Germany, and Austria). The Dolomites are the most majestic mountains I’ve ever seen. Our time together was priceless.
Experiencing different cultures made me want to bring a small part of each town back to Dallas. During our adventures, something about the people jumped out. Picture this: we’re wandering a small European town, and I see families whose children are the spitting image of their parents. A son playing a card game with his dad, both with corkscrew hair. The next town, it I saw the same thing: a daughter walking hand in hand with her mother – like little freckled doppelgängers.
This got me thinking about our own reflections. How do we reflect the image of our Father? He is the “Prince of Peace”! He is righteous. The Lord is faithful. His Love endures forever. When others look at me, do they see righteousness, faith, love, and peace? Do they see my Father?
Lord, you are the vine, and we are the branches. Conform us to your perfect image for Your glory.
2 Tim 2:22,
Ross Miller
Aug 11, 2023
Summer Roundtables are winding down! Join members of the TouchPoint team and others within the TouchPoint community as we chat about… anything you like! Come prepared with questions for other church partners, be ready to share your tips & tricks, or sit back and listen.
Please note that TouchPoint Roundtables are not live support sessions. These times are designed to give you the opportunity to engage with other churches and bounce ideas off one another. Summer Roundtables are a great way to stay connected with others in the TouchPoint community.
