Technology in KidMin - Part 2 (Connecting)

We've been talking about technology in ministry and one major aspect is using technology to communicate outside of our weekends.  Here's some of what we've seen and love:

SOCIAL MEDIA

Facebook and Instagram win points for the most popular ways to connect with parents.  Some tips from those that do it well:

- be consistent.  Have a regular presence (weekly at minimum)

- post the Main Point and memory verse for each week

- photos of what's going on (small group leaders, or the back of kids heads as they worship, or get permission from parents, crafts, worship response centers)

- ask parents to share "post what service project your kids did for this week's LOVE EACH OTHER" project", or "what is YOUR child thanking God for this week?" - let it become a conversation online, not just a bulletin board of announcements

- preview what's coming up (a teaser you made up, a photo of the new series you're starting, or some curriculums have monthly preview videos)

- make a youtube playlist (the Meeting Place has one bimonthly) to share with parents on Facebook and play before services

EMAIL

Mailchimp is our favourite way of communicating with parents - it's free, looks classy and is easy to manage.  It gives great templates that are fully customizable and tracks how many people are actually reading your emails.  

Parent communication - whatever platform you use to get it out, ReThink group has a service that helps make that communication be more meaningful.  Use their "parent cue" email for a ready-made template that includes weekly blog posts on parenting, interesting trivia #justaphase, and a brief recap of the week before (their default is 252 Basics curriculum, but it's fully customizable).  They also have a similar service included in the subscription that gives email templates for your small group leaders as well.  www.goweekly.com

Constant Contact is another paid service that's great for emails... and also is a full church management database.

WEBSITES

There's some discussion on this - many say it's obsolete, other than as basic info to let visitors know a children's ministry exists, and others still use and maintain theirs, saying if you keep posting fresh information, it keeps the website active in search engines.  Even posting a basic "what we're learning this month" can help.

BLOGS

Haven't seen much activity on blogs for children's ministry, other than as a resource for those in ministry, not your own congregation.  Our children ministry experimented some with this last year - using blogs to post family devotion ideas and "what we're talking about" but it felt like extra work that wasn't really reaching people.  Social media seems to be the simpler, more accessible way to handle this.

ONLINE TOOLS

www.wufoo.com is a premier service (free with limits, or cheap with full features) that does forms for you.  Yes, that means day camp registrations, volunteer applications and any other form you can dream of!

www.jotform.com is also recommended as a paid service that does forms well.

Want to get feedback?  www.surveymonkey.com is a free service that lets you do evaluations and surveys quickly without much fuss.

VOLUNTEER TRAINING

There's a couple new sites dedicated to online training of volunteers.  Ministry Grid and GoodToGo are the two big ones - Good to Go being more kid-centred (and cheaper) and Ministry Grid with more content and is a more church-wide application.  Both come at a monthly cost, and both allow you to upload your own videos.

HOWEVER, after testing the two of them, the monthly subscription price and the cumbersome method to assigning videos to each volunteer individually (plus the amount of email it generated) made both sites less attractive.  Our favourite idea was to simply post our video training on youtube.  You can make it a private channel if need be, and a tip from a university is to have a secret "code word" near the end of the video - if your volunteer comes in having watched the training & they know the code word, a free coffee or little gift can make it worth their while!  You can just email the link (or have it on your website) and it's free to use.

VOLUNTEER COMMUNICATION

Forget the emails - one church just does a weekly video outlining any changes made in the curriculum for the week.  A webcam and 2 minutes is all it takes.  It can get emailed out or posted online for small group leaders to watch ("Hey guys - we're doing the first craft in the lesson plan, only instead of hearts we're using leaves.  Here's an example of how it looks...  Don't forget our memory verse is changed this month to this one... We've got a guest speaker this week, so you won't have time for the closing activity...")

As a parent or as a minister... what's been an effective communication tool for you?