God's purposes are accomplished through people. Evangelistic tools, computer systems, transportation vehicles are all helpful, but people are the means God uses, and all of the other things are what those people use.
The Apostle Paul's letters are often concluded with a list of names Paul wants to greet. He doesn't mention whether those people supported his ministry financially, although it was very likely most of them did.
Ministry information systems historically have focused much attention on the financial side, striving to accurately record financial flow. But the people side is often neglected. Ministry donation systems often focus only on donors, while another (separate) system may track conference attendees. They may have a third system that tracks employees, and maybe even another one that tracks staff members who raise their own support.
"People" in a ministry often fall into multiple categories. For example, an hourly employee may raise some personal support, and be a donor, and be a conference attendee.
Finally, contacts may not be people at all, but organizations. These organizations could be external, such as churches or businesses (whether they give donations or not), or internal, such as ministry offices and departments, or even ministry projects and events.
DonorWise solves this problem by tracking all contacts for an organization. For an individual or organization, DonorWise can track a variety of contact information. DonorWise can track the donations a staff member receives, as well as donations they give; it can track if they are a supervisor and which departments/ministries they supervise.
Because DonorWise's contact features are such an integral part of the overall system, we will spend several sessions discussing the contact management features.
Bringing it back around to the people. The high quality of DonorWise's contact features enables us to build better relationships with our ministry partners. Our interaction with them is more consistent and more accurate. They appreciate that, and ultimately that results in greater involvement in the ministry.
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