PDS Live is all about...People!
This software is about people and their process of becoming fully engaged followers of Christ. Thanks to the Internet, we can engage people directly online to help them connect with a small group, find a place to serve in a ministry or give online as an act of their worship of God and support of the church.
We created a special browser based application called PDS Live Online just for the people in your church. This innovation puts data, services and functionality directly into the hands of your people accessible 24 hours a day. They can login and update their own contact info, connect with their small group and the ministries in which they serve. They can see their giving record and make contributions online. Of course there is also a church photo directory so they can easily look up contact info of other people in the church who have given permission to publish the info.
By "People Centric" we also mean it's a powerful tool for pastors to help facilitate your whole disciple-development process of reaching people in your community and moving them incrementally toward greater commitment to Christ. It’s for churches that value community in small groups. It’s for churches that encourage spiritual growth and want a way to track how people are progressing in their journey. It’s for churches that value “every member ministry” where each member is guided into service according to his or her uniqueness using popular gift assessment methods like SHAPE, Network, Uniquely You, and many others.
Here's a list of just some of the features in People Driven Software
- Track all the usual demographic information for every person: birth date, marital status, race, gender, family position, company, title, etc.
- Track additional demographics helpful for targeting and assessing whether the church is hitting their target: educational level, occupational industry, age group, seeker status, background prior to membership, new resident in the area, baptism occurred at this church or another, marketing method used to attract to the church, etc.
- Record each person’s involvement (and complete history of involvement) in small groups, ministry teams, and class attendance.
- Keep record of every follow up letter sent to each person.
- Track unlimited prayer requests for each person.
- Track follow up requests made to the staff on welcome cards from the previous Sunday. For example, if someone requests a hospital visit, flowers, meals, answers to questions, etc., these can be logged and automatically delivered to the appropriate staff.
- Relational sharing of data common to the household – e.g., enter or update home address, home phone and driving directions only once for every member of the household. (Or store an additional optional mailing address for each person.)
- Store an unlimited number of phone numbers (work, mobile, fax, etc), email addresses and websites for every person.
- Store photos of individuals and/or families and print photo directories.
- Send email or print envelopes for individuals by clicking a button on their record.
- Copy a person’s name and mailing address to the clipboard for pasting into another program.
- View people in a “Tree View” showing each person in their family under their household name
- Send personalized letters using mail merge linked to MS Word.
- Track each person’s status as they move through your church's disciple-development process beginning with their first visit to the church through step 1, step 2, etc., and then annually as they renew their membership.
- Encourage each person to keep growing using automated email and form letters to congratulate them on their commitments and invite them to the next level of commitment. (Sample letters and emails are included with the program for easy customization.)
- Automation of annual renewals. Member profile and covenant renewal forms are generated and mailed to members.
- Tracking of every person’s history of small group involvement and their position within each group (member, host, apprentice, leader, coach, etc.)
- Detailed management of small groups: location, meeting time, leadership structure (division leaders, coaches, leaders.), maturity level (100, 200, 300, 400), gender type (men’s group, women’s group), study curriculum, openness to new members, etc.
- Detailed management of ministry teams: location, meeting time, leadership & team members, skill requirements, etc.
- Set membership involvement goals for small groups and ministries. For example, the church goal is to have 80% of all members in a small group—compare it instantly to the actual percentage.
- Send all follow up letters, emails and weekly reports--all at the same time with one press of a button!
- Output ANY small group, ministry, event, class or mailing list to a:
- printed report,
- mailing labels,
- envelopes,
- MS Excel spreadsheet,
- MS Word mail merge file,
- Outlook Contacts folder,
- PDF file,
- PhoneTree list or
- HTML file. - Track Total Weekend Attendance & Offering plus track an unlimited number of attendance figures for services/groups within each week – 1st Service, 2nd Service, Saturday Night Service, High School Group, Nursery, etc.
- Track Individual weekly attendance at weekly services, small groups, ministry teams, classes or events.
- Contribution & Pledge tracking and analysis
- Automated data entry of frequently used Cities, States, Zip Codes, and Area Code
- Advancement of grade schoolers to the next grade level each year
- Customized Church Information – insert church logo for automatic inclusion on reports. Track church address, phones, website, email, data entry person, etc. This info is used throughout the program.
- Staff Birthday Reminder – pop up reminder of upcoming staff birthdays – helps build community among the staff by never forgetting a birthday!
- Follow Up Letter Reminder – For example, a pastor can flag a person to receive a form letter. When his assistant opens the database a hyperlink is displayed on the main menu that shows the form letters that need to be sent. All form letters are then generated at the click of a button.
- Staff Follow Up Reminder - if there are outstanding follow up requests or people interested in serving in a ministry that a staff person oversees, the staff member will be reminded of these outstanding requests every time they log into PDS.
- Fully web-based so that many concurrent users can view, enter and update information in real time.
- But also capable of running in offline mode with a local copy of your database that can be used anytime, anywhere. Your data is automatically synchronized with our servers when you are connected to the internet!
- PDS is secure and requires users to log in with a username and password. (Role-based permissions can be set for each user for adding, deleting or changing data. You can lock down contribution & pledge data for example.)
- Export people records to your PDA or phone! Just export any list of people from PDS into Outlook and then sync with your iPhone, Windows Mobile Phone, or any device that can sync with Outlook.