Searching for the Perfect Congregational Database

Collecting information is a vital part of keeping our congregations going. We collect information on visitors, on members, on pledging, and religious education enrollment. We compile names for mailing lists. We create board reports, budgets, membership directories, and committee lists. We print out pledge reminders.

If we're fortunate we have all this data in one computer database. But many congregations find that their data is spread over many databases, some of them in the congregational office and some on members' home computers.

Bringing all this data together in one database often makes sense, but the question that burns in our administrative souls is how best to do it. InterConnections hopes to shed some light on this subject. We've asked administrators of our congregations which databases they actually use and like. We asked them to give their databases a satisfaction rating, from one to five stars.

We hasten to add that we are not replacing Consumer Reports here. We have not done an exhaustive comparative survey of all the products available. Nor are we recommending any. What we are doing is simply letting you know what some church administrators say about the databases they use.

But because of the level of detail needed for comparing databases, we found we had to write a separate, online-only, article, which can be found at www.uua.org/interconnections/databases.html.

Remember that if your congregation can't afford an off-the-shelf database, many congregations have created satisfactory ones within multipurpose programs such as FileMaker Pro and Microsoft Access.

Ask these questions before buying, says Gail Donkin, administrator for the Association of UU Administrators:

• Can data be exported into a word processing, spreadsheet, or other database application?
• If it has a financial ledger, can it be either calendar or fiscal year?
• Is training available?
• How much will tech support cost?
• Can you read the manual (anddoes it make sense)?
• Are there modules that can be added?
• Once you purchase the application, how often will there be updates or new versions, and at what cost?

Take a test drive, says Donkin. Enter all of the information for 50 or so of your "unusual" families-- those with long names, partners who pledge independently, etc. Think of the usual work you do in the office and test the system.

Alice Dilbeck, former board chair at the UU Church, Huntsville, AL (172), points out that the best database can be undermined if the congregation hires someone who fails to maintain the information properly. "Most databases do a great job of holding data," she says, "but someone has to know how to collect it and when, and why, and how to use it."

Go to http://www.uua.org/interconnections/databases.html for a database discussion, with product reviews by UU administrators.

See http://www.uua.org/CONG/software.html for a page assembled by two UU software developers that includes some products not mentioned in our article.

UU administrators are invited to subscribe to the UUA-sponsored e-mail list that was created for them. To subscribe, go to http://lists.uua.org/mailman/listinfo/church-admin-uu.