Limit who can create or edit Programs

Allow only a select group of people to create or edit Programs. These individuals should understand the implications to Donation processing as well as best practices and conventions adopted by your church with regard to Programs.

Be consistent in naming your Programs

Ensure that your Programs are named so that the staff easily understand what Program should be used for what Group or Event. Ensure that each program is associated with the correct Ministry and Congregation.

Avoid having Programs used only for "Tithes & Offerings" or "General Fund"

Avoid having a Program created for the sole purpose of offering or tithing when there is an appropriate corresponding ministry endeavor to associate it with.  So, DON'T create a Sunday Morning Children's Offering program for giving only AND a Sunday Morning Children's Worship program for events only, those should be the same.  However, DO create a VBS Offering Program (Tax-deductible) AND a VBS Registration Program (Non-Tax-Deductible) as those funds need to be kept separate. Use the Statement Title of a program to indicate "General Fund" or "Tithes & Offerings".

Make sure at least one Program exists for each and every Ministry Department and every Congregation

For some Ministries like Children's, Youth, or Women's the Programs may be easily identified because they have brand names like "AWANA" or "MOPS" or "SURGE".  For other Ministry Departments, you may have to simply create a Program. For instance "Counseling" may be a department and it may have only one Program called "Counseling Activities". Over time that single Program may separate into "One-on-One Counseling" and "Celebrate Recovery"

For example, say you have a Downtown and East Side campus, and a Middle School Ministry department and an Adult Ministry department. You'd set up the following Programs:

• Middle School Ministry Activities (Downtown)
• Middle School Ministry Activities (East Side)
• Adult Ministry Activities (Downtown)
• Adult Ministry Activities (East Side)

Use Church-wide Programs when necessary

In a multi-site church, some ministry departments operate only on one campus. For example, the Christian School may only happen on the main campus. At other times, a Program may serve the entire church (all campuses), but it is based on a central campus. For example, "Counseling" may need to be assigned to the "Church-wide Activities" congregation as an indication that it serves all campuses.

Do not create a "Church-wide" program for a specific ministry, unless that ministry has a clear history of doing a specific program church-wide.

When possible, allow ministries and accounting to use the same program

When a real-life program does ministry and accepts donations, the same program may be used for both. If a program requires registration fees (non-tax deductible) as well as donations (tax-deductible) two programs may be needed, especially if your church is using different account numbers for the various incomes. 

How to decide which Program to use

• When creating an Event or Opportunity (or other things like that which use Programs), the Program should be the ministry/location that hosts or carries out the initiative.
• For example, a Middle School Ministry large group event that takes place at the Downtown campus would get a Program of Middle School Ministry Activities (Downtown). Even if other campuses are able to attend the event, the Downtown campus is still the host.

For information on Program Groups see Groups & Programs.