The Program page is found in Church Structure > Programs. To create a Program:

1. Church Structure > Programs
2. New
3. Add the required and optional information
4. Save

Fields

• Program Name:*  A short, friendly name describing this Program. Multi-site churches should start the Program name with the name of the Congregation.
• Congregation:* The Congregation where this Program takes place.
• Ministry:* The department of the church that is responsible to oversee this Program.
• Start Date:* The date this Program began at your church.
• End Date: The date this Program ended at your church.
• Program Type: An internal informational field indicating the main purpose of the Program. It has no impact on any MinistryPlatform report or software applications.
• Leadership Team: An internal informational field indicating the main group that oversees this Program. It has no impact on any MinistryPlatform report or software application.
• Primary Contact: The person who answers questions or follows-up with things that are entered into the database and coded against this Program.
• Priority: An internal informational field indicating the primary church purpose this Program exists to further.
• Tax-Deductible Donations:* if Yes, Donations distributed to this Program should appear on a Donor's contribution statement for tax purposes.
• Statement Title:*  The text you want the public to see when making Donations towards this Program. This text appears on many reports and some contribution statements.
• Statement Header:* Many Donor statements and reports organize Donations into columns. If two Programs have the same statement header, then their Donations are listed in the same column on several columnar Donor statement formats. For example, "Missions" is a common Statement Header, and it would be expected that all Programs related to Missions regardless of the congregation would have this statement header.
• Allow Online Giving: If Yes, this Program is available in the list of online giving Programs so long as the Program has not ended (End Date field contains a past date).
• Online Sort Order: If available online, the number indicated here determines how this Program sorts in relation to other Programs. If you do not set a sort order (or two programs have the same sort order number), the Programs list in alphabetical order. It is recommended to number programs as 10, 20, 30, etc, in order to be able to add or move programs later without having to renumber all of them.
• Pledge Campaign: The Pledge Campaign this Program is a part of, if applicable. This action ensures that the system attempts to credit a Donor's pledge to this campaign when the Donor's donation is designated to this Program.
• Account Number:  The Accounting System's account number:
  • This field for Shelby v5 Financials churches is often used to store the historical "Purpose Code" from Shelby v5 Contributions, which is typically used to match values imported from 3rd party systems like SecureGiveand ServiceU.
• On Connection Card: If Yes, Milestones, Responses, and Prayer Requests can be credited to this Program via the Connection Card Tool.
• Default Target Event: Select an Event (generally one where the "On Donation Batch Tool" field is set to "Yes"). The system assigns this target Event to Donation Distributions automatically when selected Donations are Batched or selected Batches are Deposited.  
• On Donation Batch Tool: If Yes, Donations can be distributed to his Program when processing check and cash donations through the Batch Manager Tool.
• Available Online: This field is no longer in use.
• Omit From Engagement Giving: If true, this Program is not considered by the Participant Engagement routine.
• Accounting-specific fields: Depending on your Accounting System, you may have custom fields on this page that are unique to your accounting system. For example, Shelby v5 Financials churches have:
  • Shelby Fund
  • Shelby Department
  • Shelby Account

Sub-Pages

The following sub-pages are available for all churches with the default MinistryPlatform implementation. Records on these pages are directly related to one Program record:

• Events: The list of Events connected to the Program.
• Groups: The list of all Groups connected to the Program.
• Prayer & Feedback: The list of all Feedback received about the Program by congregation members. Usually in the form of comments or prayer requests provided on Connection Cards.
• Milestones: Milestones attributed to the Program. Milestones usually track life events or church events such as receiving Christ, new believer classes, or baptisms.
• Opportunities: Opportunities for individuals to respond to that have been attributed to the Program.
• Donations: Any donations given towards the Program (only viewable by users with Stewardship rights).