Using Flocknote Complete for Member Management | A Conversation with the Archdiocese of SF

We had the opportunity to chat with our good friend Martin, from the Archdiocese of San Francisco. Martin has played an integral role in getting the parishes in the archdiocese on board with Flocknote for their communications, and Flocknote Complete (formerly known as Flocknote People) for their member management.

We asked Martin how things have improved for their parishes and the archdiocese since implementing Flocknote and upgrading to Flocknote Complete. He told us:

“Flocknote has been absolutely essential in creating more connected parishes, and an overall more connected archdiocese. Most of our Flocknote parishes now rely on Flocknote as their main way of communicating with parishioners Monday to Saturday. Pastors have been loving that they no longer have to piece their various ministry lists together every time they want to get a communication out to the entire parish. Now, all parish ministries are on one platform. When the pastor wants to communicate with his flock, he just does it!

Additionally, Flocknote has helped the archdiocese get important news out to the parishes by creating custom templates that the parishes can send out at the times they deem appropriate. Flocknote gives dioceses the flexibility to work on a parish communication model that works for them.

Our parishes that use it love that they don’t have to feel bad for not having done a parish database cleanup every other year. The Intelligent Information Gathering does most of the legwork for maintaining a clean parish database. You just set it, and forget it.”

When building Flocknote Complete, we wanted it to feel different than other member management software, and we wanted it to be fun to use. With that in mind, we asked Martin specifically about the difference between Flocknote Complete and the archdiocese’s previous member management tool. He shared,

“Three differences stick out for me. The most important is Flocknote’s legendary customer service. At the Chancery, I never have to worry about Flocknote taking several days to get back to our parishes for technical needs. In my experience, Flocknote’s friendly and faithful customer service team responds to customer service needs within two hours. In addition to the rapid response times, Flocknote liberally gives our pastors, employees, and volunteers all the training they need to succeed on Flocknote and to help them become better and more effective communicators.

Second, when you’re looking at a solution for a diocese for the long haul, it’s really important to know not only how good the product and service is now, but what it’s going to be like in the next several years. In my archdiocese, most parishes have told me that they’ve had severely bad experiences with the legacy parishioner management tools out there ever since they were sold to secular investment companies – that is, they’re no longer run by people who live an active parish life. Flocknote is a worker-owned company. I don’t have to worry about Flocknote selling out to a secular investment company.

Finally, Flocknote is just so darned easy to implement quickly. You don’t have to worry about long boring afternoon trainings. This isn’t Quickbooks, or Salesforce. This is a program that you can get running at its most basic level in an hour. Not only is it quick and easy to implement, but it’s also such a delight to use. We’ve got a lot of parish volunteers and pastors out there who don’t just use Flocknote, they love Flocknote. Have you ever met someone excited about, I don’t know, Microsoft Word? I haven’t!”

And finally, we asked Martin what he would tell a church or diocese who was thinking about using Flocknote Complete. Here is what he told us:

“Switching to Flocknote is such a low-risk decision. It requires so little upfront and grows as your lists grow. The support is superb and they’ll partner with you to help you succeed in your communications goals. Your parishes won’t look at Flocknote as a tool they have to use, but as a tool they get to use.”

Written by Liz Linhares

Flocknote Happiness Engineer

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