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We recently had the chance to speak with Kristin Stegmueller, the business manager for St. Scholastica, a parish nestled in the city of Erie which is just outside of Denver, Colorado. While the parish boasts 230 registered families (and is growing!), Kristin noted that the current church can only fit 80 people comfortably, so they’re transitioning to a new property to facilitate this growth. “We do weekend Mass 4 times to try to fit everybody in!”
Amidst this transition, the parish has embarked on another noteworthy transformation – a shift in its online giving platform from Vanco to Flocknote (which includes integrated online giving – free with all plans).
Kristin’s candid reflections on their experience with Vanco painted a vivid picture of their struggle: “There was a lot of confusion when people needed to update their information, forgot passwords, etc. I was spending 2-3 hours a week just helping people navigate Vanco. It kind of became a nightmare!”
Their experience with Vanco revealed another stumbling block; discrepancies emerged between what was promised in terms of data transfer to their existing record-keeping platform and the arduous reality of manually inputting data every single week. “Human error occurs, of course, so every tax season we would spend all of December & January going through ALL the records to make sure they were correct. Things would still get missed…there’s not enough hours in the day,” she lamented.
Despite many hours and diligent efforts, the parish team would still get constant calls from parishioners reporting their tax reports were inaccurate. To complicate things, they still needed 6 different software tools to get it all done. Yikes!
Growing increasingly exhausted, the St. Scholastica team jumped at the opportunity to switch to Flocknote (which includes integrated online giving – free with all plans!) as soon as it was approved by the archdiocese, and were fully transferred within one month.
“Everyone was really excited!” Kristin shared, highlighting the palpable enthusiasm that rippled through the church. The parishioners especially love the ease and security of being able to manage their online giving information themselves. They also love that, with Flocknote, they can review their giving records and easily make payments or donations to specific funds. Kristen mentioned that, with Vanco, “if they forgot their password, I had to go in and do it all…they did not like that!”
On the admin side, the team loves the flexibility that Flocknote offers; they can pull custom giving reports at any time, pick when deposits occur and do one lump sum if preferred, get free data-migration services, and the user-friendly interface has translated into significant time savings. This simplified process has been a HUGE relief.
The benefits of Flocknote have extended to individual ministries as well. Kristin recalled with a chuckle, “I’m usually tracking parents down 3 weeks after VBS has passed to let them know they haven’t paid. [With Flocknote] it was so easy! This year, everybody paid a week before VBS started. And we could track it easily! Between me and our Family of Faith Director, it probably saved us 20-30 hours.”
Looking ahead, St. Scholastica has big dreams, including a “Flocknote Drive” during the busy Advent season. This event will allow parishioners to register themselves and have a shot at winning a prize. Another great benefit of their switch to Flocknote is now they’ll be able to register whole families, including kids, as the Archdiocese of Denver requires.
Kristin is very relieved to be using Flocknote where her parishioners’ information is no longer spread across 6 different software tools – it’s all in one place. “Taking the human error out of it has been a game-changer for us!” And in an unexpected turn of events, Kristin joked she’s actually excited for tax season now.
Written by Chanelle
Flocknote Happiness Engineer
Included in the Flocknote Starter package.