January 2010

E-zekiel Customers Tell Their Stories

E-zekiel.tv has begun featuring videos from our customers telling how E-zekiel and its set of tools and technologies are making a difference for their organization.

In one of the first videos released, Glenn Davis, executive pastor of Countryside Christian Center, talks about his own church’s use of video – and how the collaborative tools of E-zekiel.tv and E-zekiel.com were used to replace a Web site that didn’t work with a Web site that’s now one of their primary promotional tools. Visit www.e-zekiel.tv/glenn to view Glenn’s video.

Need Help? Put the HelpRoot Volunteer manager to work.

Most churches could use a little more volunteer help running their programs. Announcements during the worship service, messages in the church newsletter, and encouragement during Sunday school are all options for getting the word out about the roles that need to be filled. But you’ve also got the option of using your Web site. With the HelpRoot Volunteer manager, the tool E-zekiel.com makes available to customers (Essentials plan and above), you can streamline the promotion and management of volunteer activities.

To get started, go to your control panel and click on the HelpRoot Volunteer icon. There, you’ll be able to fill in the fields in your Manager settings, including whether to add the link to the site menu, who can create and volunteer for activities, and who you will allow to submit volunteer requests and to access the volunteer portal. In the Editor section, you could give an overview of your church’s mission and philosophy of volunteerism – or simply highlight the particular areas you are seeking to fill (lay leadership positions, for example). The search fields themselves come with default text that explains the search process.

Once your page is created, you’re ready to start adding specific opportunities for which your members can review and sign up.

Completing the Tabs for Your Volunteer Opportunities

To begin adding opportunities (or projects) with the HelpRoot Volunteer manager, you’ll click the “plus” sign and then be taken to the editor, where you will begin by completing the fields under four tabs – Contact, Location, Distribution, Requirements and Search.

Contact is where you will add the name, email and telephone number (if desired) that the potential volunteer will use to contact the person responsible for the opportunity. Location is, naturally, the location of the opportunity. This is important to help someone know if volunteering is even possible, particularly if the opportunity is being published globally on HelpRoot.com and not just a church site.

Speaking of which… the Distribution tab is where you’ll decide whether to publish the opportunity on the public HelpRoot.com site or just keep it to your own site. You can also set dates for when you’ll accept applications for the opportunity, as well as the date and time for the work to be accomplished.

“Requirements” is where you can note any particular prerequisites to serve in the volunteer position. This could be helpful in, say, medical missions seeking trained medical personnel. But it’s also the place to note any financial responsibilities that would come with the opportunity. Finally, the “Search” tab is where you will add the keywords and summary description that people will use when searching for opportunities on your site or within HelpRoot.com.

Volunteer Projects vs. Volunteer Opportunities

When you open your Volunteer manager to add a volunteer opportunity, you’ll see you’ve got a choice between two groups – Volunteer Projects and Volunteer Opportunities. You’ll ultimately be creating “opportunities” for all the jobs you’d like to assign; the “projects” section is simply a managerial tool that you can use when you create a set of opportunities that are tied together.

For example, let’s say you are seeking workers for various ages in your preschool department. Perhaps your project title would be Preschool Teachers. You complete the fields in Contact, Location, Distribution, Requirements and Search, then scroll to the page bottom, where you’ll see a section to add Volunteer Opportunities to go with this project. The specific opportunities could be Bed Babies Teacher, Toddlers Teacher, Twos Teacher, Threes Teacher, Fours Teacher and Kindergarten Teacher. Thus, you’d create six opportunities to go with this project.

One benefit of creating a project for related opportunities is so that you won’t have to re-enter the contact and location information. Also, as in the case of many other types of projects, should there be a change in a date, location or time, you can update the project information, and choose for the changes to cascade into all the related opportunities.

Ways You Can Use the HelpRoot Volunteer Manager

As with many types of technological tools, the HelpRoot Volunteer manager can be used extensively to fill volunteer positions in every area of your church or ministry – or you can begin with specific projects and grow your use over time.

One church, quite logically, used the Volunteer manager to seek technical worship volunteers, including Web site administrator, sound engineer and technical ministries director. Another used the volunteer manager to fill their ministry teams – from the nursery to the music ministry, from church history to hospitality, and from congregational care to missions and outreach. And yet another took the same tools intended to bring in volunteers to create a job network for those members suffering job losses in a down economy.

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