How Many IT Folks Do You Have On Staff...And What Is the Scope Of Responsibility?

Technology General
1

I’d like to understand more what IT staffing looks like at various churches - especially paid staff. I’d like to see if there are patterns that show up based on congregation size, geographical location, or other unique features.

In order to accomplish this I’d ask for the answers to a few questions:

  1. Where is your church located (state is fine)?
  2. How many campuses do you have?
  3. What is your current average weekly attendance?
  4. How many full-time IT staff do you have? What positions?

I’ll provide my answers below, hopefully will give an idea of what I’m looking for…

  1. (Northern) New Jersey.
  2. 6 physical, 1 online.
  4. 2 full-time - IT Director, Support Specialist.

Dave

2
  1. Ohio
  2. 1
  3. 2200
  4. 1 Part time
  5. Support Specialist
1 Like
3
  1. California
  2. 1 campus, 5 buildings, over 130 active ministries
  3. 1,100
    4, None. I’m FT, but IT is about 30% of what I do and I do everything from CIO, to network administrator, desktop support, to equipment repair.
1 Like
4
  1. Savannah, GA (South)
  2. 6 physical, 1 Hispanic Service worshiping in one of the buildings on our main campus. This ministry has two worship services on Sunday mornings like all of the other campuses.
  3. 9,000 (approx, +-)
  4. 5 total - 4 FT, 1 PT: 1x IT Director, 2x Systems Administrators, 1x Client Systems Administrator, 1x Admin Assistant.

Plus an IT volunteer ministry of 10 volunteers.

Hope this helps!

1 Like
5
  1. Peoria, IL
  2. 3 physical campuses, Online and launching 2 more campuses in the next 3-4 months.
  3. 5k average weekend attendance
  4. IT Staff 5: 3 FT (IT Director/Online Campus Pastor, Systems Admin, Helpdesk), 1 PT ChMS/Training, 1 Intern
1 Like
6
  1. Albuquerque, NM
  2. 3 campuses
  3. 10k average weekend attendance (+/-)
  4. IT staff: 3 FT (IT director, IT Support, ChMS Dev)
  5. Web staff: 3 FT (1 x dev, 2 x “sustain/maintain”)
  6. Total staff: 150 (both FT & PT)

Notes:
We’re likely to hire another ChMS staff member (ChMS coordinator) next year, and we will be outsourcing a lot more in 2017 for dev work since we lost 2 devs over the past few years (mobile app and lead dev)

1 Like
7
  1. Arkansas-Little Rock
  2. 3 physical campuses, (Online). Looking to add 2 additional campuses in the next 12-18 months.
  3. 5K average weekend attendance
  4. 3 IT Staff: (1 Sys/Admin/Director, 1 IT Support/Sys Admin, 1 ChMS Coordinator/Admin)

Scope of responsibility:
Systems Admin/Director Primary responsibilities are to manage the budget as well all as all switches, servers, Firewalls, etc in the environment. Primary lead on IT projects impacting the operating environment.
IT Support - Manage and provide IT support to our staff of about 110 and resolve issues with printers, servers, hardware (Mac and PC), as well as manage the phone system.
ChMS coordinator - Manages currently F1, after the 1st of the year will manage the move to Ministry Platform and maintain MP going forward.

1 Like
8
  1. Illinois (Chicago suburb)
  2. 3 physical
  3. ~8,000
  4. 1 full-time IT Manager (me). Some outsourcing to an IT company twice per month.
1 Like
9
  1. Kansas
  2. 2 physical
  3. 3,500
  4. 1 full-time IT Director, 1 part-time support, 1 FT ChMS admin

Edit: Added our ChMS person which is part of the IT department (shhh don’t tell her I forgot to add her in :slight_smile: )

1 Like
10

Arkansas - Jonesboro
5 (one campus will become a church plant in 2017)
Around 4200
1 - Director of Information Technology (me)

1 Like
11
  1. Normal IL Where is your church located (state is fine)?
  2. 1 Campus ( 3 Service Times 4 Services)
  3. Average about 5500
  4. 5 Full Time IT Staff. 1 IT Director, Help Desk, Network Admin, Chms Admin, Developer
1 Like
12
  1. Illinois
  2. 7 campuses
  3. 26k+
  4. 10 IT Staff, 4 Full Time IT 4 Full Time Developers, 1 Director and 1 Part Time Help Desk
1 Like
13

Thanks so much to everyone who wrote in! I’d love to hear from anyone else who hasn’t yet shared.

I’ve created a Google Sheet. Any objections to me sharing this via the forums? I didn’t want to assume…though the info. in it is the same as what was shared here…

Here are some summary stats:

12 churches responded, 4 from Illinois, 2 from Arkansas. The remaining states were New Jersey, Ohio, California, Georgia, New Mexico, and Kansas.

Congregation Size
Median: 5000
Average: 6883.

# of Campuses
Median: 3
Average: 3.75

IT Systems Staff
Median: 2.5
Average 2.36

IT Systems Staff PT
Median: 1
Average: 0.71

Web / Developer FT Staff
Median: 2
Average: 2

(There are no PT Web / Dev Staff)

Combined IT FT Staff
Median: 2.5
Average: 3.03

Combined IT PT Staff
Median: 1
Average: 3.03

Some Other Thoughts

There are 4 churches with 5+ FT staff, with the exception of 1, all of these are 9k AWA or over (exception: 5.5k)

There are 2 churches with 3+ to 5 FT staff, they are both 5k AWA.

I have been unable to determine a pattern relating to geographic area.

If anyone hasn’t provided me with web staff or pt staff and wants to, I’ll factor that in. :slight_smile: Is there anything else we could track that would be helpful?

Two items that might be interesting would be (a) IT budget/year, (b) IT outsourcing budget/year.

This may throw significant light on the differences in staffing levels. Feel free to shoot that to me privately if you wish and I will provide a report on the aggregate results.

Thanks again for sharing!
Dave

14
  1. Orange County, CA
  2. 1 physical
  3. 3500
  4. 1.5 IT Manager and Arena Database person
1 Like
15
  1. Kansas City (Prairie Village KS)
  2. At this time 2 campuses with 3 separate buildings.
  3. 1050
  4. 2 - Director of IT, Database Administrator
1 Like
16

Thanks Bill and Chuck for adding your replies. I need a few more replies before we see anything interesting happening in the results. :slight_smile:

17
  1. Mississippi
  2. 1 Campus, 3 Services
  3. 1300
  4. 1 - IT Director
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18
  1. Knoxville, TN
  2. 2 campuses, 1 warehouse
  3. 2300
  4. 2 - Director and school help desk

I think it might also be worth mentioning other variables, unless I’m the only exception. Our main campus has 11 buildings or areas, all connected via fiber. So while we have 2 campuses, one is quite large. We also run a full time daycare/preschool with 75+ employees, K-12 school with 100+ employees + 200 HS students with iPads, and probably 75+ church staff I support. The school help desk employee doesn’t touch any network devices besides their PCs. So while the campus to IT staff ratio may seem comparable to others, I’m curious to see if any other people are in my kind of situation where the number of campuses may not reflect the total number of staff they support.

1 Like
19
  1. Southern Cal
  2. 1 Campus
  3. 3800
  4. 3 FT. IT Manager, Support, Print Shop Operator
1 Like
20

Texas
1 CAmpus
1500
1 Full time

1 Like