No earth-shaking topic, just as we move to new ChMS my boss would like a different word or phrase for the membership type “Friend of Church” which we have used over the years for a mishmash of folks like businesses that support us to mission partners to local community organizations…you get the idea.
Thanks for any suggestions.
When we did our migration, we killed membership statuses that aren’t actual membership statuses. For us, the big one was “regular attender”. We have replaced this with labels that are automatically added and removed to people who actually attend regularly–regardless of their membership status.
At one previous church, we called them ‘permanent visitors’. I wasn’t crazy about the title, but they were used to it.
We use “Participant” for people who participate in activities during the week (small group, Awana, etc.) but have no Sunday morning activity and likely attend another church. And, “Misc./Non-Attendee” as a catch-all for businesses, emergency contacts, mission trip supporters, and anyone else that has some reason to be in the database but we don’t expect to ever see them in person.
However, I kinda like “Friend of Church.”
Like Erik, we use Participant for people for whom we’re not their church home, Christmas ticket purchasers, givers to mission trips. The main status we use is Non-member, which I really don’t like, but that is used for active people who haven’t yet become members. That’s 81% of our active records. I’d rather say what they ARE and not what they’re not!