I love finding tools to help make my life a little easier. A few months ago, I discovered two online tools that have helped make our ministry more efficient.
According to their website, Basecamp is “the world’s #1 project management app”. Our Family Ministry team began using this tool to help us better collaborate on joint projects. So far, it has been wonderful!
Here’s how it works: Our administrative assistant goes in to begin our project, sets our to-do list and assigns who’s responsible for what. The to-do list can be assigned a date, so when you have a project due, you receive an email reminder. (That’s very cool.)
What I love about this tool: Like I mentioned before, Basecamp has helped our team collaborate better on projects without sending countless emails back and forth. We have eliminated the need to scribble to-do lists on napkins or pieces of paper because there’s a running to-do list for each project. Also, when you complete your assigned task, you can cross it off as “completed”. Who doesn’t love that?!
Disclaimer: While this tool isn’t free, the 45-day trial offer is. We tried it out for 45 days, loved it, and decided to purchase a package. I think you should check it out.
My absolute new favorite ministry tool is a program called Dropbox. The tagline for this wonderful invention is “simplify your life”. Something that promises to do that really needs to live up to its promise!
Here’s how it works: Download the program from its website. Then you’re able to create folders where you can save photos, documents and videos and then share them with a person or a group of people. It’s very easy to use and best of all, it’s free!
What I love about this tool: Every week, I would email my preteen ministry leaders their lesson for the upcoming week. A few weeks ago, I discovered Dropbox and thought that this would be a great way for my leaders to access their lessons, which I could load up lessons weeks in advance. We have just started using this tool, but I love it already and so do my volunteers. They see upcoming lessons as soon as I ‘drop’ them into our shared folder. I also love that the files are saved on all of my computers and accessible by my cell phone app. The app is free! Love it!
I am really not doing either of these tools justice by describing them. If you are looking for ways to do ministry better, I strongly encourage you to check out these two options.
Do you use either of these tools or found other tools more helpful? Tell me about it below!
At Kidology, we use both – they are amazing!
They are! I wish I knew about them sooner!
We use the google suite at our office. I’ve used drop box before and basecamp… all great tools!
I’ve not used Google Suite. I might have to check that out! Thanks for reading, Michael.
It is really great and works together seamlessly. The best thing about it is that it is all free and allows you to do much of what basecamp does without the expense.
The hangouts feature and online collaboration makes sharing documents and working on them together simple.
Worth checking out… might eventually save you some money too?
Oh wow! I will definitely check it out. So glad that I don’t do ministry alone. 🙂