Announcing the Congregant Portal Early Adopter Program!

As was mentioned in the last Church Management Roadmap session, one of our “Next Up” features is the development of a Congregant Portal.

The team and I are excited to invite you to consider participating in an Early Adopter Program for the Congregant Portal as we look to accelerate development of the Congregant Portal based on your feedback.

What is a Congregant Portal?

The Congregant Portal will be a congregant facing website or web portal, an online place where people who attend your church will be able to login, manage their giving and contact information and interact with you in ways that tie into the back-office Church Management solution.

Below you will find more details about what it means to participate in the Congregant Portal Early Adopter Program (EAP). Please take a minute to consider applying!

Timeline of the Congregant Portal EAP

• June 3 – September 2 (3 months)
• EAP will be time-boxed, in September all participants will be asked to share a written list of any outstanding items that would block them from rolling out the Congregant Portal to their congregation

Prerequisites

1. To apply, you must be a live, current Church Management Customer
2. Your church must be currently using BBMS (or willing to use BBMS and submit a BBMS application prior to the EAP start)
3. Your church must be willing to use Donation Forms for collecting gifts
4. Access to the Congregant Portal during EAP will be limited to one admin user and 3-5 congregants that will be recruited by the church to participate in testing and discovery
5. Sign an EAP agreement, agreeing to the Terms & Conditions of EAP participation

Focus of EAP Feedback

For purposes of this EAP, we will be limiting the features discussed to the following:

1. How a congregant account would be created from a Constituent record and how the registration and account creation process works
2. Congregant giving features: including, but not limited to, how a congregant can use the web portal to make a gift, manage recurring gifts, manage payment methods, and view giving history
3. Congregant ability to manage their profile & family information: ability of congregant to view and update basic constituent info about themselves and their family
4. Church Management Admin capabilities to support rolling Congregant Portal out to your congregation
5. How features in the Congregant Portal will interact with the Church’s live Church Management solution

Expectations of Participants

1. Provide a church staff member as the primary point of contact for providing regular staff feedback on the Congregant Portal. This person is responsible for:
   1. Participating in a 45-minute discovery session once a month
   2. Complete user testing tasks as assigned
   3. Providing timely feedback in the Community EAP pages
   4. Responding to information requests from Blackbaud within 3 business days
   5. Participating in EAP Kickoff Webinar on Wednesday, June 3
   6. Participating in EAP Closing Webinar on Wednesday, September 2
2. Recruit 3 congregants (non-staff members) from your church to participate in a 45-minute discovery call to provide feedback and user testing. We will need one person for each month: June, July and August.
3. It is not expected that by participating in the EAP you will launch the Congregant Portal for your entire church (although we hope you will want to!)

Want to participate?

If you would like to be considered for this EAP opportunity, please comment on this post or reach out to Christopher Anderson (christopher.anderson@blackbaud.com) or Kate Gallo (kate.gallo@blackbaud.com) via email. Spots will be limited and selected participants will be notified by email of next steps.