What's New (September 8)

We hope everyone had a great Labor Day! Here are the latest features in Blackbaud Church Management!

Classes
To further streamline classes so you can manage them separately from event records, additional improvements are available from Events, Classes.

• You can now add a class series directly from Classes. Under Classes, select Add and choose whether to schedule it now or later. Scheduling later enables you to set up a class in advance and then associate it with a specific time and location later on.

  If you opt to schedule later, from the class record, under Class schedule, select Select schedule. Then select the recurring event schedule to use.

• From a class record, under Class schedule, you can also adjust the details for the series and update rooms for individual meetings. To update the schedule or room for a class series, select Edit  under Class meeting details.

  Note: You can't choose a different schedule after the class starts.

  To update the room for a single class meeting, such as when the usual room is unavailable, select Edit room from the meeting’s menu.

For more information, see Class Management or Class Schedule.

Tip: To add and manage a one-time class, continue to use the event record it’s associated with. For more information, see Classes for Events.

Events
To better plan for events, you can now use the new RSVP status field when you add or edit participants. The new field replaces the Registration status field and includes this expanded list of options:

• No response
• Attending
• Declined
• Interested
• Canceled
• Waitlisted
• N/A

Previously, you could track invitations and registrations, but not responses. With this change, participants marked as Registered and Not registered are now Attending and Declined, respectively. For more information, see RSVP Status.

Also, to help you easily compare invitations and responses before an event to the actual turnout afterward, additional totals appear under Participants on an event record. Each total opens a pre-filtered list of participants you can use to follow up, such as to send reminders.

For more information, see Participants.

Donation forms
To capture your congregants phone numbers so you can reach out and thank them for their gifts, add the phone component to your donation forms. From Tools, Donation form designer, add or edit a donation form. Under Form, select Constituent and gift fields in Form designer, and move Phone to a location on the form. For more information, see Donation Form Constituent and Gift Fields.