It can become overwhelming at times to choose the most suitable software or hosted service solution for your mission. We’ve short-listed a few solutions our customers have found helpful. Let us know what you think in the comments below. And remember, our digital team can assist in the set-up and user experience of all these products for your organisation.
GovernApp’s core mission to democratise access to good governance so you can know your governance maturity and generate a clear, risk prioritised action plan for improving your Board governance. GovernApp is an online and super-easy-to-use system that will:
Contact GovernApp and quote VIPMission to take advantage of further benefits.
Organisations succeed from the top down. Get your governance right, manage your high-level strategy discerningly and you will make an impact for years to come.
Bastion have made managing your church’s governance and administration systems easy, effective and highly affordable. VIP Mission Digital recommend Bastion for churches both large and small. Contact Bastion and quote VIPMission to take advantage of further benefits.
A seriously powerful, Aussie-made church automation platform focused on helping churches grow. It’s been wonderfully crafted to help you connect with visitors, equip your team and grow your people. A single source of truth database for communications, website, roster, media and people all connected in a seamless central place. Used by churches like Hillsong and Stairway.
UCare is a church management system helping with pastoral care. The web interface is easy and comes with a mobile app available for both Android and Apple. A powerful tool that can also be used as a simple church database.
Elvanto is a cloud-based church management system (ChMS) that provides churches functionalities to manage members, groups, volunteers, events, check-in and finances. Member data can be entered manually, or collected through custom forms on websites and via emails.
This is the most asked question we get from customers. “What CRM do you recommend?”
There are just so many variables and alternatives. Consider hosted SaaS solutions like Wild Apricot Member Management and ASI’s IMIS ‘engagement management systems’ (EMS). There’s third-party plugin systems like CiviCRM. You could also choose to keep control of your data using software like X2CRM – an open-source, self-hosted CRM framework you can customise and manage yourself. We’ve used and tried them all. We’ll compile a list of CRMs Aussie charities recommend in the coming months. Leave your recommendations in the comments below.
We just can’t ignore the most powerful free 
customer relationship manager (CRM) tool on the market – HubSpot. Of course, you get a cut down version of the full product but boy what you get is more than enough for most serious NFP and ministries. And its free forever!
Whether you have a small or sophisticated team with hundreds HubSpot is built for organisations that want to spend less time logging data. It keeps all your contacts in one centralized, customizable database. And you can see everything about a lead in one place – no more digging through inboxes to find information.
For Charities
Liberapay is a recurrent donations platform.
Liberapay‘s recurrent donations system is designed to provide a stable crowdfunded basic income platform for charities.
A secure, highly private tool for Donors and Creators linked to Stripe and Paypal.
Do you spread free knowledge, write free software? Are you a creator of commons? Or something else that can be funded by recurrent donations? Find out more about Liberapay.
For Churches
If you want a little more than direct deposit (which is almost good enough!) you just can’t go past Tithe.ly.
They are the biggest “next” player past PushPay out of the USA with a suite of products. Tithe.ly have recently acquired Elvanto church management system and integrate a suite of related online church products including, Messaging members, Giving App, Church Management System ChMS and Sermon & Prayer apps.
GiveNow – is an online tool for orgs, donors and social fundraisers. You and your team can seamlessly manage your fundraising through your OrgHQ account. Check out their fees ~6%+
GiveEasy – Varies by plan (None to $199 per month) plus transactions fees 5.5% for free to 3.5% for the biggest plan
Benojo – a powerful product for charities seeking $0 fees – but with limitations.
Generous for Charities – Generous for Charity helps with receipting and managing donors, It has a free-to-get-going plan for small charities and a “one-with-the-lot” with ultra-lean fees for large charities.
PushPay – the “league” leaders have a very stable product and many of the biggest churches across Australia and the USA. Not recommended for churches under 500 as fees and charges become quite prohibitive.
They have recently added Church Community Builder ChMS system to their offering.
For churches or church agencies looking to deliver private or open subscriber based training VMH recommend talking with the team from AXX Global.
Axx.Global is an online SAAS training platform for churches to provide effective bible-based ministry training and leadership programs that are trusted and accessible globally for pastors, leaders and disciples. Talk to Brendan Roach about your ChLMS needs.
The team at VIP Mission Digital highly recommend Thinkific as a general solution for NFP seeking to deliver and sell training online to an open audience. If you want to do all the work yourself think about using Thinkific. It’s a great tool. You get a free account to get started. Step up as you grow. The advantage Thinkific has over many other LMS products is its great social media marketing tools to promote your courses.
Arlo is great for organisations that sell and deliver short courses, webinars, workshops, conferences and elearning. It’s a complete training management solution to organise and sell instructor-led, online and blended courses. It takes care of your public training schedule, private in-house courses and ongoing training contracts, so you can manage your whole edu in one system.
Arlo saves time by automating mundane manual processes and helps organisations grow with ecommerce and marketing tools.
Google Classroom is a learning management system designed for schools, non-profits, and organisations. It helps create virtual classrooms, manage calendars, communicate announcements. It helps educators create assignments, receive feedback, assess progress, share information with students.
Integration with other Google products is both a strength and a weakness. For example, having a conference call with your students, then switching to the classroom, then having to switch to the whiteboard. GC is quite basic and lacks some of the extra features of other advanced LMS products.
The best thing is it comes free with G Suite for Education or NFP Subscription!
Kajabi is an all-in-one platform for digital entrepreneurs, mission agencies and NFP to sell content and digital products online.
It’s a content marketing platform designed to utilize customizable templates to create and sell engaging content in the form of online courses or coaching programs. The system also allows administrators to process payments, gain insights into customer’s progress, and automate targeted marketing campaigns or funnels to create personalized customer experiences.
Mission influencers can use Kajabi to build personalized websites, theme-based landing pages, and emails.
Easy LMS is for organisations of all sizes large and small. Its user-friendly simple design makes it much easier to use than many other platforms. It’s available in many languages and reasonably priced.
The ease of putting together a course and attaching an exam on any device is a huge plus for some organisations. It automatically grades and files tests so you can verify who has taken the course and which questions people miss regularly to change the emphasis of training.
Some standard features are included in more pricey plans which may dissuade people. Take a closer look here – https://www.easy-lms.com/
LearnDash for WordPress is a well developed and trusted LMS used by some of the top enterprises and universities around the world. You can easily create & sell courses, award certificates, manage users, deliver quizzes, download reports, etc. LearnDash provides you access to the latest e-learning industry trends for creating robust learning experiences.
GoToTraining is a versatile software platform for learning and development in virtual, or a mix of in-person and virtual situations.
It allows trainers to create effective and engaging training sessions. Trainers can measure students knowledge before class via custom registration, distribution of course materials, and tests. Vital class engagement is achieved via polls, videos, and document collaboration. Trainer evaluation and exams ensure learning has taken place.
Absorb is a high level LMS product for large organisations training staff, volunteers, members, external training, or both, including e-commerce. It’s built to deliver flexible training, with intuitive design and engaging learning environment.
Absorb LMS offers automation and deep reporting capabilities. A scalable LMS that supports integration and security. They also provide 24/7 in-house support.
Your website’s content management system will become your most used online mission tool.
While there are many good options like Drupal, Joomla, WIX, Squarespace, church website management CMS’s like Fluro and charity tools like Nation Builder we highly recommend you consider WordPress as a comprehensive and lasting solution. Here’s why.
WordPress is the most popular and supported content management system (CMS) in the world.
It started life as a blogging management tool but quickly became known as a powerful tool for creating beautiful websites. Despite originally having some criticism by some in the development world regarding security WordPress now commands hundred of thousands developers attending to its framework and importantly its plugins.
Reasons we rate WordPress for your Charity/Church or business.
Why not consider the following alternative content management systems.
1 Comment. Leave new
Agreed with LearnDASH as a great LMS but requires a fair bit of work to manage. We’re just looking for a ready made solution so we can get on with our training. Thanks for the AXX global recommendation will follow them up.