25 years and counting with Servant Keeper

“Servant Keeper is a Godsend!” - Joe Richardson, Treasurer at Greater Fairview Baptist Church

6+ individual work days saved per month

30-60 fewer database back-ups/restorations across computers per month

5 tools/vendors consolidated into 1

Visibility into trends

Quick stats

• 5+ days saved each month on contribution tracking and reporting
• 2+ hours saved each month by automatically backing up to the cloud
• 1+ hour saved each month collaborating with different areas of ministry (able to quickly deliver them needed reports)
• 5+ tools all consolidated into 1, and at least 2 tools completely eliminated (Membership database, contribution tracking, reporting, text to give, texting, and dashboards all connected. Replaced Excel and Access)
• Additional hours saved in advance of each church meeting on planning and budgeting with Servant Keeper’s Dashboards
• Always have the most up to date information, even on users’ phones with the cloud
• Improved pastoral care by being able to pull up a map to members homes, or to quickly pull up their records

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Greater Fairview has used Servant Keeper since 1999. When they first got started with Servant Keeper around 25 years ago, the most immediate benefit was that it could replace a couple other tools like Excel and Access for tracking contributions and pulling financial reports.

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But today, since switching to the cloud, the church uses Servant Keeper to not only track giving, but to do so much more.

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Like most every ministry, Greater Fairview had a need to keep highly accurate, detailed records on giving. Initially they were doing that as much as possible with Excel - but with the need to track gifts coming in from many different people to various funds and through various areas of ministry, this became a time consuming task. 

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As Treasurer Joe Richardson explained, this would take “forever”. Add to that the time spent trying to build formulas in Access in order to pull reports, and you could say financial reporting took forever and a day.

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When they started using Servant Keeper, they were able to turn this days-long task into one that could be completed almost instantly - saving at least one day a week just on tracking and reporting. 

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“If the men’s ministry needs a report, for example if they need to know who has given, and the last time they gave, I can run a report and they know everyone who has given and the last time they gave whether it was in person or online.” Joe added the difference that this in-depth reporting can make in the members’ lives, “It helps the men’s ministry know who they need to follow up with. For example, if we see someone who typically gives has stopped giving, we may need to reach out and see if they’re at a point where they need some help.”

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Not only that, with built-in dashboard reporting available with the cloud, planning for church meetings is a breeze. Joe and others on his ministry team can pull up-to-the-minute reports so quickly, they can even adjust them live during the meeting as the discussion takes place. This makes planning, budgeting and seeing ministry giving trends a breeze. “We’re able to look and figure out why giving may be up this month, or plan for the next two months to be higher on giving because we can see that they were last year. Or we can look and realize compared to last year, we’re doing better than we even thought. A picture paints a thousand words. This helps make the meetings more effective.” 

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After using the local version of Servant Keeper for so long, Joe was initially hesitant of going to the cloud. But besides just getting the new features of the cloud (like dashboards, or online giving) he also appreciates the time he saves every day. Previously, Joe had Servant Keeper installed on his computers at the church and at home. So every day he would have to back up and restore his database back and forth between his home and church computer up to a couple times a day. This required him to carry a flash drive on him at all times, and took at least 5 minutes a day of repetitive steps every time he wanted to use the program. Now, with the cloud, he can access his data whenever, wherever, and it’s always up to date and secure.

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And best of all, not only does Joe have all the information he needs always up to date, with the cloud, it’s all tied together. What started as just a place to track giving, has now become a powerful tool to tie his team together, communicate with ministry members, take attendance (even from their phones) encourage better pastoral care, run business meetings and more in one simple tool. “That’s the Godsend of it. Everything is right there. We don’t have to go into multiple different programs.”

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