Church Event Planning And Management Software

Fundraising events can be incredibly helpful for funding services and mission work at your faith-based nonprofit. But without the right tools, event planning takes money, time, and people power that you might not have. How can you make hosting fundraising events easy and profitable for your organization? The right church event planning and management software can make a significant difference! 

Read on for our list of the best event management software for faith-based nonprofits. These suggested tools are designed to help you be more profitable and can also save you time and money. 

Best church event planning and management software

Qgiv

Okay, so we might be a little biased with our first choice for event management software. Qgiv’s peer-to-peer, auctions, and simple event tools are robust enough to make planning and managing many types of church fundraisers significantly easier. 

Here are some of the Qgiv tools you can use to plan more successful events: 

Apps for on-site giving

If you’re planning an in-person element for your next fundraising event, giving apps make it easy to accept credit card and eCheck payments at both indoor and outdoor events. Free to download and easy-to-use on any supported device, apps have helped religious organizations move away from cash-only events and accept gifts using other payment methods. 

Text fundraising tools

Qgiv’s Mobile Suite platform is an event planner’s dream. Not only can you set up a text fundraising keyword that your congregants can text to make gifts from their phones, you can use those same tools for event communications. 

Mobile Suite also includes a helpful screencast tool called FundHub Live that you can broadcast to attendees during your event. Plus, when they give using your text fundraising keyword, congregants can see their gifts on the FundHub Live screen, so they know their donation was received. 

The peer-to-peer platform

The peer-to-peer platform houses a lot of tools for church event planning and management. You can create a customizable fundraising page, build an event store to sell branded merchandise, and even enable tools your fundraising participants can use to raise funds on your behalf. 

Additionally, you can create registration packages, offer early bird discounts, and create promo codes for discounted admissions to religious events.  

Many religious organizations have also used the peer-to-peer tools as a platform for supporters to host their own DIY fundraisers for your faith-based nonprofit. 

Reports for tracking registrations, fundraising progress, and more

The best way to make a church fundraiser more successful is through analysis of past performance. Qgiv offers reports to help track your progress while the event is ongoing or compare your event against past events to see where you can make improvements.  

Qgiv’s data tools include the ability to run reports for many different aspects of your events. The registration report, for instance, offers a quick view of who registered for your event, their contact information, and other event details you need. And the peer-to-peer store reports make it easy to see which items are the most attractive to your guests.  

If your event has specific reporting needs, there’s also the ability to create your own custom reports so you can access the data you need without pulling several different reports or re-entering complex sets of filters. 

Integrations to make donor and event data portable and boost fundraising

Sometimes, just having reports and access to your donor and event data isn’t enough. Qgiv has built integrations with leading software for nonprofits and faith-based organizations to make church event planning and management easier on your staff.  

Some notable integrations specific to religious nonprofits include Fellowship One and Church Community Builder.  

Not only does Qgiv offer integrations with CRMs, email service providers, and accounting software, your organization can also benefit from fundraising integrations that help you raise more. For a complete list of services that integrate with Qgiv, check out our integrations page. 

Matching gifts integrations

Your fundraising events can raise a lot more if supporters apply for matching gifts. This can double, and even sometimes triple, the original value of their contribution. Qgiv’s matching gifts integrations with leading matching gifts solutions CyberGrants, Double the Donation and HEPdata, put the power to apply for matching gifts directly on your event pages. When congregants complete their gifts, they can go directly into the matching gift process afterward. This helps you raise more money and is convenient for your supporters. 

Facebook fundraisers integration

The Facebook fundraisers integration offers another great way to grow your peer-to-peer fundraising. When planning a peer-to-peer event, enable Facebook fundraisers so your fundraising participants can set up a Facebook fundraiser that links back to their personal fundraising page in Qgiv. They can track their overall progress in Qgiv even while receiving donations via their Facebook fundraiser. The best part? Fundraising dollars raised by individuals on Facebook can be reflected in your event thermometer in Qgiv! 

Best email service providers for churches

It’s not enough to just have a great fundraising and event management tool. Those tools can be made more effective with the right support software. For instance, the email service provider you use can be helpful in making event communications easy. Having a solid communication plan in place is essential for faith-based event planning. The following email service providers are the best for churches who want to use email in their event communication strategy. 

Mailchimp

One of our top choices for email service providers is Mailchimp. They’re an email marketing solution that offers a free plan that smaller nonprofits can use at no cost. 

Their free plan includes a contact list of up to 2,000 individuals and one email audience. That said, if you use segmented lists or have multiple audiences you may need to opt for a higher tiered plan. 

With Mailchimp, you not only gain access to an intuitive, drag and drop email builder, you also get a custom Mailchimp domain for professional emails, a website builder tool, landing pages and forms, and access to their Creative Assistant. That’s all included on the free plan. At higher plans, you also gain email testing tools, real-time analytics, access to a wider collection of email templates, and more.  

You can also integrate your Mailchimp account with Qgiv to sync over your supporters as contacts! 

Constant Contact

Another great option is Constant Contact. Constant Contact offers a lot of similar features to Mailchimp. They offer a free 60 day trial of their email marketing tools, and have plans starting at $20/month.  

With the basic email plan, three users from your organization can use the software to create and send emails about your fundraising events. The size of your contact list isn’t limited, which is great for larger religious organizations. Plus, they’ve got real-time email analytics as well, so you can gauge performance of your email sends from the moment they get sent out.  

Qgiv also has a Constant Contact integration so importing your contacts from Qgiv into Constant Contact is easy! 

Other powerful email marketing tools for your consideration are Emma and Campaign Monitor. Both integrate with Qgiv and can help you craft stunning event emails to grow your church fundraisers. 

Best livestreaming services for faith-based fundraising

For hybrid and virtual events, livestreaming festivities is a must. Livestreaming an event gives virtual attendees the ability to take part in an event in real time even if they can’t attend in person. There are a lot of available options when choosing a livestream provider. You can opt for free livestreaming with Facebook Live or YouTube Live or a paid subscription with a livestreaming software company. 

Facebook Live

Our pick for the best livestreaming service for church event planning and management is Facebook Live. Why? There are three important reasons we ranked this livestreaming tool over their competitors. First, Facebook Live is free to use, which is great for your event budget. Second, your participants can raise funds on Facebook while watching and engaging in your event livestream on one platform. Third, you can broadcast the Facebook Live livestream on your Facebook event page and via the video widget in your Qgiv events! That means that no matter where participants are, they can take part in the event. 

It’s also important to note that when you finish your Facebook Live broadcast, a recording is made of the livestream that you can share to your social media accounts for those who miss your event.

YouTube Live

YouTube Live is another free livestreaming service powered by the YouTube platform. Similar to Facebook Live, livestreams made with YouTube live can be shared on Qgiv event pages. Plus, when you finish livestreaming, YouTube Live will create a video you can share to social media for event recaps for those who missed your event. 

That said, you can’t fundraise directly on YouTube and neither can participants, which is why it isn’t the top pick for livestreaming. 

Other great choices for livestreaming include, Twitch.tv, which a free livestreaming platform geared toward the video game community. You could also use virtual meeting software like Zoom or GoToMeeting to livestream events if your church is already using these tools for meetings or to broadcast services. 

Best software solutions for selling event merchandise

Qgiv’s peer-to-peer and auction event stores can be a great way to raise funds for your organization. But if you don’t want to pre-purchase and store event merchandise yourself, there’s a great solution for that.  

Bonfire

Bonfire is a unique software solution that lets you design and sell merchandise directly on its platform. You get your own Bonfire store for your church and don’t have to purchase and store inventory. Instead, you send the link to your shop to your event participants. They can browse and buy merchandise during your campaign. When your campaign ends Bonfire handles the creation and shipping of products for you. Then, they send you the profits from your merchandise sales. That makes merchandise sales easy to reconcile after your event. 

Teespring

Teespring is a similar service to Bonfire. You can create your own custom t-shirts and other merchandise, open your store, and even integrate that store with your social media account. Teespring is unique in that it caters itself to social content creators, but you can still use them for an event store to sell branded gear. They print and send the orders on your behalf so, like Bonfire, you don’t have to worry about managing a large inventory of products.

Promotion Resource Group

A third option is Promotion Resource Group’s Pop Up Shop feature. This Canada-based company offers nonprofits to select merchandise to add their branding to. These curated items can then be sold with a virtual pop up shop. That shop can be set up to accept coupons and pricing can be set to ensure you earn a profit when items are purchased. Like Teespring and Bonfire, orders placed in a virtual Pop Up Shop are printed and shipped from Promotion Resource Group so you don’t have to manage inventory. 

Conclusion

With the right church event planning and management software, your fundraisers can save you time and money while boosting your fundraising efforts. This collection of event software was designed with religious organizations in mind. Grow your fundraising with these tools so that you can raise more for your mission. 

Want to learn more about Qgiv’s event planning and management tools and how they can help make your religious fundraisers more profitable? Request a demo and take our tools for a test drive!