CAPITAL CAMPAIGN? YES. CHAOS? NO.
As the leaders at Citizens of Heaven Church prepared for a major building initiative, one of their biggest questions was centered on giving: Would transitioning to a new, all-in-one church tech platform create unnecessary friction for donors and staff alike?
( Left to right) Kingdom Kids Director Mary Tod Braswell; Ministry Coordinator Sarah Miranda; Worship + Communications Pastor Reid Work; Youth Director Hunter Stonebraker; Lead Designer Mary Kate Kitsmiller; Assimilations Coordinator + Interim Kingdom Kids Coordinator Logan Hunt; College + Young Adult Director Caleb Anderson; Teaching Pastor Will Campbell
“ I knew Subsplash did X, Y and Z, but I wanted to learn more,” he says.“ When [ my friend ] showed us the Subsplash One platform, it really began to break it down for us— what it could do, what it could replace, how it could really put everything under one giant umbrella.” After discussions with the church’ s elder team, Work green-lighted the transition— a pivotal decision. Especially because he would be leading the process internally.
From fragmented to highly functional Fortunately, Subsplash’ s migration support team helped make the transition manageable. The migration process took roughly three months and included consolidating years of data and information stored across multiple platforms.“ In that time, we were just processing all the people data and information we had stored in other places and getting it imported into Subsplash, setting it up the way we wanted it,” Work says. The transition also included rebuilding the church’ s website and app.“ To be honest, I probably wouldn’ t have figured it all out on my own, so thankfully, Subsplash’ s team was a huge help making that jump,” he recalls.“ We’ d used so many different apps, so many different platforms for different things, that it was a lot of consolidating.” Once the all-in-one platform was in place, Work faced another challenge: helping staff members“ unlearn” the habit of using separate tools for separate functions and begin thinking about church operations as one connected ecosystem.“ It meant thinking with a‘ Subsplash brain’ to say,‘ No, all of it can be done right here,’” Work says. After onboarding calls, training sessions, and hands-on learning, the new system gradually became second nature.“ We haven’ t looked back, nor regretted it,” he says.“ We’ ve been very, very pleased with it.”
More ministry, less management According to Work, one of the biggest advantages has been simplicity. The transition allowed the team to retain the features they valued from previous software platforms while gaining additional benefits, particularly a more intuitive and user-friendly experience.“ I think some of the other software that we used before was overly complicated for what we needed it to do,” Work admits.“ I’ m sure it works really well for others and what they need, but it created a lot of issues on the staff side of things for us.”
As it turns out, the opposite happened: instead, the integrated Campaign feature within the Subsplash platform streamlined nearly every aspect of the process. Used across the church website, mobile app, QR codes, and tap-to-give functionality, the tool allowed members to make one-time gifts or pledge recurring commitments over periods of up to three years— all within a single system. According to Worship + Communications Pastor Reid Work, the simplicity of the experience proved critical. Congregants can easily navigate the giving process regardless of age or technical comfort level, resulting in virtually no support requests or confusion during the campaign rollout.“ The Campaign feature created a welcome mat in front of the door,” Work explains, noting that a few instructional slides were enough to guide users through pledging and giving independently. The self-service functionality also reduced administrative strain. Members could create, edit and manage their own pledges without staff intervention, while church leaders maintained realtime visibility into pledge totals, campaign progress, and overall commitments. Work said the alternative likely would have involved juggling multiple software tools and manual tracking systems to manage donor records and campaign updates.“ Without it, we would have had a lot more headaches, three more apps, and five more software platforms trying to keep up,” he said.“ Instead, it’ s all consolidated under our Subsplash One platform.”
With such a small staff, Work says there simply wasn’ t enough bandwidth to master the ins and outs of multiple systems.“ There was no way for us to know all the nuances of every tool,” he says.“ This way, we got to keep all of the positives that we loved about the other software and only add really beautiful benefits to that.” Best of all, the new platform has freed up several hours each week that Work can now spend on ministry instead of troubleshooting systems or training staff members how to navigate different tools.“ Again, we were using so many different platforms that I had to train them in different ways,” he says.“ A lot of those tools weren’ t as intuitive as Subsplash has proven to be.” In some cases, Work says, he would simply complete projects himself because teaching someone else the process would take too much time.“ It has freed me up from doing a lot of hand holding and training,” he concludes.“ And that has allowed me to do other things that I’ m also gifted at and that are part of my role.”
CHURCH EXECUTIVE. COM | 19