Techsoup: a portal with articles and many other resources on technology useful in nonprofits.
CNN - The Ten Commandments of e-mail - March 31, 1999
If you're new to email, or if your email seems to be out of control lately, here are some good tips for how to handle this new communication medium.
The article is a few years old, but the ideas are still good today.
The Ten Commandments of e-mail
1. Delete that e-mail
2. Break free from attachments.
3. Count to 10, then send
and more
Here's the article: CNN - The Ten Commandments of e-mail - March 31, 1999
A nuts-and-bolts article on what should go into a weekly bulletin. The specifics relate to Christian services, but it's easy to translate into the elements of a Sunday Platform Meeting.
Excerpt: "Is your bulletin full of 20 little sheets of paper that fall out everywhere, or do you use moderation in the content? Put only the most important information in your bulletin. If there’s too much, you’ll overwhelm today’s too-busy-to-read person. Keep it brief."
Creating a Church Bulletin That Gets Read and Used Resources
Article in Church Business online. Looking for membership database software, financial management software, scheduling software or asset and inventory management software? Or some combination? This article may be helpful in determining what solution is right for your congregation.
An excerpt: "Think about what you want your software to do. Of course you'll want to keep track of people, but how? By the various kinds of relationships they have with your church (members, visitors, constituents, children and spouses of members and so on)? Do you need to know different kinds of telephone numbers (fax, cell, pager)? What about keeping information about their spiritual gifts and how they use them? Do you want to print your own directory? Is contribution entry going to be done onsite or from a remote location, such as a volunteer's home? Do you want to maintain vendor information files and be able to enter invoices? Is it important that you are able to do payroll and everything associated with it? Do you want to keep an asset inventory (quantity, location, value and description)? Are you going to use your CMS package on an individual computer or on a network with multiple workstations?"
Church Management Software
How to choose the package that's right for you
By Nancy Armstrong and Brent Bill
Church Business 03/2002: Church Management Software
Unitarian Universalist congregations have many similar organizational issues to those in Ethical Societies. This very complete resource is now available online.
Includes many nuts-and-bolts ideas -- from by-law suggestions, effective meetings, programming ideas, social justice and religious education resources, congregational planning and budgeting, and financial and property issues. Some sections are specific to UU congregations, but most are either applicable to an Ethical Society, or can be easily "translated."
The Congregational Handbook
How to Develop and Sustain
Your Unitarian Universalist Congregation
The UUA Congregational Handbook - Table of Contents