Trello: Free Project Management for Churches

 

Free Project Management for Churches: Trello

In any church or ministry, you’re going to be faced with programs, planning and tasks that must be duplicated time after time.  

For most churches, volunteer and staff time is based on a weekly schedule of planning, prep and programming, culminating in the Sunday Worship Service (or weekly Kids Club, or Bible Study, or whatever).

Because of this, you’re repeating the same set of tasks week after week.  When you’re in administration, this weekly set of tasks is multiplied by the number of ministries you support.

Keeping all of those repetitive tasks organized and completed in a timely way can be overwhelming.  I’ve tried several different project management systems, but Trello has by far, come out on top as the most user-friendly system.  There’s very little setup, it’s accessible from anywhere, and the free tier is quite extensive.

Trello is a project management system based on the Kanban method of organization.  Cards containing information, to do lists, comments, graphics, files, and links, are moved from one column to the next as they move through your unique workflow.  

I use a Trello “Board” (collection of lists populated by cards) to manage our sermon workflow.  

Each card holds all of the details for one sermon.   I use the date to name each sermon card, and populate each card with the 3 to-do lists that I need to complete for each sermon.  I’ve made one sermon card a template, so that I don’t need to manually type out the to-do lists each time.

The first column is “Upcoming Services”.  As each service card is completed, I move it to the next column “Past Services”. You could easily add more columns if there is an approval step in your workflow.

For each sermon, I attach Youtube and Google Drive links, and upload graphics.  Before using Trello, I was always scrambling to remember where each of those components were located; now I have easy access to them all in one place.

I also use Trello to manage our Benevolent Application Process, and our Outreach program.  Each of those has a series of steps that need to be tracked, and Trello does that perfectly.

Benefits of using Trello for Church or Ministry

– standardized workflow for repetitive tasks

– flexibility for non-standard tasks

– add other members to your board and/share with others

– set up email-to-board email forwarding (ie. when you receive a Connect Card email, a card is automatically created with the content of that email)

– to-do lists- due dates

– automated rules (ie. when a card is moved to a specific column, a due date is automatically added)

– access from your desktop or through the app- the visual layout allows you to see everything at once

– add labels and tags to your cards

– up to 10 boards for free, which is more than enough for most small churches

– did I mention it’s free?

You’ll find a ton of tutorials online for setting up your Trello boards, but I’ve found that just playing around with it helps figure out the details specific to my church’s needs!