Consultants
D2Design – D2Design provides promotion and marketing resources to ministries and churches, including graphics services and a variety of printed materials.
Design 373 – Design373 is a full-service solution for graphic design and marketing for churches and ministries. Services include marketing strategy, social media, web design, branding and strategies for reaching your community.
Outreach Marketing – A leading provider of church marketing communication tools, such as postcards, bulletins, banners, door hangers, small group curriculum and outreach campaigns. Find Bible study materials, outreach books, evangelism tools, church invitations, new mover cards, and church mailers.
Ticketing
iTickets – iTickets is a great ticketing resource for churches, concerts and events, with an iOS scanning app and a full suite of services.
Brushfire – Brushfire is a robust platform for online ticketing and registration for churches and ministries. The service is customizable, flexible and powerful with assigned seating, e-mail marketing and a branded event experience. Pricing starts at $1 plus 1% per ticket and includes the full Brushfire features slate. The mobile app allows for ticket scanning and has tools to manage individual seats and overall capacity.
Giving
e-giving – e-giving by NCS Services offers a good online giving and payment processing solution for churches, schools and nonprofits. Depending on the plan you choose, the average transaction fee for credit cards is 2.09% to 3% plus a .39 processing fee. The ACH transaction fee is 1% plus a .39 processing fee. e-giving also supports giving kiosks and text to give.
Pushpay – Pushpay began as a mobile giving solution that made generosity easy and simple. Over time, the company has grown to be a full mobile giving and engagement solution that serves over 7,000 churches around the world. Pushpay offers three pricing tiers: Core, Advanced and Complete. Processing fees range from 1% for ACH transactions to 3% for credit card transactions. Be sure to negotiate pricing to receive the best quote possible.
Art & Graphics
iStockphoto – Image files downloaded from iStockphoto can be used for advertising, websites, blogs, presentations, video productions, podcasts and more. Purchase iStock credits individually or on a subscription plan.
Shutterstock – Find royalty-free stock photos for promotion and marketing purposes on this useful web resource. Images can be purchased in small batches at affordable rates.
ChurchArt Online – Subscribe to ChurchArt Online® and gain access to thousands of church-art images and newsletter, postcard and flyer templates.
Digital Marketing
WordPress – WordPress is a free and open source blogging tool based on PHP and MySQL, which runs on a web hosting service. Use templates, plugins and themes to create an endless variety of design choices. WordPress is used by more than 18.9% of the top 10 million websites as of August 2013 and is the most popular blogging system in use on the Web.
Buffer – Buffer is a free service that schedules messages on various social networks. It can distribute posts throughout the day or week to help maintain a consistent social media presence. Buffer also shortens links and provides statistics about web traffic for each link (analytics).
HootSuite – HootSuite is used to manage online brands and to submit messages to a variety of social media services, including Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn. An industry best practice, HootSuite provides a browser-based dashboard that allows users to keep updated on linked accounts and collaborate among a team of users to manage social media accounts. There are both full and lite versions of the service. HootSuite uses URL shortener ow.ly to shorten web addresses submitted to its service.
Post Planner – Post Planner’s benefits include consistent focus, shareable content, laser targeting and optimum scheduling. It makes it easy to post consistently and avoid embarrassing pauses between posts. Post Planner shows you the freshest trending content in your niche so that fans will share it. The service also helps you target fans in specific locations and demographics.
Constant Contact – Constant Contact is the leading provider of web-based e-mail marketing software for small to mid-sized organizations. With an easy-to-use wizard, more than 100 eye-catching email templates, list management features, e-mail tracking and reporting, and high deliverability, Constant Contact makes it easy for a ministry to communicate with members and guests. Existing e-mail addresses and lists can be easily imported for use in Constant Contact.
Emma – Emma offers a full range of features needed to engage your e-mail subscriber list. It features a drag and drop editor, built-in social media tools and autoresponders to target new subscribers. A $30.00 monthly subscription fee covers 1,000 subscribers with unlmited e-mails each month.
Writing
Bibme – Use this free automatic bibliography and citation generator to create a works cited page in MLA, APA, Chicago or Turabian formats.
Grammarly – Grammarly checks your writing for grammar, spelling and punctuation mistakes. Upload or drag and drop a text file to their site for instant proofreading and context-optimized vocabulary suggestions. Instructors like the site because it’s a great plagiarism detector, checking submitted texts against over 8 billion web pages.
Religion Communicators Council – The Religion Communicators Council, founded in 1929, is an interfaith association of religion communicators at work in print and electronic communication, marketing and in public relations. The RCC provides opportunities for religion communicators to learn from each other. Together, RCC members promote excellence in the communication of religious faith and values in the public arena and encourage understanding among religious and faith groups.
The Writing Center – The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Writing Center provides summaries with helpful advice on a variety of writing topics.
Writing Gooder – Writing Gooder is a project of the Young Writers Society, a keynote online community for young writers from around the globe. Their aim is to promote creative writing as a favorite pastime, and to assist aspiring writers with the development of key skills. Maintained by members of the Young Writers Society, their blog is a resource to writers of all ages.