Church Management Software (ChMS) Parish Management

2023: The volume of the global market for digitalization of churches grew by 7% to $14.18 billion over the year

In 2023, costs in the global market for digitalization software for churches reached $14.18 billion. Growth in relation to 2022, when the volume of the industry was estimated at $13.27 billion, was recorded at 7%. Such data are given in the materials of Market Research Future, published in mid-August 2024.

The study says that the market for church management software is experiencing a surge due to technological advances and the growing need to increase the efficiency of church activities. The main drivers of the industry are the digitalization of church processes, the emergence of mobile services and the introduction of cloud solutions. In particular, churches are increasingly collecting and using digital data to improve their operations and decision-making. You can use this information to track attendance, financial management, and event planning. Mobile software can be used to quickly disseminate information or, for example, to organize online donations. In turn, cloud solutions offer a number of advantages over traditional local software, including lower initial costs, increased flexibility and scalability, and simplified data access.

Among the significant players in the church digitalization software market are Real, Shelby Systems, Rock RMS, GRM Software, Church Management Pro, SimplyWorship, ACS Technologies, Aplos Software, A Church Near You, Altiris Charity, DonorPerfect, Fellowship Technologies, etc. Geographically, North America contributed the most to total costs in 2023. In Europe, active development is observed in Britain, Germany and France. In the Asia-Pacific region, the highest growth rates are recorded.

Analysts believe that in the future the industry will steadily expand. The CAGR (compound percentage CAGR) is expected to be 6.79%, and costs will reach $25.6 billion by 2032.^[1]

2017

In the West, church organizations use not only standard office packages of programs, but also actively implement specialized software that allows you to automate specific processes of religious associations. This class of solutions is called Church Management Software (ChMS). With their help, you can keep the parishioners' database up to date, keep records of donations and expenses, organize church events, notify the flock and much more.

In addition to ChMS, several more species are traditionally referred to as "church" IT. software First, it is the so-called "Biblical ON Software," which is a type of e-book and allows you to search for quotes from the Old and New Testaments, as well as compare various versions of Bible translations. Some of these solutions are equipped with rather complex analytical tools that allow you to conduct grammatical analysis of sentences, find links to similar topics in various works. Clergy use these programs to prepare sermons.

Another class of programs is called Worship Presentation Software ("presentation for worship") - with their help, slides with psalm texts during service in the temple are displayed on a video projector. Unlike ChMS, however, the latter two kinds of solutions are auxiliary in terms of automating the activities of the church.

"Electronic temple": how to automate the life of the parish?

Many ChMS systems are implemented using the SaaS model and are available via a web interface. Both clergy and parishioners can register in them, to whom a set of certain functions is available through the online office (for example, a schedule of services and other events, online registration for seminars, etc.). Parish management determines what set of functions will be available to parishioners.

What tasks does Church Management Software solve?

Most solutions are designed to be implemented at the parish level, which brings together from several hundred to several thousand people. The emphasis on parish decisions is associated with the decentralized governance model that is characteristic of Protestant churches. In addition, there are a number of programs that automate the activities of dioceses or dioceses.

Often, a feature of IT projects for the church is the need to act within a limited budget - most parishes cannot afford expensive implementations. Thanks to this, the rental of programs based on the SaaS model (which saves on the purchase and installation of boxed software) and open source solutions distributed free of charge have become very common in the ChMS segment.

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