One of the key design features of GHC is to help you grow and maintain your membership.. To help you do this with confidence let us explain how GHC manages membership with respect to new people.
1. Who are New People and Members
The terms we use in GHC are defined to straddle various church management system (ChMS) setups.
The primary definition is this: Members = people categories defined by suffix "_" or with a colour ending in "_".
The second definition is this: New People = anyone added to the system in the last 12 months. This date range will include both members and non-members. Those who are members are people who have been "integrated".
2. How these definitions are used in the dashboards
New People in GHC is not based on a ChMS people category, but rather people added to your system in the last 12 months who have not yet become members.
The following table helps you see how GHC categories of New People and Members are used in calculations.
| GHC Dashboards | GHC Categories Used in Metrics |
|---|---|
| All people (health gauges) | All people |
| New people (health gauges) | New People Only |
| Visitor (strategic + pastoral) | New People Only (pastoral can filter people categories) |
| Integration (strategic + pastoral) | New People Only (filters / separates members and non-members) |
| Attendance* (strategic + pastoral) | Members Only |
| Group* (strategic + pastoral) | Members Only |
| Volunteer (strategic + pastoral) | Members Only |
* Note that service and group attendance might not match actual numbers if there are new people in your groups (by definition maybe you should consider them as members if attending a small group)
3. Tracking new people to move them towards membership
Use the Visitors and Integration dashboards to focus particularly on new people. When they have connected in as you've defined then you can move them to a member category. At this point your stay ratio will be increased (newcomer becoming a member).
It's a good idea to ensure your new members have actually engaged. You can take particular notice of this in the pastoral integration dashboard which puts visitors and new members side by side.