Admin, Data and Governance

Admin, Data & Governance brings cross-church reporting, reusable resources, formal decisions, policy records, and data stewardship into one permission-controlled workspace. Members receive only resources and acknowledgements deliberately published to them.

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Before You Start

1. Decide who may view administrative data, manage reports, lead governance, read confidential documents, review retention, or enter a sealed case.
2. Assign discipline cases and whistleblower channels by name. A general administrator does not receive those records automatically.
3. Confirm your quorum, voting, recusal, policy-approval, retention, and legal hold rules outside the app.
4. Publish only the resource version that members should rely on.
5. Run a sandbox preview and one test access review before using the workspace with live church records.

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Build Reports and Saved Views

Open Admin, Data & Governance > Reports & Data. Choose an available church dataset, add multiple filters, select the columns you need, and preview the result before saving it. Saved reports keep the report definition rather than a copied result set. Exports check current access each time they run. A scheduled export sends only to an eligible staff recipient and skips someone whose access has since been removed. Use bulk change only after reviewing the exact candidate count and sample. The confirmation expires, cannot silently widen to new records, and records an audit entry. Sandbox previews show the likely audience and effects without changing records or contacting a messaging provider.

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Add Church-Specific Fields

Create a custom field for a member, household, visitor, or volunteer record. Choose its value type, audience, and sensitivity before recording values. Choice fields accept only the configured choices, and sensitive values remain protected from ordinary search and exports.

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Use Reviewed Form Templates

The Forms template library includes connect, baptism, membership, counseling, prayer, volunteer, background-check consent, facility, room-booking, benevolence, testimony, mission-trip, and event-waiver starting points. Review the questions, audience, managers, consent wording, and follow-up action before publishing. Background-check consent records consent only; it does not order a paid check. Event waivers and other attestations remain tied to the published form version the person actually reviewed.

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Publish a Resource Library

Use Resource Library for ministry handbooks, volunteer guides, sermon discussion guides, policies, facility maps, training materials, worship files, and youth permission documents. Set the intended audience, sensitivity, tags, effective date, and whether an acknowledgement is required. Publishing creates a dependable current version without removing earlier version history. Member downloads and acknowledgements are tracked against that version. The unified search returns links to approved sermons, transcripts, events, announcements, resources, and staff knowledge. It does not search private prayer or pastoral text, safeguarding records, discipline cases, whistleblower reports, financial account details, or child medical details.

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Run Meetings and Decisions

Create a board, elder, deacon, committee, or congregational meeting and add its agenda, documents, decisions, and owned actions. The packet keeps these items together for review. For a motion, freeze the eligible roster, record recusals, choose the voting method and threshold, then open and close the vote. The result explains quorum and the eligible denominator. Generated minutes always remain a draft until a person reviews and approves them. Annual plans preserve purpose, outcomes, milestones, risks, and follow-up. Meeting action items keep an owner and due date visible between meetings.

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Manage Policies, Covenants, and Standing

Adopt a versioned policy, bylaw, or membership covenant with its effective date. Require acknowledgement where appropriate, and set a renewal period for a covenant that must be reaffirmed. The member Church Resources area shows only published standard resources, policy acknowledgements, and that member’s safe membership-standing summary. It never includes internal standing reasons or confidential governance data.

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Protect Confidential Governance

Leadership documents require the confidential-governance permission. Conflict-of-interest declarations record the statement and recusal needed for an explainable decision. Discipline and restoration cases are separately sealed and visible only to an assigned person who also has the discipline permission. Linking the protected case to its member allows an assigned leader to offer only its current status through a separately consented Church Network care handoff. The case itself remains sealed. The public reporting channel seals a concern for its fixed recipients, excludes anyone named as an accused person, and sends a content-free notification. For immediate danger or suspected abuse, follow your church safeguarding plan and local reporting or emergency requirements before recording administrative follow-up.

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Review Retention and Access

Retention rules record how long a dataset should be kept and whether it needs review, archive, or approved disposition. A legal hold prevents an eligible record from being treated as ready for removal. Start a permission review to freeze each staff member’s effective access. The reviewer records a keep, change, or remove decision and a reason for every person. The review closes only when no decision remains pending.