If a recipient does not have the option to unsubscribe from a list, it’s spam. For years, Constant Contact has been the go-to newsletter and communications portal for many ministries and churches. It certainly is a great service, but the monthly cost deters many smaller churches from signing up. Now, there is an awesome  solution that is free and meets the needs of a small to medium size church. It’s called MailChimp.

MailChimp has just reorganized and is now offering free accounts up to 1,000 subscribers and 6,000 sent emails per month. They have tools to easily embed a sign-up form into your website so you can start capturing your visitor’s data. You can also import subscribers on the backend and segment your lists into smaller groups. Email the entire subscriber list or just a small group, it’s all determined by your specific need set.

MailChimp also gives you an analytical look into your subscriber’s behavior. They tell you how many people actually opened and read your email with more intricate data attached as well. With their social feature set, you can easily integrate your newsletters into your subscriber’s social experience. I love the fact that you can design your own custom HTML templates or select from dozens of pre-design template for your email campaigns. It’s free, so go give it a shot!

Go to MailChimp

Free Constant Contact Alternative is a post from: Mister Nifty

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Skype

• Phone  Calls – Skype-to-Skype calls are always free. If you need to call a cell phone, just purchase some credit and ring any phone in the world from your computer screen. This is also a great way for your family to reach you when you are connected to the Internet.
• Video Conferencing – This is a great way to call into your church services and give them a glimpse of what’s going on in your neck of the world. If you’re on a PC, Skype has just released a new version that supports 5-way video calls. This is a great way for you to have meetings with your staff while you’re out of the country.
• Internet Access – If you’re stuck in an airport with pay-to-play WiFi and you don’t want to use your credit card in a foreign country, most public WiFi hotspots accept Skype credit as payment for using their service. Just fire up Skype and type in your credentials, Skype does the rest. Skype Internet access saved the day for me when I was recently stuck in a Brazilian airport with no way to communicate.
• Skype Phone – This is a great way to make calls when you’re near WiFi without lugging your laptop everywhere.

• Download Skype For Free

Google Voice and Gmail Video

• Never come home to an overwhelming voice-mail box. Forward all of your calls to your Google Voice number and it will record your messages in MP3 form for you to check anywhere in the world.
• Google Voice also allows you to send text messages to any phone from anywhere in the world. This is a great way to get in touch with your leaders or your loved ones for free!
• Gmail video chat is another great video conferencing tool

TinyChat

• TinyChat is a great way for you to embed a chat room right into your website for loved ones to come and chat and keep up-to-date with what’s going on real-time.
• Yet another great way to hold a mass video conference.
• Private messaging allows all travelers to communicate privately away from the public room.
• Honorable mention to Tokbox as well who provides a similar service for free.

• Create your own room at TinyChat

Satellite or Cell Phone Rental

• Rent a satellite phone for a very reasonable price. $10-$15/day
• Free incoming calls and incoming SMS in most cases!
• Ability to be reached anywhere in the world
• Most countries also have local phone rentals for a nominal fee with free incoming calls.

• Visit Global Cellular Rental

If you have any other great ways to stay in touch, please add to the comment list! Enjoy your travels!

Communication Tools For Mission Trips is a post from: Mister Nifty

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A few years ago I came up with an idea to help leaders stay connected with their congregations/leadership teams. This concept was birthed out of observation of many leaders only connecting with their congregation/leaders on a personal basis only during times of crisis or conflict.

We often view relationships as a time-consuming process that involves large chunks of our time. A leader who leads many people or leaders can feel overwhelmed with the burden of connecting. Many simply run from this burden and never make an effort to have any form of personal contact outside the functions of the church. Thus, the concept I call “2MPH” was birthed.

Two things about 2MPH

• The Premise – Two Miles Per Hour
  • Slow down from the busyness of life.
• The Application – Two Minutes Per Hour
  • Take two minutes out of every hour and connect with someone.

Get Your Calculator Out

I took this idea of two minutes per hour to the calculator and was amazed at the impact of these small time investments. Before I started my mad calculator skills, I factored in a 40-hour work week which equals 2,400 minutes of work time.

Here’s what I came up with:

• 2 minutes X 8 hours = 16 minutes / day
• 16 minutes X 5 work days = 80 minutes / week
• 80 minutes X 50 work weeks (minus Christmas and Thanksgiving) = 4,000 minutes / year (66 1/2 hours)
  

How It Works

These numbers really got my attention.  By taking 80 minutes out of a 2,400 minute work week, I could connect with 40-80 people in one week.  I realize what most people are thinking right now that one or two minute interactions are not truly connections, but I disagree. As I mentioned before, we tend to look at relationships in the large chunks of time that we spend with someone and discount the value of small consistent interactions.

The 2MPH concept means every hour you take two minutes to  do one of the following:

• Send a short text message to someone
  • Word of appreciation
  • Birthday/Anniversary wishes
  • Encouragement for someone who is hurting

• Make a quick phone call (I realize this is the most time consuming)
  • A call to a patient in the hospital sometimes means as much to them as a visit.
  • Call your kids and tell them you love them and are proud of them.
  • Call a guest that attended last weekend and let them know how glad you were they came.

• Send a quick email to someone
  • A quick note in a businessman’s email box from the pastor or leader can make them feel a part of the family
  • Share a thought from the Word with your leaders or a small group of friends/family
  • Send a note to your mayor or city officials letting them know you’re praying for them

• Write a personal note
  • Prepare  your desk with a box of pre-stamped envelopes and simple stationary to jot a note to someone.
  • For someone struggling, find a few relevant verses, write a quick note of encouragement and include the references.
  • Write a romantic note for your spouse and leave it for them to find.

• Personal contact
  • When grabbing a takeout meal, order an extra meal for a coworker without them asking and bring it to them.
  • If you’re in public, take time to ask a stranger you come in contact how they are doing today. A quick caring conversation can be a great witness

Keep a tally of your time. Your daily 16 minutes may yield sixteen communications, or maybe only two. Just commit to spend 16 minutes during the course of your day caring about someone other than yourself.

If you are employed in the secular workforce, I am not condoning stealing time from your boss to use this concept. Take time during your breaks to connect with others so you can be an honorable employee.

The Power of Small Consistency

The previous suggestions might not seem very impacting to you right now, but concerted, consistent, communication can reap huge rewards in the people around you over the course of a year. The purpose of taking time out of every hour is not only to keep ourselves from becoming self-absorbed, but also to create an awareness of others around us, and to extend the love of Jesus to others in two minute investments.

Certainly this concept is not a replacement for time well spent with those you love, but I see each of these small time investments as reinforcement for the relationship and friendship. These small snippets of time may not be the building blocks, but they are certainly rebar to strengthen the relationship over time.  Thousands of small interactions per year bring people closer to your inner circle and give you easier access to deal with conflict when it arises.

You cannot be everyone’s best friend, but if you’ve showed a party in conflict that you cared about them multiple times throughout the year, there is a built-in trust that accompanies those precious two minute investments.

Consistent communication and caring will open doors with people in your church and in the community that otherwise would have been shut. By taking 3% of your ministry work week and connecting with someone, you can impact up to 4,000 people per year.

Leaders, you will spend a minimum of 2,400 minutes this week working. Are you willing to give up 80 of those minutes to care for others? If you’re so wrapped up in your task list that you forgot ministry was about serving others, try using this concept to get out of the rut.

Make a Connection Plan and Prepare

Take some time and write down the relationships you wish to strengthen over the course of the next year. Use this as a master list that you carry in your wallet or purse. Make a weekly or daily connection plan. This involves who you are going to contact and what form of communication you will use to contact them. Making a plan helps you stick to your guns on the process. No planning means you probably won’t follow through at all.

Don’t devalue the impact of minute things. It’s not hard to start connecting. It just takes a small consistent two minute investment. It’s time to put the brakes on at least one time per hour, and give to others.

Slow down and connect!

2MPH – Slow Down and Connect is a post from: Mister Nifty

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Install WordPress

• Install WordPress – I used a subdomain (http://team.mydomain.com)  Most hosting companies have a One-Click application installer so you don’t have to mess with setting up a database or ugly FTP interfaces.   All you have to do is fill out a simple form where you want WordPress installed, give it a few minutes, and viola, it’s up-and-running.

Install the P2 Theme

• Log in to the admin interface (http://team.mydomain.com/wp-admin/) and go to Appearance->Add New Themes
• Search for “P2″ in the search box and install the theme.
• Activate the theme under Appearance->Themes
• If you have problems, download the theme files to your computer and upload them to your WP directory using an FTP client.

Make your WordPress Private

• You probably don’t want the world reading your posts, so let’s make your WordPress private.  Go to Plugins->Add New
• Search for Private WordPress and install the plugin (Install button is to the right of the search results table)
• Make sure Private WordPress is activated under Plugins->Installed

Setup Your Preferences

• Go to Settings->General and give your portal a name and description.
• Go to Settings->Reading and enter the number of posts you want to appear on each page under: “Blog pages show at most”
• Go to Settings->Discussion and enable threaded nested comments (Choose how many levels you desire – this is basically how many levels down people can comment on other’s comments)
  • To keep non-users from commenting, check “Users must be registered and logged in to comment”
  • Un-check “An administrator must always approve the comment” and “Comment author must have a previously approved comment

Force Posted Links to Open In New Pages

• Go to Plugins->Add New and search for “Target Blank In Posts And Comments”
• Install and activate this plugin.  The functions will work automatically without any additional settings.

Add Your Team Members

• Go to Users->Add New  Create profiles for your team members.  Assign them the role of author so they can only edit their own posts.  To assign a moderator, give them a role of administrator, or editor.
• Team members can have their own personalized user icon by registering the same email address in their profile at: http://gravatar.com  This is a universally recognized avatar that will work on any site they use the registered email address on.

Install Additional Features

• Try installing other plugins for added functionality.
• Allow users to be notified of additional comments with the plugin “Subscribe To Comments”
• There are dozens of YouTube plugins that allow users to embed videos right in their posts.

Set Up Your Own Twitter-like Communication Portal is a post from: Mister Nifty

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Go To TokBox

TokBox Is Intensely Awesome Video Chat is a post from: Mister Nifty

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Organizing Your Email

If you aren’t familiar with the native star tool, just click the little star in the upper right hand corner of each email.  If you have superstars enabled in the settings properly, you can click multiple times to iterate through the list of superstars.  You can tag an email with on of the above stars or orbs to identify that email later on.  I have four categories for my star usage:  Urgent, Important, Info, and Reply-To.   By simply adding star I can easily file that email, archive it and retrieve it later with all other emails that need the same action.

Creating Quick Links

Stars are great, but to get a list for a specific superstar you have to enter a cryptic code in the search bar.  Entering “has:green-check” will give you a list of all the starred items with a green check.  But, who wants to do that every time?  Gmail created a great little feature called Quick Links.  It’s basically a quick way to save frequent search results.  I use it for action folders to organize my email and access my action items quickly.

Gmail Superstars Cheatsheet

I created a handy dandy cheatsheet for you to use when searching for each superstar in Gmail.  Download it and make your Gmail experience more fun and productive!

Tranparent PNG’s

You can use these recreated images for your own projects.  Here are the transparent PNG images.

Super Productivity with Gmail Superstars is a post from: Mister Nifty

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What’s slick is that you can import from almost any well known communication software so grabbing your current digital information is painless.  You can also share contacts over multiple Keepm accounts.  The thing I like the most is that you can add dated notes that keep track of all of your communication with a contact.  This could help minus out some headaches!  For instance, a guest speaker will be arriving next month.  The point person who speaks to them can notate their flight information, their food preferences, etc.  Then, when other team members need this information, they simply log in and view his contact profile instead of tracking down the person who made the original contact.

Lastly, it’s FREE!

Go to Keepm

Keepm – Free Contact Manager is a post from: Mister Nifty

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The beauty of it is that people outside of your organization are not able to join your private network. This keeps communication free from external distractions and allows tracking of important conversations. Another feature I really like about Yammer is the ability to create groups. For instance, during our leadership retreat, I created a group for ideas and the minutes of our meetings. I had several people with laptops join the group and begin documenting the meeting with short posts. All posts were saved in that group and are easy to find when I need them. You can create private groups for more sensitive conversations as well.

You also can use hash tags which help you search for posts later with keywords. For example, one of my posts looked similar to this: “#todo09 Increase the soda machine price to $.75 from $.50.” Yammer then gives you a link to all the hash tags you create and with one click of a button, you have a list of every post where you used that tag. By the way, I haven’t changed the price yet, so come by for a cheap soda.

Last, but not least is the portability of this app.  They have a desktop software that is simple to use as well as the basic web interface.  You can post just like using Twitter or an IM service.  They also have an iPhone and Blackberry app that allows you to submit posts on the go.  Receive SMS updates on your phone or right in your IM client.  This is a free service for companies and organizations. There are a few paid features that you might want to check out. If you need to centralize your team’s communication, sign up for an account and check it out. You have nothing to lose.

Here are a few ideas for using Yammer in churches:

• Creative meetings
• Event planning and coordination
• Weekly staff check-in with posts about what’s going on in their ministry this week
• Corporate to-do lists of things needing completed around the church
• Personal prayer requests group for staff members
• Microblog about missions trips
• Traveling pastors can update staff with minimal effort.

Yammer.com

Yammer Is Twitter for Organizations is a post from: Mister Nifty

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I’m very excited to announce the latest version of my new plugin for WordPress.  EasySMS installs right into the back-end admin panel and a simple sidebar form installs by dragging and dropping the widget on your sidebar.   Once people start subscribing, you can categorize them in groups and send SMS messages right from WordPress.  Another cool feature is automatic SMS messages broadcast your lastest post (optional). I’m very excited about the possibilities for churches to keep in touch with their congregations and leaders right from their websites!  The best part is it is FREE for the taking.  So, what are you waiting for?  Go over and grab yourself some Mister Nifty goodness for your website.  If you don’t have a WordPress site, we feel sorry for you.  Go get yourself one for free!   http://www.wordpress.org

Download EasySMS here

Features:

*   Owner Verification of cell phones with unsubscribe feature
*   AJAX sidebar widget form with custom title and terms of agreement.
*   Subscriber groups
*   Track how many SMS message have been sent to each subscriber.
*   Auto-notification of new posts to subscribers (optional)
*   Custom text messages from admins only
*   Message preview before sending SMS
*   80 default carriers
*   Delete/Add/Edit and Carriers
*   Edit/Delete Subscribers
*   WP Administration compatible interface.
*   Stats snapshot on dashboard.
*   New subscriber notification. (optional)

Screenshots

Sidebar Form

Send SMS

Carrier Table

Groups Table

Subscriber Groups

Settings

Free WordPress SMS plugin from Mister Nifty is a post from: Mister Nifty

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In short, GA uses your domain.  You can map it to a subdomain like:  http://email.yourdomain.com   When you send email from GA, it sends like this:  yourname@yourdomain.com.  It allows you to easily create new email boxes for your team members with just a few clicks on the administration panel.  You can create mailing lists and assign others to help administer the accounts.

With their calendar application, you can create calendars that can only be shared within domain.  This is a great way to keep up-to-date with what your team members are doing throughout the weeks and months.  It also centralizes main team event/schedule data as well.

Google Docs is just pure productivity for your team. You can create docs (text documents, spreadsheets, presentations) online.  The best part is you can share them with team members.  Two team members can be working on the same file and chat about it at the same time.   There is a great setting that does not allow documents to be shared outside of your domain.  So, if you are working on sensitive information, there isn’t a chance of someone without an account getting their hands on it.

Google Sites allows teams to create simple websites that contain embedded documents, lists, presentations, videos, shared calendars, and much more.  Each page of information contains a discussion forum (if enabled) that allows a digital conversation about the subject or event.  This is a great way to plan and post team information for events.  This could easily be created to be your church intranet.

Now, installing Google Apps is a bit of a techie process, but I hope to explain it in simple terms.  First of all you have to have access to your domain from the hosting company where you purchased it.   The most important thing is to have access to the DNS settings.

Once you get to your DNS settings, find where it says CNAME record.  We need to map our sub-domains to send them to the proper Google services.  If you use GoDaddy I’ve included some screenshots of their back-end system.  Don’t worry, Google also provides instructions for most of the major hosts. Add the following CNAME records:

email  (points to)  ghs.google.com
calendar (points to) ghs.google.com
docs (points to) ghs.google.com
sites (points to) ghs.google.com
home (points to) ghs.google.com

Next we need to map our email servers to the Google servers. Find where your MX records are stored.  Write down your current MX records just in case you want to revert to that server one day.  Next delete all your MX records.  GA will only work if you point to their servers.  Add the following MX records.

Priority     Mail Server (You must include the trailing period)
10     ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
20     ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
30     ALT2.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
40     ASPMX2.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.
50     ASPMX3.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.

Great!  Now you’ve prepared yourself to open a Google Apps account.  The reason you should do this first is sometimes servers take a while to propagate your settings to the internet.  This means you will be sitting, twittling your thumbs and waiting until GA recognizes your settings.

Now, go to http://www.google.com/a/cpanel/domain/new and enter your domain.  Make sure you click that you are the administrator/owner of this domain.

Once your sign up is complete you will have to verify your domain ownership.

It will give you two options to verify your domain ownership.  The easiest is to add another CNAME record as follows.

It will usually take about 20-30 minutes before your domain is verified.  Just be patient.  In the meantime, customize the URLs of each service to match the sub-domains you entered at your hosting site. (docs, email, calendar, sites, home)

Make sure you active the services, and it will take about an hour before your email is set up on the google servers.  From here, everything is pretty self explanatory.  If you can set this up, you can figure out the rest. While you wait, try adding users and mailing lists.

After all services have activates, your domain is verified, and your DNS settings propagate on your hosting server, you should technically be all set.

To access your GA go to:

http://email.yourdomain.com

http://calendar.yourdomain.com

http://docs.yourdomain.com

http://sites.yourdomain.com

http://home.yourdomain.com

Enjoy this wonderful free service from Google!  If you have any questions, leave a comment and I’ll answer so everyone else can see.

Google Apps equals super productivity. is a post from: Mister Nifty

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