How To Simplify And Organise Communication Requests

Steve Fogg 25th Mar 2015 Communications

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Being organised in your communications is essential. Having a streamlined system to manage requests is also vital. Gone are the days where you could just have a conversation in a meeting. We get bombarded with more information than we can cope with in a day. How do we make sure nothing is missed?

One area which I need to improve in is to create simple repeatable systems and processes that help others get what they need to communicate out efficiently. We receive many communication requests each week which are processed through editable Microsoft word documents. Works well for us, but it isn’t perfect and is decentralised. I love the idea of having one central place where our ministry partners can go to for everything and a central place where we can also manage our projects.

In our last #cmschat a few people shared some great examples of what communication request systems and processes they have implemented and I thought it would be useful for you to see them too. Here are the communication request systems which I think are a good template for others to use:

1. WestRidge Church

2. Saddleback Church

3. Two Rivers Church

4. Harvest

A great overview of their communication request process.

5. Crossway

Here is our communication request form.

If you want some of the back story to why Phil Bowdle at WestRidge Church updated his communications request process you can read more here ‘How to Handle Communication Requests Without Chaos’.

Here is a useful complementary post that will help you schedule your communications once you have them in. ‘3 Ways To Create A Church Communications Calendar On A Shoestring Budget.’

Your Turn

Do you have any questions about managing communications requests? Or do you have a sample you can share? Comment below.

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12 Comments

Steve Witwicki - March 26th, 2015 at 12:49 am
What I’m curious to know is this: some of the examples above are pages on their website (like the WestRidge and Saddleback Examples) so my questions are:
1) Are these webforms intended only for ministry leaders or anyone in the congregation?
2) Whichever it happens to be, while navigating their websites, I couldn’t see how one would get to those pages on their site. They don’t seem to appear in their menu and I didn’t see a site map. So, as an example, if I wanted to get to those pages that include the various communications requests, would I need to log in or simply have the unique URL to get there?
3) I’m guessing they’re NOT password protected, otherwise I never would have been able to access the WestRidge example.

There are several things like this I would like to include on our own website, however I prefer that it not appear in what the general ‘public’ or a visitor sees.
Thanks for your help.
Steve Fogg - March 26th, 2015 at 11:49 am
Hi Steve, The Westridge church request process is essentially a series of web forms. The Saddleback church example is more like a portal with much deeper functionality. I can’t link to it as its not for public consumption, but I was shown it and a screen shot gives you an overview.

One cool feature that the Saddleback comm’s portal has is a assets library. That means you can see graphics that have been created and download them for your own campus. Great for a church the size of Saddleback that would get multiple requests for the same graphic assets from different campuses.
Jon Parsons - March 31st, 2015 at 10:06 am
This is brilliant Steve!
We’re currently in the midst of a Communications overhaul, and finding tools like these to make our lives easier (from both sides – comms and ministry leaders) is something we appreciate!
Your blog has become a valuable resource for us, both in the content you create and the content you share from others.

Thanks!
Jon
Steve Fogg - March 31st, 2015 at 2:23 pm
Thanks for the feedback Jon! I love hearing this kind of stuff. Helps me get motivated to write next time around!
Kaz - April 8th, 2015 at 9:34 am
Hi Steve,
I am also very interested in this subject. Do you know of any cms systems that have this capability?
Steve Fogg - April 15th, 2015 at 1:52 pm
Hi Kaz, you have to build your own request system. We are in the process of building our own.
Eric Dye - April 10th, 2015 at 11:40 pm
The Harvest flowchart is INTENSE!
Susan Engbrecht - February 6th, 2016 at 5:15 am
How do you handle changes that need to be made to a graphic a week or two down the line? For instance, an ad that needs a Registration due by … or a change in venue … curious. Right now our department is creating the graphic and then the individual departments are adding/changing info on top of our graphic. It looks terrible. And it looks like it’s coming from us. How do you get individual ministries to relinquish their “hold” on their ministry? We are trying to build a cohesive look and it’s a constant battle between ministries to get a good looking product.
Steve Fogg - February 17th, 2016 at 5:12 pm
First thoughts, there are some things you can anticipate if there is a consistent change that departments are making. Include that in the brief.

Secondly, tell them that you are here for them! Come from an advisory point of view on how you can help them look better, rather than ‘this is my patch’ stay clear.
Andrew Barnes - February 18th, 2016 at 11:27 am
We’ve really streamlined requests from ministries by having them fill out a form every time they have a new event, announcement, or serve opportunity they want promoted. Depending on what they request, we guarantee it will be on the website serve finder or website calendar and our monthly ministry news handout. Our team takes those requests, enters them into our website, and then into a cleaner database (Google Drive) for us to reference when we build out our monthly handout.

The whole form is logic based so they aren’t having to read through a bunch of unnecessary questions. It’s been interesting to see how ministries are now thinking more in depth about their events based on the questions we ask. For instance, we ask if there is an actionable next step presented during their event. On several occasions this has prevented us from having to throw something together at the last minute simply because they weren’t thinking of it ahead of time.

At the end of the form, they can select if they would like to setup a meeting to discuss what they submitted further and they have the option to let us know what items they would like to discuss including printed materials, logo, day of social media coverage, etc. We don’t guarantee any of those things but it does give us a heads up on what they are thinking. All of this allows us to spend more time to develop and strategize our main messages each week through each of our other communication channels.

We’re still working on a general project request form for requests that aren’t tied to an event, but if it goes as well as this form has, it should save us a lot of time and reduce our weekly stress.
Steve Fogg - February 18th, 2016 at 11:55 am
Hey Andrew, is there a link you can share please?
Andrew Barnes - February 18th, 2016 at 11:57 am
Of course.

This is the direct link: https://pbcraleigh.formstack.com/forms/events_announcements_serve_opportunities

But we’ll generally point people to http://www.pray.org/Forms just because it is easier to remember.