It’s hard to believe that Christmas is here and 2008 is coming to a close.  All of us here at ServiceU want to wish you and your families a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!  As always, it has been a joy and a privilege to work with each  and every one of you throughout this past year.  While I know that you are incredibly busy right now, I would like to take just a moment of your time to let you know about some fresh ideas that we have been brewing at ServiceU to help you, “Get People Involved”.

First, I want to take this opportunity to plug our training seminars. As I’ve mentioned before, these are designed specifically to be a resource for you. In these training seminars, you’ll be able explore all unique features that EventU has to offer. Needless to say, these seminars are a must for both new and experienced users alike.  To read more about ServiceU Training Seminars click here. 

Also, check out the short article in this edition of the UNews about the successful campaign at Yorba Linda Friends Church for year-end giving.  Andy Collins, Communications direct for YLFC, explains how they were able to use TransactU in conjunction with traditional methods to help laypeople meet their year-end giving to the church.
To read more click here.

As always, we are offering our ever popular webinars.  Our “EventU New User Training” webinar is essential for all new users to our system or for those that just want a refresher course. We’re also offering “An Intro to TransactU“ webinar. This webinar will focus on how to use our system to create beautiful yet functional web registration and donations forms and to take advantage of all that our reporting system has to offer.

Again, we hope you have a wonderful and blessed Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Warmest Regards,

Tim Whitehorn

It’s that time of year when many churches encourage attendees to consider giving a year-end gift in order to catch up on their annual giving to their church. Yorba Linda Friends Church is a big proponent of TransactU’s online giving functionality, they first offered online giving to its congregation in 2006; Today, they take in over 20% of their offerings online.

Andy Collins, communications director for YLFC says, “Each year we write a letter to our members recapping all the positive things we’ve done as a church over the last year. This gages a better reaction and makes a big church seem smaller. We can’t always announce everything as it happens throughout the year, so this is one way we center in, for instance, on a very positive junior high school trip that wasn’t mentioned to the congregation at all.”

YLFC promotes year-end giving in their bulletin, in the letter that goes out to the congregation, and in email. All forms of communication offer links to the church website where people can opt to give online.

When asked if he had advice for other churches, Collins said, “Churches that don’t offer online giving and might be afraid of the whole security issue surrounding credit cards, but because ServiceU is Level 1 PCI Compliant, there’s not need to worry. It’s all taken care of.”

“Online giving is completely worth the money—you will gain a hundred fold plus. Our goal is to supply our congregation with the means to ‘do life.’ For instance, if we need to start texting students as a means of communications, we’ll do it.

He continues, “Everyone’s life revolves around the internet. It gets to a point where you have the meet your congregation where they’re at.”

Lastly Collins adds, “You’ll see the giving go up in the 18-35 age category if you offer online giving. I don’t see how you wouldn’t.”

By Lauren Hunter - from www.ChurchTechToday.com

This December, I will be running the ever-popular webinar entitle“EventU: New User Training.” This webinar is targeted to users that have little or no experience with EventU, our event, facilities and resource scheduling software. This will be a great way for administrators to help get new users up to speed quickly and to lessen time spent in training. We will look at examples that showcase some of the special features of EventU like:

• Creating new events
• Calendars and online scheduling
• Running reports and much more…

This free webinar will be offered on 12/11 and is scheduled to last 1 hour. Again, this is designed for beginners. To sign up, follow the link below:

Thursday, December 11, 2:00 PM CST. Register here.

Brian Robison
Support Manager

Many of our customers experience great success using TransactU for online registrations and donations. Whether you need registrations for sporting events, classes, or even providing your users the ability to tithe online, TransactU can provide the answer. You may ask: How can TransactU help meet the need of my organization? The success story of Avalon Consulting is an example of how TransactU can be used to meet and exceed your goals.

Avalon Consulting represents ManeGait, a non-profit therapeutic horsemanship center. Avalon needed an online registration and donation solution for ManeGait’s annual “Gala at the ‘Gait” event. For previous Galas, registrations and donations were received by mail or in person. To maximize the fund-raising potential, Avalon decided to add an online component to this year’s Gala. ServiceU worked closely with Avalon to create and customize the online registration and donation experience. Not only was the staff of ServiceU able to guide Avalon through the process of building the registration form for the event, but they also helped build a customized web template to match the style of ManeGait’s website.

“The donations and contributions were great, and the registration form did wonders.” Thanks to the general convenience TransactU provided Avalon, registrations for the Gala saw a dramatic increase. Though much greater than expected, registrations weren’t the only thing that saw an increase. Overall fund-raising goals for the entire event were nearly doubled. More than half of the fund-raising total alone came from online registration and contributions.

This is only one example of the many success stories experienced by our customers. No matter the size of your organization, event, or fundraising goal, TransactU can work for you. ServiceU can help you rein in the potential of your organization and its goals, and make them a reality.

During this Thanksgiving season, we want to extend a warm season’s greetings and let you know how much we appreciate you and what you mean to us. As we at ServiceU look forward to the Christmas season and the New Year, I want to give you a “heads-up” about some exciting changes that will happening over the next few months.

First, in the next few months we will be releasing EventU Green. ServiceU has teamed up with Network Thermostat to bring you this award-wining product that will directly interface with your facilities HVAC system for greater utility savings in these tough economic times. To read more on this exciting product click here.

Continuing in our efforts to help you get people involved we are proud to announce a partnership with Sage Software. It is now easier than ever to implement TransactU, our online payments and donations software. Click here to read more.

Also, due to the continued success of our training seminars, we’re offering training in Charlotte (Dec. 3rd & 4th). You won’t want to miss out on this valuable opportunity to learn more about topics like creating events, donation forms, reporting, advanced administration settings, and much more. Of course, we’re continuing our ever-popular webinar, “EventU New User Training”. This webinar is essential for all new users to our system, or for those that just want a refresher course.

As always, THANK YOU for your continued patronage and have a blessed Thanksgiving.

Sincerely,

Tim Whitehorn