Recently I caught up with Jeff Hook, the president and CEO of Fellowship Technologies, to talk with him about what’s on the horizon for their company. Fellowship Technologies is the fastest-growing, 100% web-based, church management software company. Their solution is used by churches of all shapes and sizes across the country. (They also happen to be a site sponsor of TonyMorganLive.com which obviously makes them pretty cool.)
TONY: Give us a brief overview of your background and then share the history of how Fellowship Technologies got started.
JEFF: Prior to starting Fellowship Technologies, I spent most of my career in enterprise software and management consulting. Fellowship Technologies got it start out of a desire by Fellowship Church to divest itself of some leading edge software it had written to replace its then current church management system. I raised money from outside investors, bought the intellectual property from the church and launched the company in January 2004 with Fellowship Church being our first customer.
TONY: What would you say are the key benefits Fellowship One offers churches today, as well as can you give us a sneak peek at what’s coming next?
JEFF: In this economic environment, one of the key benefits is the fact that we are a Software as a Service (SaaS). With a Software as a Service, implementation is quicker than building servers and primarily revolves around training, process design and data conversion. Also, many benefits are derived from the ease of use of the system. Because our user interface is browser-based, the casual user can get to the information they need quickly, without much training and from anywhere they can get to the Internet, even their mobile phone! Finally I will mention that I believe our track record indicates how innovative our developers are. Fellowship Technologies was the first ChMS vendor to offer a check-in system. It is integrated to all activities and is still arguably the best in the industry. We were first to provide a closed loop process for integrated activity registration and check-in. We brought the church other firsts like integrated small group management, online giving and contact management.
As for new things, we have a new look and feel for the main portion of the system that makes it really easy to use. We are also diligently working on new Groups functionality through a joint development project with four of our more innovative church partners. This Groups capability will be foundational in how we support activities, resource management, curriculum management and social networks. We also have underway a data warehousing project that will allow our customers to write their own reports as well as perform analytics on aggregated data to support better decision-making.
TONY: In the past, I’ve heard you emphasize the need for churches to have a data management strategy. Do you really think tracking and managing data translates into changed lives?
JEFF: Absolutely! Data represents information; information represents people. Churches can make better decisions to help support changed lives through better information. However, you know the old computer adage: garbage in, garbage out. If you roll-up incomplete or inaccurate data, you get bad data; and that is worse than no information at all.
TONY: Your annual conference is labeled the Dynamic Church Conference. How do you define a “dynamic church”?
JEFF: My definition of a dynamic church is one that is alive and changing all the time. A church is really the people in the church. If lives are being transformed, then they are continually changing. Improvement cannot happen without change. People who are truly alive are always learning and improving. Thus a dynamic church is made up of dynamic people!
TONY: Here’s maybe the most important question. Will the Cowboys make the playoffs?
JEFF: Tony, I am no prognosticator when it comes to professional sports but I’m hopeful. After the loss to the Steelers, it can only happen if we win the remaining games of a pretty tough schedule. But with a lot of prayer, perhaps . . . :)
My husband interviewed for this company , he was very interested in the technologies they were using and the kind of business they do. But unfortunately he was not selected :(