6 Tools to Manage Church Events and Facilities

Nearly every church in America has a facility; as such, these facilities have been entrusted to us to properly steward. Facility Stewardship is a combination of effective utilization, scheduling and planning combined with the care, maintenance, preventive maintenance and life cycle planning.

Here are six tools (three of which are free for your ministry) to help you be a better steward of your facilities, and mange your events like a pro.

1. Prevent double booking events and rooms and over-promising on resources with an event scheduler.

Think of the number of events that happen in your church in a given year. Ensuring that these events don’t overlap on days and times can require a lot of coordination. To add to the challenges of sharing and managing your event space, you also likely have a number of event resources to manage. Without knowing that a projector or a stack of chairs are needed that night for a meeting in the sanctuary, a ministry leader may move them to another room for a children’s choir practice in the youth room.

You can prevent this with a good event scheduling tool, like the one from eSPACE that integrates with Servant Keeper Online Office. Your entire team, or just your coordinator, will be able to easily reserve rooms and resources. This will provide everyone with the assurance that what they’ll have what they need at the time of their events, plus help give everyone some accountability for keeping spaces tidy after they’re done using them.

2. Make facility upkeep faster, and divide the load with work order management.

You likely have a process in place for getting repairs made at your church, from calling your handy-man church member, to keeping a running list of repairs for a church work day. But is there a way for you to ensure the job is getting done in a timely manner, and one person is not feeling overwhelmed with tasks?

With Work Order Management provided by eSPACE, you can quickly and easily create and assign work orders. If you have a leaking sink, you can get in Servant Keeper and quickly search for anyone with plumbing skills. Then, through your eSPACE integration, you can quickly assign that task to someone in your ministry, and even allow others to submit work orders as they find issues throughout the building. Then stay in the loop with alerts and reminders throughout the repair process.

3. Reduce heating and cooling costs, and keep your spaces comfortable with automated HVAC integration.

What would your deacons say if they no longer needed to show up three hours before events and return after to just to adjust the thermostat? How much money could you save if you eliminated the possibility of someone forgetting to do so? With eSPACE’s integrated HVAC system, you can schedule your heating and air conditioning to come on and shut off based on your scheduled events. This auto-adjusting not only saves time and money, but helps to ensure everyone is always comfortable.

4. Plan ahead and save for future expenses with the Lifecycle Calculator.

You can prevent financial stress on your ministry by planning ahead for future expenses. Imagine having a tool that helps you to know how much money you need to be putting away now to pay for the roof you’re likely going to need in 15 to 20 years, for example. The free lifecycle calculator from eSpace is a tool designed to help churches be better stewards of their money, by helping them to avoid financial crunches that can slow down ministry from happening. Access the free lifecycle calculator here.

5. Learn 5 intentional steps for planning your church events from an expert in eSPACE’s free ebook.

Need help getting started with event planning? eSPACE is sharing their eBook, 5 Intentional Steps to Planning an Event at Your Church Facility. Download the eBook to learn more about:

• Coordinating resources and rooms.
• Scheduling multiple events at one time.
• Leveraging technology to make communication easier.

6. Try eSPACE at your church for free for 30 days.

The best way to learn about how your church can benefit from event and facility management tools is to try them out for free for 30 days. Servant Keeper customers on the cloud with Online Office will receive a 10% discount. Sign up for the free trial here today.