If you communicate with parents of children in your ministry you know how important it is to get them the right information in a timely and efficient way. Our most recent release helps your ministry do just that!
Consistent, Responsible, and In Control.
With the improvements to parent communication in Realm:
- Your staff and group leaders will be able to consistently and responsibly communicate with children and their parents or guardians
- Parents or guardians of children in your ministry will have complete control over how their family receives communication from your church
Parents in your ministry can decide who and how they receive communication for their child(ren).
You may have a household with two parents (mom and dad) and perhaps mom is the one who should get all of the communication for their child(ren) that is sent from your church. Now in Realm parents can dictate which one of the parents gets the communication. They can also provide an email for their child(ren) if they would like for them to receive communication or if their child(ren) are 18 years old or older but have a family position of “child” in Realm.
As the church admin, when you add a new family member into Realm with the Family Position of “Child”, a new field appears for Parent/Guardian Contact. Realm will default to the primary contacts for that family. However, you can add other contacts, such as grandparents, to be a contact for that child or remove a parent/guardian contact if needed. There must be at least one name selected as the Parent/Guardian contact for each child profile. Realm gives you the choice to add a child email as well.
Parents and guardians now have more control over receiving communications from their child’s groups. When choosing their notification preferences, they will see a section that allows them to select which children they want to receive communication for. This comes in handy when you have only one parent who consistently checks their email address and wants to be the one notified.
Parents can consistently receive all communication for groups their child(ren) participate in.
Sometimes a parent receives communication from Realm about groups that their children are in, but then other times they may hear about it secondhand. This makes them hesitant to engage with Realm because it is confusing. Parents in your ministry may also have concerns about information being sent directly to their child and being unable to monitor it. Parents need to be able to see all communication sent to their children, and now they can do that.
Group Leaders are better equipped to send communication to parents.
Your group leaders may regularly communicate to parents about upcoming commitments for a group their child(ren) participate in. They use the Realm Connect app for most of the communication but it only sends emails to the children on the roster and not the parents. Most of the children don’t have an email on their profile, so your leader is forced to create an email list outside of Realm and communicate that way. With the Parent Communication feature now in Realm, your leader can count on Realm to be the sole communication tool and can be confident parents will receive any communication sent.
With the new release, group leaders can now see a list of Parents/Guardians and who their child is right within their group.
When group leaders in your church send emails from their group roster, Realm now sends the emails to any parent/guardian who’s listed on the child’s profile or has elected to receive communication for their child. Group leaders will see a notification at the top of the ‘Send Email’ inbox indicating that Parent/guardian contacts will also receive it.
Key Benefits
In summary, here are the key benefits:
For Group Leaders
- Ability to communicate with parents through the Realm Connect mobile app
For Administrators
- Eliminates the need to set up additional groups for parents to ensure parents receive information
- No longer need to pull lists or create custom queries to send emails on behalf of group leaders to parents
For Parents
- Will see all communications to their child(ren)
- Gives them control over how communications are received for their family
- Ability to select which parent/guardian contact receives communication sent to their child(ren)
- Can elect to add a child email if they want their child(ren) to still receive communications in addition to parent/guardians or for individuals over 18 years of age who have a family position of “child”
Not only does this improvement to parent communication make it easier for you and your leaders to communicate with parents, but it also empowers parents in your ministry to take control of who and how they receive communications. It also gives you the confidence that communication is reaching the right parent, and can help increase engagement from your parents because they are more in control of the communications they receive from your church.
Learn more about this release in the Release Notes.
Lily joined the ACST team in 2020. She spent six years working at a large church in Atlanta, GA, serving as the Business Systems Analyst. Lily understands the mission and challenges of the church. She spent her time in ministry utilizing Realm to help solve those challenges. She is passionate about helping our Ministry Partners leverage technology to fulfill their mission and grow their ministry impact.
