Pastoral Care
An Elvanto Guide
www.elvanto.com
Pastoral Care is just a fancy term for one
way the church shows love to people.
Let’s see how Elvanto can empower your church’s
Pastoral Carers ?
- The Elvanto Team
Contents
Introduction
1
Setting up Elvanto for Pastoral Care
2
Keeping Records
3
Reporting
5
Follow up
7
Introduction
Looking after other people is a super important job. This guide steps through the ways Elvanto helps
you care for others more effectively and efficiently.
It covers, among other things:
• Keeping notes
• Identifing people who may need help
• Contacting people
While every effort has been made to make this guide comprehensive, it’s still only supposed to be
a guide. Experiment to find extra ways Elvanto can help your church (and let us know if you find
anything that’ll help other churches ? )
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Setting up Elvanto for Pastoral Care
A good foundation makes everything easier.
In order to get the most out of Elvanto, you should consider how the following features are set up:
People Categories
Each church cares differently for different people. For example, newcomers to the church will be
ministered to differently to how a regular church-goer will.
Setting up People Categories is vital for managing Pastoral Care well.
Check out this link for a more detailed look at setting up People Categories.
Custom Fields
Custom Fields vary between People Categories, and become more important as the people in the
categories become more connected to the church.
For the purposes of Pastoral Care, it may be a good idea to set up Custom Fields for Baptism Date,
Last Pastoral Visit, and Spiritual Gifting. That said, there are no limits on what you can do with
Custom Fields: you can even record what everyone’s favourite football team is!
Learn how to set up custom fields at this page.
Skip forward to collecting information to fill custom fields at this link.
Groups
Groups are often where the rubber meets the road for Pastoral Care because of the extra level of
intimacy found in smaller gatherings.
For the purpose of keeping information up to date, make sure you’ve set up group categories and
the reminders to group leaders to submit the fields for reporting.
For a more in-depth look at setting up groups, go to this page.
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Keeping Records
Once you’ve set up Elvanto for Pastoral Care, all the infrastructure is ready to store your information.
Here’s two ways to quickly build up your records:
Forms
Forms are the easiest way to collect information from people in your church en masse. This method
of gathering information is particularly useful for new custom fields.
When you set up a new custom field, send out a form for people to fill in with all the areas you’d like
to keep a record of. Forms can automatically update people’s information so you won’t have to go
through and manually enter all of this information yourself.
For example, if you’ve just set up a custom field for Spiritual Gifting, send out a form that includes
a link to an online quiz and a question about what their Spiritual Gifting might be (according to the
quiz).
Visit this page to learn more about making forms in Elvanto.
Notes
Notes are useful for storing information about people that isn’t anywhere else in the system. For
example, you might want to record when a person is released from hospital, or any significant
pastoral care issues.
Because notes are often of a private nature, they’re able to be locked down and categorized, as well
as assigned and scheduled to be followed up by a specific person in the system.
Access Notes through a persons’ profile.
Note Categories
Note Categories allow you to sort notes, but more importantly, are a great way to manage security,
because you can assign different access permissions to each category.
Learn more about categorizing notes at this link.
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Private Notes
The option of private notes is particularly handy for notes that contain extra sensitive information
– like any high-level pastoral care information or specific security needs. Private notes creates an
extra level of restriction for your system – only people you specifically grant access to will be able
to see them. We recommend minimizing how many people have access to these notes; for more
general limits, use a note category.
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Reporting
Reporting allows you to keep track of all sorts of trends. Watching these trends often indicates which
people may need extra pastoral support.
Where the data comes from
For any reporting to work, the software needs data to report on. In some cases, it’s merely data
you entered when you first added the person to Elvanto: Birthdays, for example. For special fields,
you’ll need to have collected all the extra data before you can report accurately. And for things like
attendance, you’ll need to be keeping records of who came when, and where, to get an accurate
snapshot of people in your church.
In group situations, the Group Leader is usually responsible for submitting all the relevant data. Set
automatic reminders to make sure your leaders remember to submit.
For more on how collecting attendance works, have a look at this article.
Reporting
Reporting is the easiest way to bring large amounts of information from all over Elvanto into one
place. To get the most out of reporting, familiarize yourself with these features:
Scheduling Reports
Reports, once set up, can be automatically emailed to people on a regular basis. To do so, simply
find the report on the reports page, and click on the ’email’ link underneath the report title. This will
then give you a variety of options about how frequently, at what time, and to whom you want the
email sent.
We recommend scheduling reports done on a regular basis, such as a birthdays and anniversaries
report or an attendance report.
Learn how to schedule reports at this page.
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Advanced Reports
While we hope you’ll find the Built-in reports regularly useful, and other reports easy to set up,
sometimes you just need a more complicated report. Comprehensive Reports allow you to group
multiple reports together. Use this feature for any reports you regularly view together.
Learn how to set up new comprehensive reports at this link.
Advanced logic allows you to further narrow down your searches. For example, a ‘High-priority
Follow Up’ report might specify people who attended church weekly last month but haven’t attended
this month, and people who gave more than $500 last month, who’ve given less than $100 this
month (Use the logic: (1 AND 2) OR (3 AND 4)). Reports like this will indicate people who either
need Pastoral Care, or feel disengaged from your church.
See how filter logic works in Elvanto at this link.
People Views
People Views are just like Reports (in fact, they’re set up exactly the same), except that People
Views allow you mass manage any people that show up in the results. This is really handy for
sending emails, or adding people into People Flows.
By default, all Reports will be saved as a Report and a People View, but you can select which one
you wish to create when you set up any Report or People View.
Reports Versus People Views
When you set up a report, the default is that you set up a report and a People View. People
Views are the same as a report, except that you can Mass Manage anyone who appears in the
report’s results. We recommend setting up a People View with any report that generates results
you intend to move into a People Flow.
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Follow up
Follow up is where people doing Pastoral Care will spend the bulk of their time on Elvanto. Let’s look
at some of the ways Elvanto helps you follow up more quickly and efficiently ?
People Flows
People Flows are a great way to keep track of you who are following up, and how well you are doing
it.
Setting Up A People Flow
First, go to ‘People’, selecting ‘Flows’ in the drop down menu. Add a new flow. The set-up page for
a People Flow allows you to set someone over everything in that flow, and define who can be added
to it.
Once you’ve made a flow, you still need to add steps. For a basic follow up, you only need one
step: Call the person. Or you can set the step to SMS them automatically. If your follow up process
is more complicated, you can set up a People Flow with as many steps as you like, even accounting
for different responses from people if a different action is required.
For any step that requires someone to do something (i.e. any step that isn’t automated), we
recommend assigning a Step Admin. This is someone to make sure that the step isn’t getting
overfilled. Depending on the amount of people in the flow, the Step Admin isn’t necessarily
responsible for actioning everyone on that step. You can even assign multiple admins for a step. For
example, a Follow Up People Flow might have Youth and Adults in it. Assign two admins: one for
the Youth, and one for the Adults, so that no one ends up being called by a complete stranger.
For more about setting up steps in a People Flow, take a look at this link.
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Using a People Flow
Once you’ve set up your People Flow and started adding people to it, you can perform action for
those people. There’s two main ways to do so. The first is to select people from the People Flow
individually, and perform actions as you do what’s required in the step. The next is to select – using
the select all checkbox at the top left of the table – everyone in a step (you can also deselect
individuals once you’ve selected everyone), and Mass Manage them as you do what’s required in
the step.
Learn how to add people to a People Flow at this link.
Communication
Elvanto offers a variety of methods of communication. Mostly, though, you’ll be using email or SMS.
Just remember that you can’t communicate with someone you don’t have contact information for.
If communication in Elvanto hasn’t already been set up, see our Account Setup pages for setting up
email, and setting up SMS.
If you just want to say something to someone, often the easiest way to do so is through People.
Search for an individual by name, Group, or anything else you can remember about them. Or, if
you’re wanting to contact people because of a report, why not use the related People View? Once
you’ve found those you want to contact, click the ‘Contact People’ button up the top.
For a step-by-step guide to searching people in Elvanto, visit this page.
For a step-by-step guide to contacting people through Elvanto, visit this page.
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Pastoral Care
An Elvanto Guide
© 2017 Elvanto Pty Ltd
Updated on 5th December, 2016
We want you to be able to use this guide for training, so feel free to distribute as a
whole or in part as needed.
https://www.elvanto.com
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