Insights
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How to Conduct an Effective Project Retrospective
When a big project finishes, it’s easy to get caught up in what comes next, quickly shifting gears to focus on the next project. But there’s a cost to doing that too quickly without taking the time to look back at the work you’ve just completed. A project retrospective is an opportunity to discuss what…
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Integrating Mobile Giving into Your Donor Strategy
Mobile engagement has exploded in the last ten years and shows no sign of slowing. With the move to mobile, the internet has become ubiquitous. And with ever-present internet comes increased opportunities to reach your audience and help them move from curious passerby to committed donor. Mobile giving more than tripled (9% -> 28%) as…
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8 Technology Trends Ministries Should Be Paying Attention To
In 1965, Gordon Moore posited that the number of transistors per microchip would double every year. While this prediction has changed over time, it continues to guide forecasts for hardware development. Hardware isn’t our specialty here at Agathon. But it’s easy to see how we can extrapolate Moore’s Law to the advancements in software as…
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How Nonprofits Should Evaluate Digital Ministry Success
Measuring success as a for-profit company is pretty straightforward. At the end of the day there should be, well, profit. But if your organization’s primary reason for existence isn’t to make money but to make change, how do you know you’re executing your strategy well? In this article, I’m going to outline a simple framework…
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Protect Your Ministry Work by Futureproofing Your Digital Strategy
Change is inevitable, and it can challenge your ministry’s focus on its digital strategy. Some change is cataclysmic—founders retire or funding dries up some years. Other change is less dramatic—key staff seek greener pastures or the landscape shifts around your ministry initiatives. Whether big or small, change threatens the work to discover, document, and pursue…
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5 Reasons Web Accessibility Matters for Ministries
It’s 2021, and web accessibility is no longer a “nice to have” feature of your website or mobile app. By now, we know how poorly designed software impacts users with a variety of limitations or disabilities. And ongoing court decisions show the expansion of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to include online accessibility is…
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‘re Building the App Your Users Actually Need
How do you know whether the app you’re building is the one your users need? This is a common challenge for organizations doing digital ministry. It’s easy to get caught up in your own excitement, what best serves internal stakeholders, or what users think they want. And those don’t always align with building what users…
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What COVID Means for the Future of Ministry
A year ago, COVID-19 was declared a worldwide pandemic. Schools, churches, and other organizations were shut down. Work moved online. And life as we knew it changed drastically. At the time, most of us thought we were looking at a few weeks—possibly a couple of months—of these shutdowns. As it became clear they would last…
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What Your Ministry Needs to Know About Leveraging User Research Data
“How do I turn all my ministry’s raw data into something usable? How do I organize and store it? Do I need to be able to refer back to it once my user research is complete?” We’re going to answer these questions and more. But we have two caveats: We’re going to assume you already…
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How to Pitch a Comprehensive Strategy to a Reluctant Board
Most projects don’t require board level or top leadership approval. When they do, it’s because they’re ambitious and require strategic decisions and/or exceptional funding. And because the stakes are high, boards can be cautious or downright reluctant to proceed. Let’s talk about how to get past this reluctance to approval because chances are you’ve been…