2010 has brought a lot of changes here at Church Marketing Sucks and with our nonprofit parent, the Center for Church Communication (CFCC). We’ve launched new projects, we’ve cleaned up old ones and we’ve tried to get organized. So with the new year coming we wanted to recap our accomplishments this year.
5) Annual Report
We took a big step toward improved accountability in 2010 by releasing our first annual report. It recaps the accomplishments of 2009 and summarizes our financials going back to the beginning in 2006. In reality it’s not that exciting, but offering that transparency and accountability is very important to us.
4) People Power
2010 saw a vast improvement in plugging into the power of people. We still have a long way to go, but we made great strides with the launch of the Regional Network Coordinators. A few things have come out of that group, including a pair of project catalysts, a forthcoming book called Outspoken, an little international flair, and lots of blog posts and ideas. We certainly don’t have all the answers, so we’re excited any time we can plug in people who know more than we do.
3) Redesign
After way too long we finally redesigned Church Marketing Sucks and the Center for Church Communication sites. We upgraded our back end and completely redesigned the front end. It’s nice to have a new look and even nicer to have improved functionality. It’s hard to believe the kind of “innovations” we didn’t even have working only a year ago (like scheduling posts!?).
2) Church Marketing Directory
One of the major projects we launched in 2010 was the Church Marketing Directory. This project started as an idea back in 2006 and took years and several failed attempts before we were able to get something off the ground. In a nutshell it’s a directory of resources to help churches do marketing. It’s been slowly and steadily growing throughout the year as more and more resources have been added.
And the top CFCC news item of the year…
1) Firestarter
Another project that finally got off the ground in 2010 (thanks to more people power) was an initiative to recognize churches that are excelling in brilliant communication: Firestarter. We recognized an initial batch of churches in 2010 and this will become an annual thing. We want to put the spotlight on smart thinking in church marketing and we hope that creativity will spread.
So that’s 2010 for Church Marketing Sucks and the Center for Church Communication. It’s been a good year. Thank you. We hope to do even more to help the church’s courageous storytellers in 2011.
