If you have an online giving option on your website (you do have that, right?), have you thought about what the donor sees after successfully sending money to your church?

Enter the ‘Thank You’ page.

Here are some best practices based on Hubspot’s blog article Thank You, Come Again!: Best Practices for Thank You Pages:

• Thank Them. Well, duh! Put yourself in their shoes and ask yourself what you’d like to see if you had just given money. Be sincere but not cheesy.
• Set Great Expectations. Will you send them a tax receipt? A written thank you? What are you going to do with their money? Let them know what happens next.
• Suggest They Follow You. Are you on FaceBook or Twitter? Invite them to be more involved in your ministry/cause by joining your circle of friends
• Better Yet: Suggest They Tell Their Friends. They’ve already given you a vote of confidence by their donation. Suggest they invite you into their circle of friends. Get the word out!

Don’t miss the opportunity to involve your donors in the mission & ministry of your church. People love to be a part of something bigger than themselves, and especially love being part of a ‘winning team’.

What good ideas could you add to this?

Learn Advanced Google search tricks – http://www.googleguide.com/advanced_operators_reference.html

1. Countdown Creator
2. Free Background Loops
3. WordPress Driven Church Website
4. C2.0 Poll – Is Podcasting Dead?
5. Use Metax to Tag MP4 Videos Files
6. Create Key Word Cloud
7. DIY Make Wii Remote into An Interactive WiBo
8. Presentation Tips
9. Hiring
10. Planning Center Online

This device would be excellent for anyone who has to do presentations for a living. Especially presentations that are in a conference setting.

Check out remotes.com

Also check out how you can win free gas!

It’s called ‘the sticks’ [www.thesticks.tv]

You won’t want to miss it. There are only 400 seats available so register soon to get the discount pricing!

If you are interested in supporting our ministry click the DONATE button in the right column of our website.

Grace and peace…

Nic comes to us with a back ground in graphic and print design. His real job is “Mac IT Support for Corporate Advertising” for a national grocery store chain. He says his title sounds more impressive than it really is. Nic also have experience in prepress and production art environments. When time permits he picks up freelance design jobs. Nic is a mac user, heavy user of free-ware, for media editing, audio editing, image editing, and productivity.

Nic believes every church should be using technology to their advantage, and he is excited to give you some ideas about how to do just that.

Don’t forget what Christmas is all about!

If you’ve even been curious about what information is collected when you search on Google, you’ll want to check out the “Google Search Privacy: Plain and Simple“. Trying to help someone understand what all those “cookie” files are on their machine? See the Cookie Crumbles Finalists videos.

If you’re using any of these Google tools, many of which we’ve recommended before, is nice to know some of the tweaks for sharing information in limited circles (e.g., sharing the candid photos from the missions trip with only the folks on the trip) and it’s always a good idea to understand the privacy aspects associated with various services.

Image citation: Today Is A Good Day, “Not Something You See Everyday….” Today Is a Good Day’s Photostream. 7 Dec 2005. 20 Dec 2007 .

The answer is yes!

BibleGateway can be added to both Firefox and IE 7′s toolbar search utilities. Here’s how:

In Firefox:

1. Choose “Manage Search Engines”

2. Choose “Get More Search Engines…”

3. Scroll down the page and find the “Browse through more search engines” link.

4. Type “biblegateway.com” in the search field.

5. Choose your favorite version from the list, and click “Add”

You’re ready to search BibleGateway directly from Firefox’s search box.

To do the same thing in Internet Explorer 7:

1. Choose “Find More Providers…” from the search drop down options

2. Follow the directions to “Create Your Own” – The all-capital spelling of “TEST” is important.

(BTW: http://www.biblegateway.com/quicksearch/?quicksearch=TEST&x=13&y=11 should suffice for the requested URL.)

3. Click “Install” and then “Add Provider” to complete the process.

Next time you need to search for biblical text or scripture, simply choose BibleGateway from the list of search providers, enter your search information, and hit enter.

Rather, it’s a quick note about a tool called ZIPskinny that lets you pull up demographic information about a given zip code based on census data and even compare that to other communities around you. As the folks at churchrelevance.com point out, “it is a great resource for learning more about your church’s community.”

Any tool that helps a church learn a little bit more about their community and, in turn, be better able to get out and meet needs of that community is a good thing.

[via Mister Nifty via churchrelevance.com]

Join me in congratulating the Rush family. Drop by Kevin’s blog and leave them a note in the comments.

Photo credit: techno_chic’s photostream, http://flickr.com/photos/techno_chic/

Also available for IE v6 and 7 & Safari 2.0.1 and above.

Once it is installed, highlight the text you want read to you on any website.* Then right click and find “Say It” (pictured to the right). As soon as you left click “Say it” a computerized voice will begin to read to you. It’s great for people who get tired of reading everything off of the internet. Like me.

* needs to be html code. Don’t worry over 90% of all websites are html code.