Finishing up a great week

An incredibly rich and busy week --

Revamped the payment process to streamline the registration form -- I think it will be much easier for people to navigate through. Lots of technical snafus to work through, but it came out pretty well. I've added a question on the order form, "Are you lay or clergy?" as I want to gather that piece of data to see who on the whole we're appealing to. Went back through the previous 100 registrations to fill in the blanks there -- so far about a third more lay people than clergy have signed up for a class.

Also revamped our fee policies. After having two people drop out of a class 30 minutes before class time, bringing us from 4 participants to 2 plus the leader and eMinistry associate, I am kind of glad that the free registration/beta-test period is coming to an end. We've given over 100 registrations free and have benefited a lot from the whole process. Now it's time to start charging a moderate fee and seeing how that impacts registration. Our fee policy is simple and clear, and it allows us to pay the leader the stipend we've committed to, even if participants drop out at the last minute. I'm hoping that paying something for a class will discourage drop-outs....but we'll see.

3 great teleclasses -- on "What Is Your Spirituality?" with Alan Akridge, "Ten Best Practices for Vestries" with Jim Adams, and "Narrative Budgeting" with Mike Stephenson. We learned a lot -- that with each of the first two classes, there was enough content for a two-session class instead of the one we scheduled, and we're revamping both of those into two-session classes for later this fall. In both of them participants felt the pace was packed (rushed) and we need to allow more time for the very interesting people who show up for these classes to connect with each other.

The third class on Narrative Budgeting proved we really do need to make the leap into web-seminars for certain class topics. Mike did a terrific job moving people from worksheet to worksheet in MSExcel, and the class got top grades in feedback, but it would have been much easier to take people through the forms online......so that's underway in terms of choosing a provider we can afford....

Lots of wonderful connections with 4 new potential leaders, 3 of whom are already scheduled to teach a class this fall -- and each of them have other great leader ideas to suggest....

Onward and upward!

Elizabeth