All of us here at ServiceU would like to wish you and yours a Happy New Year. May 2009 bring you nothing but the best.  As always, we would like to thank you for your continued patronage, and we are looking forward to serving you in the coming year.

It’s hard to believe that Christmas is here and 2008 is coming to a close.  All of us here at ServiceU want to wish you and your families a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!  As always, it has been a joy and a privilege to work with each  and every one of you throughout this past year.  While I know that you are incredibly busy right now, I would like to take just a moment of your time to let you know about some fresh ideas that we have been brewing at ServiceU to help you, “Get People Involved”.

First, I want to take this opportunity to plug our training seminars. As I’ve mentioned before, these are designed specifically to be a resource for you. In these training seminars, you’ll be able explore all unique features that EventU has to offer. Needless to say, these seminars are a must for both new and experienced users alike.  To read more about ServiceU Training Seminars click here. 

Also, check out the short article in this edition of the UNews about the successful campaign at Yorba Linda Friends Church for year-end giving.  Andy Collins, Communications direct for YLFC, explains how they were able to use TransactU in conjunction with traditional methods to help laypeople meet their year-end giving to the church.
To read more click here.

As always, we are offering our ever popular webinars.  Our “EventU New User Training” webinar is essential for all new users to our system or for those that just want a refresher course. We’re also offering “An Intro to TransactU“ webinar. This webinar will focus on how to use our system to create beautiful yet functional web registration and donations forms and to take advantage of all that our reporting system has to offer.

Again, we hope you have a wonderful and blessed Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Warmest Regards,

Tim Whitehorn

It’s that time of year when many churches encourage attendees to consider giving a year-end gift in order to catch up on their annual giving to their church. Yorba Linda Friends Church is a big proponent of TransactU’s online giving functionality, they first offered online giving to its congregation in 2006; Today, they take in over 20% of their offerings online.

Andy Collins, communications director for YLFC says, “Each year we write a letter to our members recapping all the positive things we’ve done as a church over the last year. This gages a better reaction and makes a big church seem smaller. We can’t always announce everything as it happens throughout the year, so this is one way we center in, for instance, on a very positive junior high school trip that wasn’t mentioned to the congregation at all.”

YLFC promotes year-end giving in their bulletin, in the letter that goes out to the congregation, and in email. All forms of communication offer links to the church website where people can opt to give online.

When asked if he had advice for other churches, Collins said, “Churches that don’t offer online giving and might be afraid of the whole security issue surrounding credit cards, but because ServiceU is Level 1 PCI Compliant, there’s not need to worry. It’s all taken care of.”

“Online giving is completely worth the money—you will gain a hundred fold plus. Our goal is to supply our congregation with the means to ‘do life.’ For instance, if we need to start texting students as a means of communications, we’ll do it.

He continues, “Everyone’s life revolves around the internet. It gets to a point where you have the meet your congregation where they’re at.”

Lastly Collins adds, “You’ll see the giving go up in the 18-35 age category if you offer online giving. I don’t see how you wouldn’t.”

By Lauren Hunter - from www.ChurchTechToday.com

Are you interested in learning how to use the ServiceU system? Every year ServiceU offers many training classes around the country. The ServiceU training seminars are the one stop shop for learning how to use our products. These training classes cover everything you need to know about EventU and TransactU. You can be a brand new users or an experienced power user, we cover it all. We want to offer more classes in 2009 but we need your help selecting locations. It would be very helpful to us if you could complete this short survey form.
Click Here for the ServiceU Training Survey.

Comments from some customers:

Kathy Short from Calvary Church said “I thought the training was great! I really did learn so many helpful tips!!”

Heather Burke from Covenant Church said “I really enjoyed the training. It was very thorough. I realize when I am working in the application that I have a great grasp of how to get around and schedule the items I need scheduled and that’s thanks to the training. It has helped me tremendously.”

Here are a few topics we cover:

• Create events
• Editing events
• Create registration forms
• Create donation forms
• Run reports
• Customize calendars
• Newsletters
• Create resources and rooms
• Create setup forms
• Setup coordinators

I hope we see you there!

This December, I will be running the ever-popular webinar entitle“EventU: New User Training.” This webinar is targeted to users that have little or no experience with EventU, our event, facilities and resource scheduling software. This will be a great way for administrators to help get new users up to speed quickly and to lessen time spent in training. We will look at examples that showcase some of the special features of EventU like:

• Creating new events
• Calendars and online scheduling
• Running reports and much more…

This free webinar will be offered on 12/11 and is scheduled to last 1 hour. Again, this is designed for beginners. To sign up, follow the link below:

Thursday, December 11, 2:00 PM CST. Register here.

Brian Robison
Support Manager