Photo Directories
Church Photo Directories
A church directory can be a great ministry tool. A church directory helps clergy and other leaders to stay connected with the congregation year-round.
Your photo directory should list the essentials such as names, addresses, and phone numbers. But there could be other information you might consider adding that could make your directory more helpful to members and staff. Maybe you can include areas in which someone serves or hobbies or interests individuals have, or maybe you can provide links to their social media accounts.
A photo directory is a great opportunity to connect your church members, especially in sizable churches where knowing everyone might be impossible. For members new and old, a directory can offer a way to put names with faces and obtain contact information.
Don’t be pushed around.
There are many photo portrait studios that will push for you to do a printed photo directory. They usually do not charge but have hard selling practices to encourage church members to purchase their portraits from the company, and these sales cover the directory costs. This process can feel awkward and usually is. Times have changed, and families simply don’t have physical photos, nor want to be pushed with hard-sell techniques to purchase photos in exchange for being in a photo directory for their church. What’s the alternative? Go digital! You can do this in-house, and it can be fun!
Online Directories
Online directories are also less expensive to produce, and you can update them easily; in real time. You can limit access to church members by requiring logins and passwords and using SSL encryption, or simply have a password-protected PDF on your website. You can also allow members to opt in and out of the digital version.
To make this possible, you can buy software, hire a photo studio or a skilled photographer in your congregation willing to donate services, or even consider doing a photo booth for a few Sundays to take your photos. You can also design the pages to send to your printer and/or post online. If someone wants a printed hard copy photobook, they can order it online at a print-on-demand online retailer and pay for it themselves, or you can order a handful of these printed books and keep them in your church office and sell them individually. You can print via artifactuprising.com, blurb.com, shutterfly.com, or lulu.com among others. Utilize online templates from these online companies, or create your own layout. If you are an InDesign user, just search online for photo directories or yearbook templates. If you have a spreadsheet of church members and want a quick and easy way to create a directory using mail merge features in InDesign, here’s a tutorial: http://indesignsecrets.com/creating-a-contact-sheet-or-yearbook-page-in-indesign.php.
You can also subscribe to an online directory service for a fee. With an online directory through an online directory service, members can also change personal information and add photos themselves. Suggested online directory services:
Reviews
The Rev. Robert Beazley, from St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in New Orleans, reports: "instantchurchdirectory.com looks outdated and not worth it. I was very hesitant to invest time into it, but it's been worth it. If you sign up for annual plans, it's only $6.65 a month. Members are able to download the app and have secured access to a digital directory. Administrators have the ability to download PDFs of the directory and easily have them printed. Mail-merge .csv are downloadable for easy mailings. Its simplicity is deceiving."