Business will save us! (Mollie)

I keep a Google News Alert out on the word “Lutheran” which yields many amazingly boring stories about church fundraisers and basketball games. But one story, a news release, caught my eye the other day:

CHARLESTON, S.C., Feb. 3 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Blackbaud, Inc. (Nasdaq: BLKB) today announced that The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS) will partner with the company on a multi-year project to change the organization’s strategic approaches to constituent relationship management, financial management, and online collaboration. With the aid of Blackbaud’s solutions and services, the LCMS will develop new business processes, procedures, and information systems to support a holistic view of the constituent.

It’s always nice when a press release reminds you of the, well, Inc. in LCMS, Inc. And I find it very funny that the C in CRM has changed from customer relationship management to constituent. That’s something that’s happened industry-wide but it tells you about the manner in which Synod operates. It treats its operations like a business.

It does sort of force the question of how that business is being run at the executive level. I mean, I don’t believe in judging “the church” by business standards. But if you did . . . how is it going? Or let’s just look at Ablaze(TM) and how much money is being spent on the program, how little is being raised in its support, and how ineffective it is. I wonder if LCMS, INC. thinks that CRM is the answer.

More from Dan at Necessary Roughness.

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