Everything You Need to Know About Church Settings

Overview

This article provides an in-depth review of the settings available for churches in their CarePortal dashboards. To access church settings, the Primary Point Person will login to CarePortal and click on the Settings tab in the left menu.

Intended Audience

CarePortal Churches: Primary Point Person

Included in This Article

• Church Information & Demographics 
• Adding or Removing Church Leaders & Roles
• Using Church-Vetted Requests Needs
• Becoming a Connecting Church
• Enabling your Church Fund
• Response Team Settings

Church Information & Demographics

• Church Name
  The name of your church, as it appears here, will be exactly how your church name is displayed throughout your CarePortal Dashboard, Public Page, Responder Sign-Up Form, and when someone from your church responds to a request. Your church's initial Response Team will use this name as well until someone changes the team name.
• Physical Address
  The address you enter will be used to determine which approved CarePortal requests you'll receive a notification for. Each individual Response Team can change this address to a different location so they get notified of different requests.
• Phone & Website Information
  This information may be used by your local Network Leaders to provide support to you and your leaders.
• Affiliation, Average Attendance, Location Type & Economic Conditions
  The selections you choose here do not influence how you use the CarePortal platform in any way, but they allow Network Leaders to identify trends and recognize opportunities to build diverse networks, making sure the whole church and its many gifts and talents are represented.
• Church Logo
  The image you select for your church logo will automatically appear in several locations throughout your Dashboard and use of the CarePortal platform, including your Public Page and Responder Sign-Up Form. Each team has the ability to add their own logo in their own Dashboards as well.
  
  

Adding or Removing Church Leaders & Roles

Church Leaders have designated roles to help manage your church and each of your teams within CarePortal. Please review this article for a breakdown of the available roles applicable to Church Leaders. You can manage your Church Leaders from the Leaders tab on your Settings Page.

Add a New Leader

1. Click the + Add New Leader button

2. Search for their email to check if they already have a CarePortal account.

3. If they don't, click the “+” button next to the email field to create one.

4. Fill out their information and check Receive System Emails so they’ll get request alerts and account updates (this can be adjusted later).

5. Select the appropriate role for them and click Submit.

Add or Remove Roles

• Click the three dots icon next to the leader you want to edit.
• Click Remove Role or Add Role.
• Some roles may not be able to be removed based on your settings, such as Church Needs Leader or Connecting Church Leader (you would need to adjust those settings or add another person to the required role before removing the leader)
• The person serving as your church's Primary Point Person can only be removed or changed by your local Network Leader or CarePortal Support. 
  
  

Using Church-Vetted Requests

Required Leader Role: At Least one Church-Vetted Requests Leader

This option will allow your church to submit needs into CarePortal, allowing your own Response Teams to serve and help. In order to turn this setting on, you will need to give the role of Church-Vetted Requests Leader to one of your leaders. This role can be added to additional Church Leaders or changed at any time.

Once you turn this setting on, the person designated as your Church-Vetted Requests Leader will be able to submit requests directly through their dashboard for team members to see and respond to. Church Leaders with the roles of Primary Point Person, Pastor, and Connecting Church Leader will also be able to submit requests from their dashboard that would need to be approved by the Church-Vetted Requests Leader before they are sent to Church Responders.

Learn more about using Church-Vetted Requests 

Becoming a Connecting Church

Required Leader Role: At Least one Connecting Church Leader

Approved Connecting Churches are positioned to use community responder resources to meet requests. This could include physical items offered or purchased by community members for a specific request, as well as financial resources offered through the CarePortal platform.

Once you enable and save this setting, your local Network Leaders will be alerted and asked to contact you to discuss the next steps for completing some additional training and answering any remaining questions you have.

Learn more about becoming a Connecting Church

Enabling your CarePortal Fund

Enabling a CarePortal Fund allows a church to invite anyone to make tax-deductible donations that Church Leaders can use to help meet CarePortal requests, without necessarily requiring the church to have or use its own budgeted resources or online giving processes. Donations can be made by congregation members, community members, local businesses, and even strangers and are available for the church to use in meeting the vetted needs of families through open CarePortal requests.

For more information on this setting, refer to our CarePortal Fund Training, FAQs, and Best Practices article!

Response Team Settings

To see more information regarding how you can customize the radius, member approval process, response process, and request type for each team, please see this article.