My “personal ministry” in my organization is to help our staff with their personal finances, and I am teaching a class on the subject to high schoolers right now also. One of the most difficult components to teach is Budgeting. If there was ever a skill that was so essential but so overlooked, it would have to be budgeting. (I know that’s not exclusive to budgeting… we all know we need to exercise and eat healthy, yet turning that knowledge into action is so very difficult.)
Recordkeeping and Planning are two disciplines within budgeting that take effort and practice. I was born to keep records; that comes so easily to me I can do it in my sleep. But planning—evaluating, acting on, applying—is not as easily. And that is especially true when I am meeting my financial goals. It is easy to just “slide” and let the machinery run.
Many people (if not most) manage their finances by simply evaluating available reports (either delivered bank statements, or simply viewing transactions online), rather than recording financial transactions in a log (paper, software, or online), and certainly more than evaluating and planning.
How does this relate to TntConnect?
I have found over the years that a lot of missionaries—a majority I dare say—wrestle with both recordkeeping and planning related to their financial support. It is easy to do the two easiest essentials (viewing donations online and keeping up with thank yous).
But getting to know our partners is crucial to long-term growth of our support teams. If we do not record what we know about our partners, that information drifts into oblivion. TNT, more than any other software I have ever seen, makes it easy to both (a) record tons of helpful information about our partners, and (b) through the powerful history engine, record an incalculable volume of relationship-building.
There is a new Getting to Know You resource on the TntConnect Downloads page that may really help you get to know your partners better:
The Partner Tracking Form is available for both US Letter and A4 formats.
This is a document you can use with Mail Merge. It’s helpful for printing before going on appointments so you can refresh your memory, since it is pre-filled with a lot of personal information (phone numbers and emails, birthdays and anniversary, financial commitment, Notes tab, etc.).
Bonus: The Partner Tracking Form contains new mail merge fields never available before! For example, you can now merge the picture if you have one, see all phone numbers, etc.
Other thoughts:
- You can mail merge this for just one partner by selecting Lookup | This Contact. This will turn your selected contact into the entire “Current Lookup”… perfect for mail merging one contact.
- You can modify the template if you want to. In my next blog post I will share how I created a 4×6 index card stack for a thank-a-thon I am doing this month.
Resources
- Read more about Mail Merge
- Read the original blog post on Getting to Know You (before this template was created)
- Partner Tracking Form (US Letter)
- Partner Tracking Form (A4)
- Partner-Tracking-4×6 (also helpful as an offline prayer card)
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Great resource! The 4×6 form would also be a great way to create prayer cards to have a 4×6 file box of your donors to pray for and record prayers and answers.
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You’re right! The nice thing about a printed prayer card is you can focus on prayer and not be distracted. I sure need that!
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