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Diocese Politics (Bishop takes Pawn)
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Keep in mind, I have a sense of humor and some of this is a little funny to me. I am retired. I worked fulltime for 42 years as a computer programmer/analyst for various companies. Jumped into web programming around year 2000. Tried creating multiple websites after hours and on weekends while still working fulltime. I now use a worldwide website hosting company with a powerful business account. Did a few volunteer duties after retirement to keep busy but those things had little value to anyone. Decided to concentrate on web programming which had the possibility of providing lots of value to a large group of people. Decided my software would be FREE. Saw the need for church mass volunteer scheduling software in my church. It appeared they were doing that manually for many years and our church was large (like 1000 families). Wrote the software which took like 3 months then approached my church to possibly use it. They first refused, so started demoing to other churches and got good suggestions and interest in it. I added lots of improvements and automated scheduling. Part of the demoing effort included showing the Sioux Falls Diocese my software in hopes they would reccomend churches use my FREE church mass volunteer scheduling software. That person liked the software but proceeded to scold me for creating it without checking with them before writing it, because the Diocese had mandated all Catholic churches in the Diocese to use their pick of software for everything. Turns out they had picked one company to provide all church related software. That company had church mass volunteer scheduling software but each church had to pay extra monthly fees to use it, they planned on creating a free version of their volunteer scheduling software. Came back and demoed to my church again and they agreed to use it but would not allow congregation access (which is where lots of benefits could have been seen and takes the workload off the church staff and puts it on the congregation). So after the second 3 month schedule was created, I figured my church would be going with the mandated software soon so I insisted the church needed to slowly introduce congregation access benefits with full congregation access in 6 months. That would be the only way, the congregation would see the benefit of using my software versus the mandated software. They immediately stopped using my software (but the schedule was already done for the next 3 months and they did use that). The mandated software company did create the free version of church mass volunteer scheduling software. Meanwhile any emails I sent to various Catholic churches in my Diocese were being logged and read by Diocese staff. I found this out after being told by the person I demoed to at the Diocese to stop using her name in my marketing materials. I tried placing an ad in the monthly Bishop's Bulletin magazine but was denied because of the software mandate and their agenda to use their software pick. I had the same outcome trying to place an ad in the Rapid City Diocese monthly magazine except they don't have a mandate but do have an agenda to use some other software - not the same software company as Sioux Falls Diocese. So South Dakota Catholic churches are mostly off limits for me. I am guessing most people are NOT aware of ALL the politics in church software selection. I have since opened my FREE software up to any USA Christian church. I am still in the marketing phase. It is tough to market because I do NOT charge anything and advertising costs lots of money. Hoping for word of mouth. Please give my software a try. I think you really would like it. Thanks... Gary
I can be reached by email addressed to webmaster@mychurchstuff.com