Founded: 1990
Location: Peoria, IL
Denomination: Non-Denominational
Weekly Attendance: 5,000
Campuses: 4
Staff: 84
Favorite Feature:
Batch Manager Tool

History
Inviting people to church has been a part of the culture at Northwoods Community Church since its founding, and their desire to see people come to know Jesus as their savior remains constant. With their growth, that desire has expanded from just serving the Peoria community to planting churches throughout Illinois and internationally. In 2017, they introduced a new vision to plant 20 churches regionally and 3,000 churches globally by 2030.
Challenge
Training the next generation of church leaders and planters is a priority at Northwoods, but making that priority possible has many challenges. To plant churches, both locally and internationally, Northwoods needed donor support. And to maintain extensive and sometimes complicated donor records and keep donors up to date with progress, Northwoods needed volunteers. After outgrowing the capabilities of their church management system, they had to find something that would allow them to live out their unique calling without compromising the security of their donor data. With such specific needs, Northwoods struggled to find a platform that didn’t limit their ministry opportunities or create more challenges when it came to fulfilling their mission.
Solution
Enter MinistryPlatform. Crowdfunding and singularly funding church plants and having the donation efforts led by volunteer teams are game-changing functions for Northwoods. The leaders at Northwoods can create and manage the funds for multiple church plants simultaneously without interfering with the financial activities of other plants or campuses. Volunteers can be given access to manage specific funds and communicate with donor groups without seeing other areas of the database, providing an extra level of security to the Northwoods fundraising process. The added ability to track the entire planting process from start to finish within a single platform was the tipping point for Northwoods, and saving time and effort at each step has made all the difference.
