Based in the college town of Holland, MI, Our Lady of the Lake Catholic Church regularly ministers to 1500 families and works diligently to serve those in their community. With so many people connected with the parish, tracking parishioner information became a challenge as each ministry area only maintained the information they needed. They desperately needed an easy way to manage information that every member of their staff and clergy would be able to access.
Their search for a single database that would allow them to track the personal and sacramental information they needed led them to Realm at the beginning of 2018.
“[Before Realm], everybody had their own way of tracking information,” says Alyssa Gaerte, administrative assistant. “Realm has provided easy-to-access information on our parishioners. It’s very helpful in that we don’t have to dig through files or filing cabinets. It’s all in one spot.”
Having all of their parishioner information in one place has made it possible for the leadership at Our Lady of the Lake to see a more complete picture of each member of the church.
“We didn’t really have what classes they had taken or what sacraments they had or if they came from another church,” Alyssa says. “We didn’t have any of that working together in one spot, and now with Realm we’re able to download or extract their information to get a full picture of a parishioner.”
The ability to see everything in a single location has drastically changed the process for tracking sacraments and printing personal certificates.
“It makes my job easier to be able to find everything all in one spot, and that saves me a lot of time,” Alyssa says. “We can get correct information within minutes instead of having to search through three or four different books. It doesn’t take days to get a certificate to somebody; it’s just a matter of minutes.”
Realm has given Our Lady of the Lake Catholic Church one effective way to manage the information that is essential to the life of their parish. Now their staff and clergy can focus on the thing that matters most: sharing the Gospel with the people of Holland.
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