Contacting

Two apps help me keep in touch with people- I'll use MAC examples, but you could easily do this with outlook, Gmail/Google Calendar, etc.

I looked and looked and LOOKED for good contact management software that would work for pastors- everything out there either suffered from bloat (doing too many extraneous things) or was way over the top in cost. Nothing I saw did exactly what I wanted, so if there are any software developers out there, I have a million dollar (or perhaps couple thousand dollar) idea...

At any rate, here's my current work around to manage contacting.

I took my list of everyone I wanted to be in my contacting schedule, and made sure they were in my address book.

I did some division (wow- my math teachers were right... you really do use this stuff!) to figure out how many contacts over the Tuesday-Friday week, and came up with contacting everyone once in a six week period.

I opened my calendar, created a new calendar set called "contacting" and began dragging names to days, starting with the A's and moving on. I set each one to repeat in 6 weeks. 

I started a mail file called prayer/contacting.

Everyday I email, call or visit with that days people- when I email, I try to ask about how I can be praying for them and place their reply in my folder. The next time they come around in the schedule, I refresh my memory by looking at past emails/notes from them.

The final step was placing "write/pray for contacts for the day" in my "dailies" or the to-do list I start every day off with.

And voila'! An easy way to make sure that everyone I'm trying to stay in touch with (in this case our whole church) gets contacted regularly.

How about you all- what's your system?

Comments

[David Knight]

Great idea. I am brand new to the Mac world (just bought a macbook pro after decades of Windows (and DOS and TRS 80 and mainframes).
I use Gmail and Google Calendar. Would this be easier to implement with apple mail and ical?
How did you build your address book data - manually? Can you import like a CSV file to Apple address book?
if you want to reply off line please email me. I enjoy this blog (and your main one). I am an Episcopal Priest on the coast of Mississippi trying to rebuild (literally) our parish after Katrina wiped us off the map - any help I can get is appreciated.