Every church has a sequence in which people move through your church. It can be a huge task to keep people up-to-date in their correct demographic, especially when it comes to children. To overcome this problem, we have developed a system called ‘Demographic Progression’.
Demographic Progression allows you to set up a system to move any person within a demographic into another demographic automatically based on either their age or school grade. You can also set up development-based demographics.
Demographic Progression is mainly used for demographics that include children, but can be used to move people of any age into the demographics they fit in to.
Development Based Demographics
Generally used for children, people within these demographics generally need to reach a goal before moving onto the next demographic. For example the goal might be to go from crawling to walking. As a result these children will need an admin or volunteer to change their demographic manually when they move onto the next stage.
Age Based Demographics
When a person has their birthday it will automatically move them into the next demographic that they fit into. You can also set this to be based on how many months old a child is. So if a child was born on the 23rd April, then on the 23rd May they will be considered 1 month old. On the 23rd June they will be 2 months old and so on. You can set-up demographics to accept children aged between certain months.
Grade Based Demographics
When a child moves to the next grade at school, they can automatically be moved onto the next demographic they fit into. You can manage what school grades you wish to include and also choose what day of the year to update children to the next grade. By default it will update all children on the 1st January.
Special Needs Children
You can add to your People Category layouts a built-in field called ‘Special Needs Child’. This is for children who are developmentally-challenged and do not fit to usual progression you have set-up. For example this child might need to stay in the 3 year old room even though they are too old. Ticking this check box when you edit the child’s details will result in an admin or volunteer having to change the child’s demographic manually when they move onto the next stage.
Demographics and Children
Most churches have an age-based demographic for their younger children, followed by a grade-based demographic for school-aged children. To ensure all children are accounted for, we recommend that there is some overlap to cover these transitions.