When you log in to the administrative side of Planning Center Groups today, you'll find a new tab: Reports! High level reports are available on both the group type view and on the individual group view. Let's dive in!
As an example, I'll take a look at the Small Groups group type and then a single small group.
Reports for group types.
At the top, we have some basic statistics about the current state of small groups at my church.
- Health Stats - In addition to the number of groups and average group size, there are two other numbers we think make for good indicators of group health. The first is "church participation." This takes the number of active people in your Planning Center People database and shows what percentage of those people are members of a small group. Second, is "90-day turnover" which tells you what percentage of members (across all time) have joined and then left a small group within 90 days.*
- Group Roles - Currently, Groups supports one type of specialized role: leaders. In the future, it's very likely we'll expand Groups to include customizable roles.
- Demographics - Here, we're seeing the age and gender breakdown for all members of all small groups.**
* Whether this stat (or any stat for that matter) is important to you, depends completely on what type of group it is. For example, you might expect high turnover for a group where people only meet for two months. For a small group that meets continually, we'd hope this number is low.
** This information can only be accurate if people in your database have birthdays.
Moving down, there are some stats that can be viewed over any time period.
- Event Attendance - Attendance taking has always been a feature of Groups, but until now, there's never been a way to view this data in aggregate. Not anymore! Now you can show attendance numbers over any time period across all small groups. You can toggle the zoom level by day, week, month, or year (depending on the date range) and view the data as a percentage, an average, or a sum. By hovering over the graph, you'll see a breakdown of the groups and events that make up that attendance data.
- Group Membership - A pretty straightforward reporting of the number of members across any time period, viewed as an average or a sum. Again, whether this data is interesting or not really depends on the types of groups you run. For self-directed, seasonal groups (which may be constantly adding or removing members) keeping an eye on fluctuations in membership may be useful.
- Number of Groups - For most churches, this graph will be relatively flat. However, for churches that run a larger seasonal operation of groups, the historical data may come in handy.
The final section is about group size.
- Group Size - This chart gives you a visual snapshot of group sizes and quickly identify the outliers on the top and bottom of the list.
Group-specific reports.
While viewing the reports for a single group, you'll see many of the same stats. At the top, you'll see how group's health compared to other groups of the same type. Below that, you'll see those attendance and group membership numbers across any date range for that single group.
Yes, they print.
For those times where you absolutely need a hard copy of these reports, click that little printer button in the top right and voilà - a cleaner printer-friendly version will appear.
More to come!
One of the reports we've heard you asking for is an attendance report that can generate specific names. This would be especially useful for identifying (and following up with) group members whose group attendance seems to be dropping off. Another request has been member-specific reports that show the group membership history of a single person.
There's certainly a lot more to do, but we think we've laid good groundwork today for reports in Planning Center Groups. Let us know what you think and, as always, we'll continue to build and iterate based on your feedback.
Sincerely,
Team Groups