Who’s a fan of corporate annual reports? Not me! Ya’ know… those boring brochures that large companies hand out to shareholders/investors to show the mind-numbing details of financial records and employee retention rates. zzzzzzzzzz… Although that information is really important, I’m so glad I don’t work for a company that publishes one of those each December!

I’m the Communications Director at PCO and, while those boring annual reports WOULD be my responsibility at another company, at Planning Center, our most celebrated statistics highlight the ways that churches have been able to do ministry easily and more effectively using our apps.

So… OUT with the Annual Report, and IN with the “DIDJA KNOW? 2015 Edition.”

In 2015:

  • Planning Center added 3 new apps to our lineup of products: People, Registrations, and Giving.
  • Within the Giving and Registrations apps, churches collected over $5M in payments and donations.
  • More than 3 million people’s profiles were added. More than 24,000 churches used our products on a weekly basis.
  • Planning Center apps were used weekly by 93 of the 100 largest churches in America.
  • Planning Center Services had over 331 million page views.
  • Our developers added more than 237,000 lines of new code to our apps.
  • Our Support team, comprised of fewer than 10 employees, made over 5k phone calls and sent more than 73k emails.
  • Planning Center University (PCU) was born! We invited ministry workers from around the country to our offices in Carlsbad, CA to learn about all things PCO.
  • We opened up our second building JUST in time to host those guests at PCU.
  • We opened a second office in Seattle.
  • We added 12 new employees to the PCO staff.

Those are just some of the ways that Planning Center products became a more valuable tool in the hands of churches around the world. Do you ever wonder where these powerful, beautiful apps come from? So glad you asked! Our employees compiled a list of their own 2015 stats as well.

In 2015:

  • Our staff took 474 walks together at 10am and 3pm daily for fresh air, clear eyes, and full hearts.
  • More than 1,000 espresso drinks were made, thanks to Nicole’s (Support Team) 14 impromptu classes on “Making Your Own Espresso and How to Clean Up Afterwards.”
  • Our developers rejected 22 recruiter emails from other companies.
  • One employee (Clay, Support Team) had his second baby boy.
  • Vox Amplifiers used the PCO offices to film 8 product videos for some of their new products…
  • … and then, 3 employees were asked to turn the volume down while playing those amps that VOX left on-site for a month.
  • As a team, we uploaded almost 10,000 images in our internal Slack chat room discussions.
  • We also uploaded 56 blog posts. Keep in mind, these blog posts normally announce feature updates, so that's more than one new feature a week!
  • We had 17 catered lunches from the best taco stand guy in California…
  • …and as a result, we gained an average of 2 pant sizes.
  • We were in a softball league with the folks at MailChimp, winning 0 games. But we gave ourselves PiCO bobbleheads as trophies because everyone’s a winner.
  • We spent 365 days waking up grateful that we get to do what we do.

Our team is made up of a dynamic, energetic staff of ministry-minded employees who have hands-on and ongoing experience in the trenches, and on the mountaintops, of church work. For example, before coming onboard, I was a working musician and contract music director with 19 (yes, 19) Planning Center accounts at churches across the country. Why do I tell you this? Because Planning Center Online was born as the result of our own needs for tools that make the day-to-day tasks of church work efficient and rewarding. We hope that our passion for sharing those tools with the church is evident in everything we do.

As we move into 2016, you’re going to see better, stronger tools from us. You’re going to see us rebuild our Services app from the ground up, so that it is modernized and dramatically more powerful. You’re going to hear more from us about our suite of apps that can be used individually, but can also be used as part of a larger church management system. This suite has all the power of enterprise software, while retaining the heart and ease-of-use that our churches have come to expect. And finally, we hope you will help us celebrate our 10-year anniversary this next year. We are humbled and infinitely thankful for the church employees who choose to use our apps. We look forward to serving you in the coming year. From our PCO family to yours– Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!