Summary of Family and Member Management Features in ShalomCloud

ShalomCloud synagogue management software handles various aspects of membership, with a strong emphasis on organizing family units (also referred to as households) and individual members. The platform provides tools for tracking, querying, and updating family and member data efficiently, often with bulk operations and self-service options to reduce administrative workload. Key features include customizable attributes, role assignments, query capabilities, and integrations for communications, including targeted emails and text messages. Below is a consolidated overview.

Family (Household) Management

ShalomCloud structures membership around family units, allowing administrators to capture essential details such as billing addresses, formal and informal names, household phone numbers, and up to two addresses (e.g., for seasonal residences). Families can be assigned roles for members, like parents, minor or adult children, or custom designations. A key feature is the ability to define and tag free form attributes to families without limits, such as “Sisterhood,” “Board of Trustees,” or “Desires snail-mail only.” These attributes enable targeted queries, for example, selecting seasonal or year-round local families for emails or printed materials.

Recent enhancements include bulk assignment of family attributes directly from the family query screen, where users can checkbox multiple families and apply attributes en masse using buttons like “Add attribute to families.” This builds on older capabilities for wholesale changes to billing status (e.g., updating prospects to full members after High Holidays). Additionally, a “Community” field allows grouping families by localized areas such as HOAs or senior living communities, which is finer-grained than zip codes. Administrators can configure communities and query families or members within them for targeted announcements, such as event invitations. This field can also be included in email templates for personalized communications.

Bulk management is supported through spreadsheet uploads for mass updates to family records. Customizable terminology for secondary addresses (e.g., “Seasonal Address”) further tailors the system to organizational needs.

Individual Member Management

For individuals, ShalomCloud tracks details like names, business addresses, personal cell phones, ages, Kohen/Levi/Yisrael status, Torah portions, emergency contacts, and Bar/Bat Mitzvah dates. Like families, members can have unlimited free-form attributes, such as “Sings in the choir” or “Lives within five minutes of building” (useful for Minyan coordination). Spreadsheet uploads are also available for bulk member maintenance.

A notable feature is querying members based on household attributes, allowing administrators to retrieve lists of individuals from families tagged with specific labels (e.g., “Seniors” or “Young Couple” for group activities). Queries can combine attributes for more precise results. Sensitivity features include a deceased indicator for Yahrzeit observers, visible in management tools like the Combo Bimah List, to avoid inappropriate contacts. ShalomCloud offers custom phrases (e.g., “z”l” or “OBM”) for deceased relationships.

Member Portal and Self-Service

The mobile-friendly Member Portal empowers users to self-manage family and member information directly. Features include updating demographics (e.g., addresses, anniversaries, birthdays, emails), viewing Yahrzeits for family members, adding new members to the family, and searching for other members by name. This reduces office involvement while keeping data current. The member portal also includes a section to view amounts owed, and to make payments, both to those amounts owed, and as contributions.

Communications and Integrations

Acknowledgement emails (e.g., for donations) can be customized to specific household members based on roles like “primary contact” or “Adult1,” ensuring appropriate family dynamics are respected. Overall, these tools integrate with broader features like financial tracking and event management, making ShalomCloud a comprehensive solution for synagogue administration.

In summary, ShalomCloud’s family and member management emphasizes flexibility, scalability, and user empowerment through attributes, queries, bulk tools, and portals, with ongoing updates to address niche needs such as community grouping and sensitive status handling.