Church IT Staff Stats and History

Do any of the rest of you get these emails?  I prob get one like this dealing with IT staffing every other month ...

David writes ... I have a desire to bring a full-time IT Director onto my Production Staff, but convincing the leadership of the need is not that easy to do ...

... Here’s how you can help.  I would like to show my folks some likeminded churches, like yourself, who have the IT position on staff.  Anything you could send would be helpful...job descriptions, names of churches that have that position, etc ...

Since it's getting asked often enough, it's probably worth investigating a way to help David and others with an online data source they can refer to.

So here's my thought.  Would you be willing to share some IT staff info and history with other churches?

Here's what I think would be helpful for other churches (including myself as we grow) as they look to hire IT staff.

Church Name
City,State
URL
Average Weekend Attendance
Approx # of computers/servers supported
Current IT Positions (indicate if part-time)
Brief history of when positions were added (indicating # of computers supported at that time)
Other info that might be helpful like do you outsource IT roles, etc

So for GCC it might look like...

Granger Community Church
Granger, IN
GCCWired.com
6000
200/20
Jason Powell - IT Director - jasonpowell.net
Ed Buford - Network Admin - ebuford.com
Kyle Sagarsee - Help Desk Specialist - welshmnky.blogspot.com
IT Director position created in August 2003 (~60 computers).  Network Admin created in June 2004 (~80 computers) as part-time then went full-time in April 2006 (~200 computers).  Help Desk Specialist created March 2007 (~200 computers).

I already have some of this data from other churches on this page from the Roundtable.

So before moving forward what other info might be helpful to capture?  What additional data from other churches would be helpful as you make a case to add to your IT staff?

Once we nail down what data to collect we'll figure out some ways to get the data and make it available.

Comments

[Joshua Wells]

How many total staff is supported? That would give you a IT staff/regular staff ratio. Sadly, ours is 1 IT staff for every 60 or so staff. Pales in comparison to our 1 IT staff to 425 student ratio. The 3.5 of us are stretched a bit thin, I think. :)

[Mark Spidle]

If you have web programming staff and where do they fall into the IT picture. Are they part of the creative staff or under IT.

[Kevin Arms]

Not sure its relevant, but our church outsources it's IT support and receives comparable if not better IT support and expertise. We're fairly large at over 5000 members, in a building campaign, and busting at the seams.

While there are always things I could point to that would be great to have "in-house", I think that including churches that have similar outsourced support might be helpful in your survey.

[Tony Dye]

I'm fearful of adding these questions, but you can always ignore me :-)

What ChMS do you use?
What is your predominant server OS?
What is your predominant workstation OS? (maybe: what other's do you support)
What email system do you use?
How much total server data space do you have?
Is your website hosted on-site or off-site?

[Tony Dye]

If you get this nailed down, how about we start this survey at the RoundTable?

[Trace Pupke]

Can we also get salary ranges for each position?

We're researching and comparing our IT staff needs and salaries to other churches and secular businesses.

[Jason Powell]

Good input ... thanks!

[Barry Buchanan]

We have over 5000 attendees each week. We have 100 PCs and 9 servers. We have 2 full time and 1 part time Staff for our database. We have a Director of IT Operations (mostly dealing with servers and operation of the helpdesk department), a Director of IT Strategic Planning (Deals with the web site and purchasing). We have a web coordinator (web guru). We have 1 full time and 1 part time person for helpdesk. We have another part time helpdesk person that works Sunday mornings and Wed nights to help with check-in 20 hours a month).
When I started I was one of two part time people. Having more hours let us grow and we have made some great accomplishments. You have to decide if you want to progress or be in "firefighting" mode all the time. Now we can spend time avoiding issues instead getting hit by small time wasting tasks. We could still fix all the issues taht happen with 2 part time peopel but that would be all and we would still be on Exchange 5.5 and 2 servers. It can be a hard sell for a church IT department but when done right it becomes essential to your ministries.

[Tony Dye]

Church Name: Perimeter Church
City,State: Duluth GA (Atlanta Suburb)
URL: http://perimeter.org
Average Weekend Attendance: 4000
Church staff size: 150
Approx # of computers/servers supported: 250/20
Do you support a school, if so how many students: Yes, 500
Predominant computer/server OS: WinXO/Server2003
What email system do you use: Exchange
Approx server space being utilized: 1.5TB
What ChMS product do you use (F1, Shelby, ACS, etc): Shelby
Do you host your website on-site or off-site: off-site
Current IT Positions (indicate if part-time):
Tony Dye - IT Director, http://TonyDye.net
Jim LaBarr - Staff Trainer
Whitney Cantrell - Information Architect
Gail Richards - Helpdesk Coordinator
Donna Bell - Database Specialist
Brief history of when positions were added (indicating # of computers supported at that time)
Single person department existed prior to 1995
Tony Dye hired as IT Manager, 1/1997; approx 30 stations
Jim LaBarr started 8/1998, initially as an Intern; approx 60 stations
Gail Richards started 6/2003, initially as department admin; approx 160 stations
Donna Bell transferred 11/2002, as ChMS specialist
Whitney Cantrell started 8/2005, as Information Architect (now project manager for Proclaim)
Approx salary ranges for each IT position: sorry, not for disclosure % of general budget spent on IT: 3.5%, including Telephones, ChMS, contract labor Other info that might be helpful like do you outsource IT roles, etc:
Yes, we outsource, roughly two full time equivalents