Brigada – 2024-03-17

7) What’s the Best Free Contact Manager or CRM?

I know, I know. I’ve mentioned this item before. But the market also continues to evolve. So when things change, we have to talk about it again. I’ve gone on record saying, if you have an I.T. guy (give praise to God), your best bet (besides just giving praise to God) is CiviCRM. Why? Because you will always forever own the data and it will always forever be free to stage the software. But what if you *don’t* have an I.T. guy — but you still need to share the application with someone. For example, say you are a small home office — just 2 or 3 people — but you want to share your contact list and do lightweight CRM (customer relationship management) stuff. What do you do??? Well recently, I tried CRMPro. It was ok. But honestly, I think it’s been a few years and it still looks… soooooo…. 90’s. Plus, after the first year, they take away your free CRM option and you have to start paying the piper big-time. So it’s a one-year ticking time bomb. Then we found ZohoCRM.

https://www.zoho.com/crm/

Their free edition is absolutely, positively free forever for up to 10 users (just right for the small office; if you have 9 people, your 10th person better be an I.T. guy anyway : ) ). For that price (zero), you get leads, accounts, contacts, feeds, documents, a fantastic mobile app (which, by the way, works offline — even with your data!!! So this is an *incredible* feature for those times you’re overseas, out of connectivity in a rural area, or flying on a plane without Wi-Fi), and more. PLUS — the app let’s you send emails (even email campaigns) from within the app itself, as if you’re writing from your own email address, recording the emails you sent in the communication record of the contact. And guess what — you get 25,000 contacts (data storage) with crazy good filtering and searching capabilities. And you can import up to 1000 contacts at a time. It plays with social networking, handles file versioning and sharing, gives you webforms, and up to 1 gig of file storage for free. You even get a basic workflow package. (Very basic, mind you.) And the iPhone app even lets you do *voice* updates for contacts. See the nice upgrade path (for when you have some money to throw at a monthly user fee) here…

https://www.zoho.com/crm/comparison.html?src=crmpricing-middle

Good luck Zohoing.

8) How Will You and Yours Celebrate Easter (ideas from GNPI)

Looking for ways to celebrate Christ’s resurrection personally, with a small group Bible study, or as a church? Try…

*** The Global Gospel – The Crucifixion, Burial, and Resurrection in 27 languages
*** Medical Aspects of the Crucifixion by Dr. Jameso Fuzzell
*** A Doctor Looks at the Crucifixion and Resurrection by Dr. Garland Bare

Check out these and other options at…

http://gnpi.org/easter/

10) This Research Group gave $20 to 20 Mission Orgs: Learn Why

James Nelson is the Director of Research Services for Global Mapping. I love the project he just did — the Online Mission Giving Project. Basically, he went online and gave $20 to 20 different orgs. (Was yours one of them? : ) ) He tracked how many clicks it took, how they thanked him, and how they treated him afterward for 100 days. Ingenius. And for under $5, they’ll send you the full 13-page report. Your web guy and social media guru will want this to learn about the *front* end of giving, but your CEO and donor care person will want to see the backside of things too. Go James. Go GMI.
http://www.gmi.org/products/research-reports/online-mission-giving-project

11) Google’s New Jamboard Pulls Together Your Global Team

Looking for a cool way to build collaboration among your team, globally, whether they live in Morocco, Mauritania, Macedonia, or Milwaukee? It’s basically a whiteboard, translated to 2017 — or 2050. It’s collaborative, digital and allows you to create without boundaries. It’s like a whiteboard in the cloud — and it’s real-time. You can brainstorm, share images and content, share photos, docs, spreadsheets, all on a gorgeous 55-inch, rolling screen. It’s touch-sensitive, comes with drawing tools, and the ink doesn’t smell. : ) AND it sets up with one cable. What’s more, it will be available this year for *half* the price of a Microsoft Surface hub. Expect it to sell for $4999 and watch for it to be available in May. Of course, you could also pay $21,999 for the 84-inch 4K model. : ) Learn more at…

https://www.blog.google/products/g-suite/jamboard-whiteboard-reimagined-collaboration-cloud/

or see the video at…

https://gsuite.google.com/jamboard/

12) “Linking Global Voices” Continues to Bring us Together

We’ve said it before — Eldon Porter’s work at…
http://www.linkingglobalvoices.com/

continues to amaze us. The way he has pulled together scads of global and regional networks, country level networks, and issue specific networks is nothing short of amazing. For example, if I were working in Albania, wouldn’t I love learning about the network of mission orgs working in my country?

http://www.linkingglobalvoices.com/country-networks

Now you can grab that info lickety-split. Great work, Eldon.

13) We’re grateful for…

…the folks at the Evangelism Resource Directory, on the web at…

http://www.resourcesforevangelism.org

for sending a gift of $50 to bump their item up to the top of the queue *and* to empower Brigada to make a difference among unengaged and unreached peoples throughout the globe. *THANK* you !!!

Would you consider joining with them in empowering Brigada to the nations? It’s easy to give. Just click “Donate” at www.brigada.org, or mail a check payable to Team Expansion (Brigada), 13711 Willow Reed Drive, Louisville, KY 40299. Team Expansion is a 501(c)3 incorporation so, for USA citizens, your gift to Christ through Team Expansion is tax-deductible. Thank you, in advance, for your partnership!

14) The Last Bit: Another Alternative to “What’s App” — Hoccer

Last edition, we mentioned that we were a little uncomfortable with the way programs like What’s App and “Signal” required us to turn over our entire address book (even just the address book in our phones). (To see the item in last week’s edition, go here:

https://brigada.org/2017/03/05_19914

We understand that the app developer is promising not to mis-use the information. It’s not that we don’t trust their promise. (But we just don’t trust their promise. : ) ) But seriously — what if they sell their app someday? So, in another glorious example of how great it is to crowd-solve these kinds of problems (and in another example of how fantastic the Brigada family is!), “Dan” came through for us in a comment he wrote following the item about Signal last week. He suggested Hoccer.

https://hoccer.com/

I can’t say I’m excited about the name. According to my German-English dictionary (the one at reverso.net), hoccer, in German, means “stool” or “to bowl over.” But I fear that many people will think it refers to a spitball. Either way, the app looks great, has end-to-end encryption WITHOUT having to turn over my contact list, and — just … *works.* It’s so simple it’s crazy. So let’s try it — and please comment here if you learn more. And thanks Dan!!!!!!!!!!

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2017/03/05 — Brigada Today

Compiled/Edited by Doug Lucas and Tina McCormick, Team Expansion
Brigada online has more graphics and links at https://brigada.org

In this issue…
1) New: Returning Well Groups Bring Debriefing to You
2) SRS Public Bootcamp Schedule
3) What’s your Take on “Signal” (a replacement for What’s App?)
4) If you have to Move a WordPress Site…
5) Trying to Sharpen your Team Building Skills?
6) Sorting out a Protocol at your Church/Group? Try RACI
7) 6-Lesson Discipleship Course is Easy to Implement
8) Global Mapping Releases Infographics
9) A Documentary To Help The Work In Unreached Mozambique, Africa
10) Secure Travel Training
11) “Catalysts For Movements Internship”, October 2017 to June 2018
12) Locally Developed Children’s Bible Story Book for Haiti
13) We’re Grateful for…
14) Glad for all the New Data on Cultural Differences
15) Closing Stuff

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