Here you will find links to many of the tools you need to make communications at your congregation simpler. You will find consent forms and the popular Style Guide, as well as the PCC logos and links to free and paid online tools.
Your Congregation Needs a Strong Website
Your congregation’s website has never been more important than now, a time of lockdowns and social distancing. If you’re thinking of investing time and energy into social media, or if you’re wondering how to ensure your website is strong and effective, this resource is for you.
Cybersecurity Best Practices for Churches
Congregations are responsible for maintaining the safety and integrity of the data stored on their computers with the same standard of care and confidentiality applied to paper records. Here are the key things you can do to strengthen your congregation’s cybersecurity defenses.
Scams: Be Aware
Thousands of Canadians fall victim to fraud every year, losing millions of dollars. Most people don’t think it will happen to them, but fraudsters use increasingly sophisticated ways to target people of all ages. The best way to protect yourself from becoming a victim is to be aware of popular phone or text scams and how to avoid them. Here are some examples and best practices to protect yourself.
Tips for the Effective Use of Photography
Images play an important part in enabling you to tell your congregation’s story online. This resource contains tips for ensuring you have the consent necessary to use and share images of congregational life at your church on your website and social media channels.
Tips to Rock Your Church Newsletter
A church newsletter is an effective way to communicate important news and information with members of your congregation and the wider community. Use these newsletter writing tips to help people stay connected through updates and announcements and draw people in closer to your church’s mission and ministry.
Visual Arts in Worship: Designing Screen Content for Effective Communication
The goal of digital technology in worship is to enhance the worship experience by creating a visual space on the screen that will point eyes to God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. This resource helps you with introducing digital projection or multimedia into your worship service.
The PCC Writers’ Style Guide and Web Standards manual and Quick Reference Sheet will guide the writing and design of PCC documents, either for print or electronic distribution.
Visit the Logos web page to download logos and find colour and font specifications.
Communications Office staff are available for leading workshops on how to improve your congregation’s website, social media, communications best practices, and more.
Tools for Congregations
The following are links to external sites that may be useful to congregations. If you are looking for something specific or want to add to this list, please send us an email.
How to choose effective typography
Canva
Design presentations, social media graphics, and more with thousands of layout options
Color Combos
Test and develop colour combinations
Compressor.io
Powerful online tool for drastically reducing the size of your images and photos whilst maintaining a high quality with almost no difference before and after compression. (file formats supported: JPEG – PNG – GIF – SVG)
Easelly
Infographic development tool
Fotor
Photo editor and design maker
Infogram
Create and publish beautiful visualizations (charts & infographics) of your data
Kraken.io
Free Online Image Optimizer (1MB initial file size limit)
PicMonkey
Online photo editing tool (7-day free trial, $72 USD annually)
Pixlr
Online photo editing tool
Squoosh
Drag and drop an image to ‘Squoosh’ it down to a smaller file size.
Stock Images, graphics and videos [FREE]
LibreStock | Pixabay | Stockio | Unsplash | YAY Images | Everypixel (Stock Image Search Engine)
Creative Commons
Search for free images that are available to use and share with a Creative Commons copyright licence.
Creative Commons
TinyPNG
Reduces the file size of your JPG or PNG files (5MB initial file size limit)
Motionbox Video Editing Tool
Motionbox exists to help creators and teams make better videos, faster.
Video Editor by Aiseesoft (basic)
Free video editing software to rotate, clip, crop, watermark and convert video and audio files
JotForm
Online form builder with thousands of templates and themes to help you
SignUpGenius
Free online signup forms.
VolunteerSignup
Create quick and easy online signup forms for volunteers
Securely convert anything to anything
Doodle
Online scheduling tool to organize meetings and activities with others
Drop Box
File sharing and storage solution with MS Office 365 integration
Evernote
Remember everything: capture, nurture, and share your ideas across any device
MailChimp
Send marketing emails, automated messages and targeted campaigns
Slack
Send messages and share files directly to another person or to a small group of people for more focused conversations
Small PDF
Reduce PDF files for the web and/or covert to or from PDF to other file types
Task Management Software
16 Best Free Task Management Software for Small Business
TinyURL
Shorten long web addresses
Venngage Chart Maker
Turn your messy data into an engaging chart or graph with the easy-to-use Venngage Chart Maker. Premium features come with a paid plan.
We Transfer
Easily transfer large files for free up to 2GB