A Simple Question That Started Everything
ChurchCRM began with a question that any church administrator would recognize: “How many people do we actually have in our congregation?”
A group of church volunteers couldn’t answer it — not accurately, not without digging through spreadsheets and paper rolls. They looked for software to help. What they found was either prohibitively expensive, unnecessarily complicated, or required handing their congregation’s private data to a vendor they didn’t control.
So they decided to build their own.
Built on an Open Foundation
ChurchCRM didn’t start from scratch. The project forked and modernized ChurchInfo, an earlier open-source church administration application, updating it for contemporary ministry needs. From the beginning, the guiding philosophy was simple: software should serve the mission, not the other way around.
That meant free to use. That meant your data stays yours. That meant no vendor lock-in, no subscription fees, no per-member pricing that punishes church growth.
A Community, Not a Company
ChurchCRM is maintained by a global community of volunteer developers, pastors, church administrators, and IT professionals — not by a company. There is no VC funding, no paid engineering team, no monetization roadmap. Contributors come from six continents, speak dozens of languages, and share a single conviction: that every congregation deserves high-quality tools regardless of their budget.
Today ChurchCRM serves thousands of congregations worldwide, from small community plants meeting in living rooms to large multi-campus parishes. The platform runs in 45+ languages, with translations maintained by the community through the POEditor project.
What ChurchCRM Does
ChurchCRM is a comprehensive church management system (ChMS) that helps congregations:
- Track member and family records with custom fields and photos
- Record attendance for services, events, and Sunday School classes
- Manage giving, pledges, and deposit reports
- Coordinate volunteers and schedule events
- Run a self-service member portal for congregation access
- Generate financial reports and data exports
- Operate in 45+ languages for multilingual congregations worldwide
Get Involved
The project grows through community contribution. Here is how you can help:
- Code: Submit pull requests on GitHub
- Translations: Translate ChurchCRM into your language at POEditor
- Community: Join the discussion on Discord
- Support: Help other users on Discord
- Bugs: Report issues on GitHub Issues
Contact
For general inquiries: info@churchcrm.io
For security disclosures: security@churchcrm.io — see our Security Policy
GitHub: github.com/ChurchCRM/CRM