Like most schedulers, Pamela Smith of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church often found herself digging through spreadsheets and email chains to create ministry schedules. Her ongoing task was to coordinate 2-3 weekly Acolyte schedules for 12-36 Acolytes. After completing a schedule, Pamela found a postcard in the mail about Ministry Scheduler Pro, so she decided to give the MSP a try.

Regardless of how diverse humans are, one thing is clear: we’re all social creatures. This makes communities — online or in-person — a powerful force in the world. Harnessing the power of community to build your business or brand takes time, but when done right, provides countless benefits.

Have you struggled to fill volunteer roles at your organization? You’re not alone. Recruiting volunteers is no small feat. Find out how to look internally at the organization’s current stakeholders to discover a whole new pool of qualified volunteers.

How can you create a culture of service at your church? Beyond recruiting, engaging, and scheduling volunteers, it’s important to ensure that service is embedded in the life of your church. Try implementing some of these ideas when deciding how to help church members see service as the norm.

Does it seem like summers fly by? Do you struggle to use them to their fullest potential for your volunteer schedules and programs? Don’t let these crucial months slip away. Commit to being intentional this summer. Approach the summer with clear goals to meet the volunteer needs of your nonprofit.

Don’t let the summer fly by without using it to your advantage. Use this summer to let your church volunteers know you appreciate them! Use it to recruit new volunteers, train people, and find new ways to work with other ministries. Take advantage of June, July, and August to bring new excitement, knowledge, and volunteers to the important work being done at your church.

Looking to grow your community? With Unison's registration forms, make joining a group easy for everyone!

It’s little wonder that Wags and Walks has become a powerful force for good. With a clear mission, an engaging volunteer program, and cute, furry friends, the people of this wonderful organization are changing Los Angeles, one paw at a time.

Images are core to group communication. Take advantage of people’s love of images by connecting your group in Unison through photos.

Want to create a free, online group, but not sure if Facebook is the best fit? Unison is a great alternative. It’s a free tool that you can use to organize and communicate with any number of people for any length of time.

The people of Sts. Peter & Paul Catholic Church have been coming together to worship, learn, and support each other for nearly 150 years. Today, with 300 volunteers and 10 ministries to organize, ministry scheduling is central to the life of the church.

Need to get information from your group members? Would you like to generate movement in your group? Want to ask your group members to complete a task by a certain date? Using Unison's action items feature is a great way to accomplish your group communication and organizing goals. If you’re unsure of what action items are or how to use them, then read on!

With Unison, it's easy to keep up with the communication happening in your group. Get the information you want in the way that works best for you. It only takes a few moments to adjust your notification preferences in Unison!

Do you have a hard time finding the exact information you need in your group? Then Unison's Projections view is for you! Use the Projections view to enjoy group communication and stop worrying about how to find the items you need. Instead, sort by data type and quickly view entire cards using Projections. Keep your group's communication organized and on track!

Volunteers create an exceptional opportunity for nonprofits to further their missions. But often, this opportunity isn’t capitalized on effectively—even by organizations with robust volunteer programs. A core problem is volunteer engagement. But you can prevent this! From on-boarding to volunteer scheduling, use these 4 ways to keep volunteers engaged.

Whether volunteers work on a one-time community service project or dedicate their time to regular, scheduled ministries in the church, taking time to make sure your volunteers feel appreciated is vital to creating a thriving volunteer program. So how can you show volunteers that you appreciate them? Although the options are endless, here are three ideas to consider as you begin to incorporate gestures of appreciation into your ministries.

Having a hard time creating a digital space where everyone is where they need to be? Leave that in the past. Now, with Unison's new public group feature, you can set up groups for your organization to streamline group communication and promote only the groups you want everyone to know about. With this option, you can ensure your organization has everyone in the right place with the right information at hand.

Are you the designated meeting planner? It’s a tough job, we know. Beyond requiring basic communication skills, when you’re in charge of creating the next great meeting or event, it’s also important to stay creative and organized. But who said being a meeting planner for your group had to be hard? Unison contains powerful features that streamline creativity, organization, and group communication for meeting organizers. Use these hacks to take the burden off your shoulders while creating meetings and get-togethers that everyone will love.

You opened a Unison account. But now what? How do you start communicating with the group members? Although it may feel daunting to get started, the good news is that you’re only a few simple steps away from adding your group members, sending your first message, and enjoying an active, online community!

One of the hardest aspects of group communication and organizing is keeping everyone engaged. People are busy and torn in a million directions. Reaching out to unengaged group members doesn’t have to feel pushy or intrusive. Use these strategies and features in Unison to get your group members engaged.

Looking for a way to ensure your group members feel valued and connected? This can be challenging in a world of chaotic communication methods and increased concerns regarding privacy. But with Unison, bringing everyone together is easy. Unison was built to make group communication a joy rather than a chore. Here are 5 reasons your group members will love using Unison.

Becoming an effective leader is a challenge. It takes insight, determination, and practice. Using three Unison features can help you be a strong leader by allowing you to learn more about your group members, better streamline communication, and foster new leadership so you can focus on leading your organization forward.

Before Unison, a small group in Chicago tried Facebook, but found that communication was lost in the onslaught of notifications. They tried email, but it took weeks to plan simple get-togethers and to coordinate basic tasks. With Unison, they’ve found that planning, communicating, and sharing the big and small moments of life together is faster, easier, and more fun.

February is underway, and we’ve already got some amazing Unison features pushed out the door! Just last week, our development team released new capabilities that are sure to be some of Unison’s most loved features: group hierarchy and text message blasts. Organizing and communicating with your people just got a whole lot easier!

Do you have a lot of people in your groups? Are you worried about too many email messages pouring through? Have no fear, my friend! We’ve got great news for you, and its name is threaded emails!

Welcome to the Unison blog! We’re happy to have you. We created Unison to help serve your group organizing and group communication needs. We created this space to invite you into the conversation and to keep you informed.