So Masterworks’ solution helps ministries identify the status of their donors and how to engage with them. “It also just gives them an instant, clear picture of the health of their money that’s coming in,” said Hearn. “So they have high level metrics on [questions] like, is my organization growing, and what can I do to turn that around if I need to, or what do I need to keep doing?”
Hearn said, “We are actually going to take this product to market…we are gearing up for the next steps to be able to launch.”
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Regarding the hackathon itself, she said, “It’s been super awesome. [It’s a] really impressive event. We’ve all had a lot of fun, and there’s some really cool projects here.”
The event has also “been a great opportunity to meet people,” said Hearn. Some attendees work in the same industry as Masterworks, that is, in “these nonprofit spaces or ministries or churches. But there’s also a lot of people here just from the standard marketplace and Fortune 500, and so that’s been really cool to hear.”
Helping Pastors Understand Congregants’ Spiritual Health
ChurchLeaders reconnected this year with the team at Atrium AI, a church management platform. Last year, ChurchLeaders spoke to CTO Ryan Fontenot about his team’s AI solution to address a problem in church security. This year, ChurchLeaders spoke with Fontenot again, along with T.J. Person and John Lyons.
“We’ve created an automated system to do spiritual assessment for churches,” said Person. “Because the normal flow today is—and pastors get frustrated with this—I show up, I fill out a card, and then I get a text a week later that says, ‘Hey, we have free marshmallows this week.’”
“I think it’s the first thing we’ve created after talking and listening to pastors,” he said.
With Atrium’s solution, new visitors will be able to fill out an anonymous survey to help churches get an idea of where the visitors are spiritually. Churches can also conduct the same assessment on current members.
“A lot of my clients are churches, nonprofit, faith-based churches,” Lyons said. “And so a lot of my pastors, I would say, deal with this issue of they think they have an idea of where their church is health-wise. But there’s no true way to get a pulse on it unless they were to sit down and talk through it.”
And how likely are people to be completely open with their pastors about their own spiritual health in a one-on-one conversation? So the anonymous survey is meant to help with generating accurate answers.
Survey respondents are scored on four pillars of spiritual health from Barna and then given the option to sign up for a spiritual growth plan based on the results. “Like maybe they’re deficient in prayer,” said Lyons. “And so then the AI is creating a 30-day email campaign…to help them grow in their prayer life. So it’s very individual to a person.”
