Miscellaneous Useful Resources

1.       www.teamviewer.com – Ever need to access your home or office computer while you are away? Team Viewer is who I’d recommend. You can login from either another computer or your smart phone and control your computer remotely.

2.       www.openoffice.org – Microsoft Office is expensive. If you don’t have it, there’s an awesome open source and free office application called Open Office. It has its own version of Word (called “Writer”), Excel (Calc), Powerpoint (Impress), and Access (Base). What makes this truly great is that it can open and save normal Office documents.

3.       Google Drive and Google Docs – If you need to edit files and don’t have Microsoft Office, this is another good alternative. This option is available to anyone with a Google account. The major bonus here is that you can open and edit Word and Excel files from anywhere with an internet connection. Google Drive is a cloud server option similar to Dropbox, and allows you to share your files with others with a simple shared link.

4.       Evernote or OneNote – You are getting two resources for the price of one here (both are free J). Both applications are great for taking notes, and can sync your notes between your desktop, your laptop, your tablet and your phone. Personally I prefer the organization style of One Note, but I know many that love how flexible Evernote is. Both applications allow you to save pictures, videos, PDFs and whole web pages as notes. These are both great options for people that need to stay organized (which includes just about every children’s ministry leader and volunteer I’ve ever met…).

5.       www.getpocket.com – I haven’t focused much at all on phone and tablet apps, but this is probably my alltime favorite phone app, and it’s perfect for busy ministry leaders. I constantly come across articles online that I’d love to read, but don’t have the time to give. With the pocket app, you can click a little button in your browser, and the article will get added to a queue on your phone automatically. It’s so slick, and keeps me from wasting so much time on Facebook.

6.       www.goodsearch.com – GoodSearch is a search engine that donate a penny to your non-profit organization every time someone uses the search engine. Getting set up with GoodSearch is totally free. While one penny doesn’t sound like much, if you get a whole church of people using it for all their normal everyday searches, those pennies really add up. Skyview has raised several hundred dollars in camper scholarships purely through GoodSearch.

7.       www.goodshop.com – GoodShop is similar in concept to GoodSearch, except here, when you go to online stores through GoodShop, and then purchase something online, that retailer will donate between 1% and 10% of the sale to your non-profit. This is a much faster way of raising money, and just about every major online retailer participates.