REACHRIGHT shares "Canva for Nonprofits: Can Your Church Get Canva Pro Free?" (16-minute read), on how churches qualify for Canva for Nonprofits: every Canva Pro feature, free, for one team of up to 50 people. Pro lists at US$144 a year per person. The hard part is proof. Verification runs through Goodstack, which wants an IRS letter or your denomination's group exemption documents, plus signed bylaws dated more than 30 days before you apply. Canva says it replies within 72 hours.

Editor's note: Apply from a church-owned account with a church email address, not a personal login, and finish Goodstack's steps within 30 days. Once approved, set up the Brand Kit first. The author is REACHRIGHT's CEO; the page ends with a free church marketing review, and REACHRIGHT sells church websites from $97 a month.

The Pro Church Tools Show shares "How to Say No to Church Promotion Requests" (43-minute watch). Their answer is a policy, not a planning tool: assign every ministry one of four levels, from churchwide and community events down to everything else, and promote each level by plan. Their audits of more than 3,000 churches found only 16% of announcements repeated in a second service. Then give each ministry its own page where people subscribe themselves.

Editor's note: Other answers: let people sort themselves onto email lists instead of segmenting them yourself, and turn one sermon point into a retitled video, a blog post and a short clip. The hosts offer a free communications makeover and a free church chaos report; their company sells Nucleus church websites from $65 a month.

Church Production shares "The Problem With Letting Every Volunteer Build Their Own Mix" (7-minute read), in which audio engineer Ron Cochran argues that if every engineer starts from scratch, every Sunday sounds different. Build one console template, with inputs patched and labeled consistently, gain structure set and sensible routing, and have the whole team start there. Volunteers can rearrange faders to suit their workflow, but should not create a different sonic starting point.

Editor's note: His examples include churches with paid techs, but the method needs only the console you already own and someone who sets it up before Sunday. Teach volunteers why it is configured that way, and train the curious ones outside the pressure of a live service.

ChurchLeaders shares "7 Cybersecurity Risks Every Church Leader Needs To Know About" (9-minute read) from Church Law & Tax. AI now makes scam emails polished, so spelling errors no longer expose them. The seven: AI-enhanced fraud, staff tricked into approving payments, untrained staff, unpatched software, sensitive data, vendors, and insurance that may not cover cyber incidents. Start free: turn on multifactor authentication for email, banking and giving, and confirm any banking change through a separate channel.

Editor's note: Volunteers often use the same systems as staff without the same training, so include them. Remove accounts for people who have left. For a broader framework, NIST's free Small Business Quick-Start Guide says it suits nonprofits. The article notes it was written with AI and human review.

TechSoup shares "April 26, 2027, Website Accessibility Deadline: What Nonprofits Need to Know About WCAG 2.1 AA" (5-minute read). That deadline applies to state and local governments serving 50,000 or more people; certain HHS-funded nonprofits face 2027 and 2028 dates, and a grant alone does not trigger them. The five starting steps cost nothing: scan your home page, tab through menus and forms without a mouse, then fix image descriptions, contrast, form labels and captions.

Editor's note: The deadlines name governments and HHS-funded organizations, not churches. The article is written by Tapp Network, which offers a free Website Wellness Assessment through TechSoup; TechSoup and Tapp Network sell website consultation and development services, priced on request.

We thank you for your time. We trust that this information was useful. Please consider sharing via the links at the top of the post. Finally, please take our brief Reader Satisfaction Survey to help us understand how to serve you better. Thanks and be blessed!

Correction: our Nov 1 issue named Instagram without a Disclosures entry. We use Meta Business Suite.

In the interest of “shunning the appearance of evil” resulting from undisclosed relationships and/or potential conflicts of interest, we disclose our relationship(s) with the providers mentioned.

We also disclose our own use of AI. This newsletter is researched and drafted with Claude, an Anthropic product. Every issue — the summaries and the editor's notes alike — is reviewed, edited and approved by a human editor before it is sent, and the selections are made by a person, not a model. We are stating this plainly because a Wall Street Journal opinion piece in August ran without such a note and the omission became the story.