Name Your Price: Logos for Your Entire Church

Phil Gons (Logos) said:

What would you be willing to pay for Logos for your entire church?

Using RNM as an example: We are a normative (<100 worshippers weekly) rural church. Our monthly RNM subscription is $69 (We had one benefactor who underwrote that for the first few years, now I'm getting pushback that it is a luxury we could eliminate). In real use, it is only used for group study by one ladies group and a FEW individual families.

I'm still disappointed in the decision to shut down Ministry Tracker and sell off to Servant Keeper. SK's pricing model only has 2 levels and we are in the higher level because of the number of families that we track due to our outreach ministries like VBS, kids club, and youth group. We track those who do not worship with us, but are open to our influence in their families. [I provide this as consideration for "church size"]

Personally, I have been a Connect Subscriber since NOW days and have a library of 6K+ (primarily commentaries and language tools). I have been a user of FSB (Faithlife Study Bible since generation 1). I will likely move from Connect to PRO in the Fall when transition pricing is announced. I RARELY use FTV, but have used clips and series for some teaching in Sunday School. If RNM and FaithlifeTV (including M.Ed courses) could be bundled for $75 for everyone in a church worshipping under 100, we would likely try it.

I presume it is unsustainable to underwrite FSB (library of 80ish resources) with a zero cost to users [How does The Bible App - LifeChurch do it?] but I believe that is the "church wide" entry point rather than Logos for everyone.

In the Catholic space, things are different.

We usually count by families, not by Sunday attendance. Mass attendance varies easily by 20% over the year, not counting Christmas or Easter.

In my part of the country, we have grade schools, so at least 40% of offertory usually goes to children's catechesis staff and buildings. 

Our churches tend to be bigger, so the emphasis on children's catechesis does leave a large slice of the pie for adult catechesis, but in most places, the pocket change is substantial compared to a little church focused on small groups but not large per person.

But some things exist in this space:

Many parishes have a Formed.com subscription. Any parish member can access any of their bible study/catechism videos, like Faithlife TV.  It is a little less than 2k a year. We also have a Word on Fire subscription, which allows us to email videos for a similar price. So, $150 to $200 monthly is the going rate for this in the Catholic space. These prices don't vary a lot based on the parish size. I personally resent that, because the uptake rate is so low it costs probably more than $10 per user hour for small parishes, but for a larger, 1000+ family parish, it is a brain-dead easy decision. 

Hallow (Catholic Headspace App) offers a deal for our schools, one price, rated on number of students, again for a medium-sized parish in the just under $2000 year category. ($150 seems like the limit everyone else has found for impulse buys.) That allows unlimited audio streaming for students and teachers in all k-12 programs in the parish and a 3-month trial for parents. It also includes detailed analytics.

We tend to be cheapskates when it comes to adults. Babysitting is usually a fundraiser for the 8th-grade trip. One of the leading Catholic video Bible Study publisher, Ascension Press, makes it easy for everyone to go online and buy a copy of the study guide with their credit card. Most parishes don't have a dedicated staff member for adult formation or small groups. 

A scheme that has opened out wallets is the "give a book away at Christmas or Easter" plan. 

Most mainstream-ish Catholic publishers have gotten into the habit of picking out one or two books each Easter/Christmas to price in the $1 to $3-a-piece range.  Parishes buy a lot of them, a parish of 1000 families would probably buy 6-800 copies, so again the impulse purchase range is 1-3k.

What would I want:

Verbum.

For the congregation, something like Verbum Faith Formation Essentials would be ideal. (Although I can't see an actual list of resources anywhere.) It could be even simpler: Bible, catechism, daily readings, book of the saints, and maybe with a handful of Catholic Answers stuff thrown in for good measure. The Bible and Catechism are free online, but Verbum is so much better and more usable.  No one is offering this stuff, at least not in a way that encourages going deeper. 

For Staff: The same plus the liturgical books, i.e., Roman Missal, Lectionary for Mass, and maybe recent encyclicals. 

2 grand a year would be hard to resist...

Except:

1. The Verbum is not great for Catholic devotional use. The readings don't appear in line with the calendar like they do on PC. The Verbum Saints Dataset is not a "devotional," so it doesn't show up on the homepage. Catholics want to see a daily meditation, daily readings, and the saint of the day, maybe a featured book. There are better apps for that.

2. There are enough Catholic Bible Study apps that don't charge parishes but offer in-app purchases. They can't offer the quality of Logos, but they have a cohesive product at no cost to me. 

The staff part is pretty appealing, especially the official liturgical texts, which are expensive and unwieldy books.