Sorting and Organizing Data

Now that you have gathered data from your local church/state or regional records, it is important to sort and organize the data.  For those of you who are familiar with Microsoft Excel, this is very simple, as is Apple Numbers or any other spreadsheet program.  If you are not familiar with these, regular paper spreadsheets are available from your local office supply store.  If you are going to benchmark several areas, I would recommend you obtain a spreadsheet with enough columns to properly organize your data.

The process is the same, whether paper or electronic for this next step.  Here is an example for your benefit:

Year	Tithe	Offerings	Sunday School	Morning	Church	Baptisms	Conversions
			Attendance	Worship	Membership
				Attendance
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011

Begin by entering the information you collected in the appropriate place:

Example:  For the year 2000, enter the total tithe in the column with that heading, do the same for Offerings, etc.  (Don't worry about doing anything else until you have entered all of your data).

Finally, as you can see, this is ONLY a method of ORGANIZING your data.  Future posts will cover how to determine averages.  I hope this is helpful.  God bless