I happened across StaffTool.com from some random tweet the other day and thought I’d give it a whirl.  First impressions were so-so (I think the homepage looks a little old-skool).  But, never judge a book by its cover, right?

StaffTool is “an easy way for churches and non-profits to manage their people, events, and communication.”  Sounds jiffy!  “Inspiring,” perhaps (or that’s what they say…)!

So, what’s the catch?  A business model that is very similar to Basecamp and many other similar services:

And if you’ve got a church or organization over 10, you’re going to start having to pay.  What’s always been so interesting to me is that these types of services have always been subject to the very same network effect that social networks have going for them, which is the simple principle that the community, as a whole, is more valuable as the size of the community increases.

Likewise, the application has more value the more people (and data) that is necessarily put into it.  If you’ve got a staff of 10 people or less, you DON’T need something like this.  A pen, paper, and excel spreadsheets will probably do.  100 people?  Perhaps.

In any case, the concept is old but the style is new.  And instead of rocking the screen grabs, I’ve decided to do something a little bit different… I’m going to video capture a “dry” run through of the site.

StaffTool.com Walk Through from ChurchCrunch on Vimeo.

Pretty cool stuff.  I think their interface is simple, intuitive, and navigable.  I think their execution is decent too.  They’ve got iPhone app and SSO with OpenID (sweet!).

I’d be interested to hear about ministries that have adopted this whole sale and their experiences.

What say you?