Community Franchises

Community Franchises require 2 parties; a Franchisor and a Franchisee.

We would define a Franchisor as a ministry that is offering resources to a church or churches in a location that equip Christians in that location to deliver that ministry effectively and efficiently.

We would define a Franchisee as a church or churches in a location that take on a ministry from a Franchisor and deliver it through volunteers or paid staff.

We have identified 3 different types of ‘Franchisors’:

1. Training course providers e.g. HTB’s The Marriage Course. These are not run under the oversight of the provider. There is no franchise fee. Churches purchase the materials for leaders and participants and run the course. These are typically for ‘non-crisis’ situations e.g. not for on-going counselling or ministry but are relevant to the community i.e. not just for church member discipleship.

2. ‘Network’ franchisors e.g. GB Job Clubs. These try to help churches running similar ministries to share experiences and also provide resources to help them. They do not attempt to ‘brand’ the ministries under a common name. In a sense they encourage and support. They could be also seen as an association – similar to a trade association.

3. Full Franchisors e.g. Christians Against Poverty. These provide the branding, training, materials, processes, support services and oversight for churches wanting to run a ministry. Sometimes this is run by one church or a group of churches. Sometimes it becomes a separate charity supported by local churches.

Included in this section are details of all of the above.

Characteristics

From surveys with various franchisors, the characteristics of Full Franchisors are as follows:

• They see their ministry as a 'franchisor'
• They set targets for number of 'franchisees' per annum
• They run 'look/see' sessions/days for interested churches
• Churches run local operations under a ministry brand
• To take on a local centre, those involved take training
• To take on a local centre, they provide the software/materials/methodologies
• They monitor quality of operations of local centres
• They can help the church(es) involved in a local centre apply for external funding

The characteristics of Network Franchisors are as follows:

• They do not see their ministry as a 'franchisor'
• They do not set targets for number of 'franchisees' per annum
• They actively advertise to/contact churches in an area to start new local centres
• They run 'look/see' sessions/days for interested churches
• Churches do not run local operations under a ministry brand
• They might train
• They do provide some resources/methodologies (chargeable)
• They do not monitor quality of operations of local centres
• They can help the church(es) involved in a local centre apply for external funding

Training course providers are similar to Network Franchisors except that there is little or no sense of network.

We hope that the information in this section is helpful. We have grouped Franchisors by the area of ministry e.g. Addiction. Some address more than one area. Use the tag cloud for additional navigation based on your area of interest.