Organisation & background
Planning Center’s legal entity is Ministry Centered Technologies, Inc., founded by Jeff Berg and Aaron Stewart in Carlsbad, California, in the mid-2000s. It has never taken outside investment or debt financing, and a 2024 Ministry Centered Foundation formally structures the company to remain unsellable.
Functionality
Planning Center is a suite of church management products that share one people database. People holds profiles, households and custom fields, and the other products read from and write to it: Services for worship planning, team scheduling and song libraries; Check-Ins for secure children’s and event check-in; Calendar for room and resource booking; Registrations for event sign-ups and payments; Giving for donations and statements; and Groups for small groups with member directories. Church Center is the app and website congregants use to interact with the church, Publishing customises it and handles sermons, and Music Stand supports musicians.
Localised features
Serves the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand from one product. Tracks nondeductible gift types, qualified charitable distributions and donor-advised fund gifts, distinctly from deductible ones on year-end statements, and generates acknowledgment letters for in-kind, non-cash, donations. Vanco is offered as a payment processor specifically for churches prioritising ACH, the US bank-transfer network, and compliance.
Implementation model
Self-service, with migration guidance and structured rollout documentation provided, and a modest third-party consultancy ecosystem for migration support, including firms such as Threefold Solutions.
Hosting
Cloud-hosted by the vendor: Given Planning Center processes payment data and children’s check-in/safety data directly, this is worth a direct procurement question rather than assumed to reflect an actual security gap.
Links
Last full research
August 2026