Use of Home Computers

14 April, 2010 - 16:50 by Jay Jay
Do you think the Church should pay for a computer/printer to produce the magazine? I have been doing the printing on my home computer and printer for 5yrs. I recently bought a new printer, mainly to print the magazine as the old one had a problem. I have only ever asked for a couple of ink cartridges before. The copies are then run off on the Church rhisograph collated by a team of helpers and stapled. We produce 170 copies 10 times a year. No one pays for these.
‹ What do you do? METHODS OF PRINTING ›
Submitted by Scribbler on 14 April, 2010 - 19:52.
Good question Jay Jay. Depends on your PCC and finances. As I said in an earlier email printer cartridges are a horrendous price. I don't ask for repayment of cartridges and paper as obviously I use them myself, though I have started to ask the church to pay my subscription for Parish Pump. Going back to cost, previously I would print one copy off to proofread then one final draft which went to the parish office to be duplicated. Now I just print a proofreaders copy and when amended email it straight to the printers. All I can suggest is get some facts and figures together and ask. You may find the treasurer has a budget for magazine costs.
Submitted by Link_Man on 6 May, 2010 - 14:48.
Yes printer cartridges are indeed horrendously expensive for what they are.. I have worked in a similar way to Scribbler for 10 years in that I produce one copy of the mag on my home ink-jet printer for proof-reading purposes and then I keep it as my reference copy. Once any corrections had been made to the files on the computer, I print out "Master Pages" which are then used on the church's photo-copier to generate the copies of the mag for distribution. A few years ago, we were given an old colour laser printer which I used successfully for printing photo pages and colour pages (particularly the front covers). As a result of the encouraging feed-back resulting from the use of colour, I was able to persuade the church property and finance committee to let me buy a new colour laser printer when the old one finally failed. But this has brought us back to the problem of cost of cartridges. For my own ink-jet printer, I buy "compatible cartridges" over the Internet to keep costs down or even re-fill my cartridges myself to cut costs even further. I have also been re-filling laser cartridges and that also dramatically reduces costs on those machines but, so far, I have found only 2 companies in the UK who can supply the materials for re-filling laser cartridges, but both of them have been very helpful when I have needed to speak to them.
Submitted by Mr. Keith Cronin on 8 May, 2010 - 03:40.
In most cases people feel "its thier way of supporting the church", but it can get out of hand when apart from the usual tasks you do, the odd meeting minutes or agenda come your way with a note saying " in gods name" then you discover through the finance report you are re-typing and printing that someone else has claimed for the ink and paper you have used. No one minds doing these tasks, but it should be noted that the work distributed is done in moderation and NO payment will be entered into, from anyone including the clergy..
Submitted by Mrs Editor on 17 May, 2010 - 19:11.
We prepare everything on our home computer, and are very careful to proof-read every page and make sure it looks 'correct' Once we are happy with this, we have to take off the stuff that will be in colour, and print every side that will be in black and white. we then do the same with all the colour sheets (although we print them in black and white as we have our own printing resource where we can print one colour at a time) - we still have some that have to be altered and re-printed so sometimes we are printing around 50 sheets per issue We do not use our colour cartridges for the magazine. We find the fairest way is to pay for one black cartridge ourselves and ask the church to pay for alternate ones. They also pay the Parish Pump subscription. We do not have advertising and ask for a minimum subscription of 30p to help with costs.
Submitted by Tanzmeister on 31 August, 2010 - 15:53.
Like Mr Cronin I regard my work on the magazine as part of supporting the church. I assemble the magazine on the laptop using Serif Pageplus X4; carry out proofing on the machine and produce only one hard copy for copying. I make no charges for this. The Parish pays for our subscription to Parish Pump. We print the copies for circulation in black and white, and a full colour PDF version is uploaded to the website. No charge is made for the magazine so I suppose the Church is making a decent input.
Submitted by Bedfont Editor on 1 September, 2010 - 23:09.
I don't mind using my personal home PC for preparing the pages, but usually I use the parish's photocopier for printing on - I recommended a machine that was also a printer/scanner!
Submitted by Mrs S Taylor on 12 September, 2010 - 17:21.
Very interesting to read how other churches produce their magazine. I receive most of the copy by email, then edit it. I have a team of proof readers on whom I can call at short notice and we proof read from the screen which only entails printing the magazine once, which then goes to a volunteer where it is printed inhouse. We have a lot of advertising which pulls in good revenue and we charge 25p. per copy. I pay for the paper and ink.
Submitted by Alipey on 17 September, 2010 - 16:40.
I receive most of my copy by email and put it all together on my computer. In theory I print out a single copy (32 pages) which is then pasted up for reproduction elsewhere. In practice a number of pages get printed twice because I make a mistake or leave something out. I do not charge for paper, ink or time. I regard it as my service to the community. Someone else deal with the advertisements which take 6 pages; she does not charge either.
Submitted by Ron Fletcher on 9 November, 2010 - 14:07.
I too get most of my copy by email - we have four correspondents in the two dales of Upper Wharfedale - I then - using Publisher [Office 2007] - put the 20 page magazine together, text, text boxes, pictures, cartoons and jokes, etc. I print one copy for my proof-reader to check - I have never yet managed a 'deliberate mistake'-free edition! When we are satisfied that all is well I convert my copy into a pdf and email it to my Printer in Skipton. With advertisers and individual annual donations from our people we cover the monthly costs of producing 750 magazines delivered through every letter box in Upper Wharfedale.
Submitted by Sue McCaig on 13 November, 2010 - 22:59.
I put our magazine together at home on my own laptop using Publisher The church kindly provided me with this software so I wouldn't have to come into the parish office. Most of my copy arrives by email, although some elderly parishioners will submit something type-written or handwritten which I then type out myself. I'm also very fortunate that I have a proof reader who proof reads for free every month! After the corrections have been made, I put the magazine on a memory stick and take it into the Parish Office where a volunteer prints 800 copies in one morning on the church 'Duplo'. The front cover and the inside page contain colour photos and get printed on the posh colour printer in the parish office. Another volunteer collates the printed pages in one evening, using the parish collating machine. Certain members of the congregation then distribute copies to subscribers in their area (we are a large parish) all free of charge. (We charge 40p for a 24 page A5 magazine, which contains some advertising) I'm glad the church lets me use my own computer as I have a busy job and not much spare time .
Submitted by Edictator on 19 November, 2010 - 12:22.
I pull the magazine together and print one for checking. When I am happy with it I print it out on my laser printer which includes colour pictures. Essentially the magazine has three formats, depending upon how much copy I get, whether there is a rota included et cetera, so I persuaded our treasurer (Me!) to work out a costing per mag based on what paper we use and what ink, including an allowance for the number of colour pictures. In this way, I am happy to use my own printer as much or as little as I like, knowing that if I ever want paying for the mag, there is an equitable way of so doing that can be checked by the auditor. We make no charge for the magazine as we see it as a way of staying in touch with our scattered congregation and also leave it lying around in the main church building for visitors to pick up as a souvenir. We also offer to post it so now we have a regular readership in USA, Canada, England and mainland Scotland.
Submitted by Steve Charman on 29 November, 2010 - 23:36.
I edit our bi-monthly parish magazine at home on my own computer. I then send a PDF copy to my proof readers for checking, and we have then agreed the very kind support of our local secondary school who print 200 copies in full colour for us. We sell approximately 150 of these to the church family at £1 per copy, and I susspect the rest are taken free of charge by visitors etc to the church. We do not offer commercial advertising, as there is not a need to (and this also then saves a lot of time!).... why not approach your local schools?
Submitted by napes2000 on 26 January, 2012 - 23:17.
None of my contributors have email, so i have to scan it all in. one of my contributors hand writes her article and the handwriting isnt too good so I "talk" it in using a microphone and Dragon software. The mag is built up on Publisher and we used to print one copy on HP printer and the Church Secretary photocopied the magazine. The print job was too much for the old clunky photocopier, so I got an HP laserjet printer on ebay for about £30 and print it all off on there. Thde cartridges are reasonably priced if you get em online and the Church pays for those. The laser quality is amazing. I do find a lot of people say they will contribute, but they never do. We do get some amazing typos when we scan in especialy when the Church typewriters' keys need a clean....it always gets the word "God" wrong, which is a pain for a Church magazine. Must dash....deadline to hit Chris N