aVillageA village that actually shows up
aVillage helps churches and communities wrap real, practical care around foster, adoptive, and kinship families — meals, rides, respite, supplies, and a team that shows up.
One app, the whole ministry
Everything a foster-care ministry runs on, in one place
One leader can coordinate dozens of volunteers without a spreadsheet, a group chat that scrolls away, and four different sign-up links.
A family says what would help. Somebody claims it.
Rides, respite, groceries, a hand on a hard week. Each need carries how many helpers it wants — an exact count, a range, or unlimited — and closes itself when there's no room left, so nobody double-signs and nobody gets asked twice.
- One-time or recurring, with a first and last day
- Filled means no room left — a 2-to-5 need with three helpers keeps asking
- Open / Filled / All, so what people can still act on is never buried
Dinner, organized around a placement.
Allergies, delivery windows, and who is bringing what — on every night, in front of the person signing up. Claiming a night is race-safe, so two people tapping at once never both get Thursday.
- Standing notes travel with the family, not with one volunteer's memory
- Reminders go out before the night someone claimed
- Scoped to a campus when a church runs more than one
A named team wrapped around one family.
Some asks are for six people, not for the whole church. A family can post a need into their own circle — the circle is notified, the congregation isn't — and a leader can open it up to everyone later if it needs more hands.
- A private thread and standing notes the whole circle can see
- Ask the circle first; escalate to the community with one tap
- Circle rows are invisible to everyone outside it, enforced in the database
A closet that can serve more than one church.
The closet is its own thing, not a folder inside one church. One church creates it, others join it with a code, and the people who run it are coordinators — a group that doesn't have to match anyone's church role.
- Inventory, a public needs list, and family requests kept private to the requester
- Donors pledge to bring something in person or to buy it online
- Volunteer shifts, with the verification bar the coordinator chooses
Becoming licensed, one honest step at a time.
A state's process is a graph, not a checklist. Steps that genuinely wait on another say so; everything else is parallel, so a family sees what they can start today instead of a list they think they must do in order.
- Per-state steps, each with its source and the date it was last checked
- “N steps you can start now” and a per-step “waiting on”
- When the state changes its process, the journey reconciles — progress is never deleted
Numbers you can put in front of a board.
Families supported, needs met, hours given — split by campus, exportable as CSV. Every figure is labelled with how it was reached: counted from real rows, or estimated from a multiplier.
- Recorded vs estimated is on the metric, not in a footnote
- Per-campus roll-up for a multi-site church
- Only aggregates leave the database — never a row about a family or a child
Where do you fit?
Three ways in
I lead a church or ministry
Start or run a foster-care ministry that doesn't depend on one person remembering everything. Set it up in an afternoon.
Bring aVillage to your churchI'm a foster, adoptive, or kinship family
You don't need a church already using aVillage. Tell us what you need and find a community near you.
Find a communityI want to help a family
If your church is already in aVillage, a 6-character join code from your ministry leader is all you need to see what's needed this week.
I have a join codePrivacy
The family's information belongs to the family
Foster care puts children in someone else's software during the least private season of their life. aVillage draws the line further in than church software usually does — and enforces it in the database, not just in the interface.
- A foster child's name, birth date and photo are readable only by that family's own account — not staff, not other members, not other churches
- A child's name is optional everywhere; cards fall back to the relationship
- Photos live in a private bucket and are served through short-lived signed links
- Every member-visible surface can be reported, and anyone can block an abusive person without asking staff
Enforced by row-level security
Access rules live in Postgres. A direct API call is refused exactly like the app refuses it.
Export and deletion
Members download their own data; leaders export the community's. Neither export can reach the other's private fields.
Texts only with proof
A phone number can't be opted in to SMS until the number itself has been verified. Changing it drops the opt-in.
Retention, published
What expires and when is written in the Privacy Policy, and a nightly job does exactly that and nothing more.
Pricing
Funded by churches. Never by families.
aVillage is funded by the churches that use it. Your contribution is based on your size; small churches pay nothing, and any church can request a reduced or sponsored account — cost should never be the reason foster families go unserved.
- Automatic. No request, no card, no trial clock.
- Every feature — nothing is held back.
- Unlimited volunteers and families.
- About $87/mo at 400 average attendance.
- All modules included in the one figure.
- 30 days of full access before anything is due.
- Access continues in full for 14 days while we look at it.
- An undecided request approves itself inside that window — silence can never lock you out.
- Giving beyond your size is what pays for someone else's.
Questions leaders actually ask
Before you bring it to your team
Who can see our families' information?
A foster child's details — name, birth date, photo — are visible only to that family's own account. Not church staff, not other members, not other churches.
It is enforced by row-level security in the database, so a direct API call is refused exactly like the app refuses it. A child's name is optional everywhere, and the app renders the relationship instead when it's blank.
What does it cost us?
aVillage is funded by the churches that use it. Your contribution is based on your size; small churches pay nothing, and any church can request a reduced or sponsored account — cost should never be the reason foster families go unserved.
Churches under 150 average attendance are free automatically — no request and no trial clock. Members and families never pay anything, on any plan. See the numbers for your size.
Do our volunteers need background checks?
That's your call and your church's policy — aVillage doesn't decide it. The app records what your leaders verified and can require a check before someone takes certain roles, but it never runs checks itself.
Does this replace Planning Center or Church Community Builder?
No, and it isn't trying to. Those run your church: attendance, giving, service planning, the member database.
aVillage runs the care around one family at a time — a meal train with the allergies on it, a ride nobody dropped, a closet with the right size of shoes, a licensing journey a family can actually follow. Churches use both.
We have three campuses. Does that work?
Yes. Content can be scoped to a campus or shared church-wide, and campus leaders can run their own care without being made staff of the whole church. Cross-campus and church-wide changes stay with staff.
Leaders see a per-campus roll-up on the impact report.
Can I look around before committing?
Yes. Ask us for a demo and we'll set up a private sandbox in your church's name, already filled with realistic families, needs and meal trains. You can click anything in it and invite your team to see it, and nothing you do touches a real church.
A sandbox is permanently free and is never asked to pay.
Somebody in your church is already doing this from a notebook
aVillage is opening up church by church. Tell us about yours and we'll get you set up — including a private sandbox in your church's name, filled with realistic families and needs, that you can click through with your team before anyone commits to anything.
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