Looking for a Modern Church Safeguarding Alternative in Canada?
If your current program charges membership fees, requires hours of training, and locks your policies behind a paywall, there’s a better way.
| Safe Pathways | Legacy program | Do-it-yourself | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Training | Volunteers complete a 20-minute video pathway specific to their role, on any device, on their own time, or together in a Watch Party. | 2+ hours per volunteer, broad curriculum, only delivered by a certified trainer in person or online videos. | Informal or nonexistent. Borrowed materials, PowerPoint, or verbal briefing. |
| Annual cost | One transparent per-volunteer price. Everything included. | Membership fees (varies by package) plus per-person training fees. | Staff time to research, create, and maintain. Often underestimated. |
| Policies | Insurance-specific policy suite ready to adopt. Optional clauses and editable resources. You own everything. | Printed manual with policies and templates. Tied to membership, approval required for edits, access lost on cancellation. | Downloaded or borrowed policy. May not match your insurer's actual requirements. |
| Day-to-day execution | Reminder emails go out automatically. References get collected automatically. Expiring credentials get flagged automatically. All without staff lifting a finger. | Staff must manually track who's completed what and chase volunteers who haven't. | Usually falls on one person's to-do list. When they leave, the system breaks down. |
| Tracking & records | Automated dashboard, expiry alerts, and a one-click Evidence Report in under 2 minutes. | Church-managed. Typically manual records, staff follows up by hand. | Spreadsheets, paper files, or nothing. Hard to produce under pressure. |
| Background checks | Integrated with Canpro SOS. Order and track from one dashboard. | Available as a service. Ordered on the church's behalf, tracked separately. | Church orders directly. No central tracking. |
| Platform | Full web app: admin dashboard, volunteer portal, automated workflows, Planning Center integration. | No web application. Services delivered through memberships, not software. | No platform. Everything is manual. |