Why do I need a unique email address?

Email is your Safe Ministry account identifier
All online ‘member-type’ websites require their users to have a unique identifier when they register or create an account on the website.

On our Training website, this is your email address.
Why use the email address rather than something else? Mainly because:

• You need an email address to use the online training system, so everyone who uses the website needs access to AN email address.
• There is no other convenient unique identifier available. Not everyone who uses the site has a WWCC number, surnames are not unique, dates of birth are not unique, and so on.

We realise that some couples share a single email address, and other individuals may not even own a computer but need to register on the site for face-to-face training.

However, this is a small inconvenience that is easily overcome by following the steps below.

If you are in a church and assisting those without a computer/internet to set up a safe ministry account:

• Set up a free Gmail account for your church for this purpose, e.g., stfaiths@gmail.com
• Get multiple versions of that address delivered to the one inbox by including a plus sign (‘+’) in the first part of the address.

For example, if you wish to set up a safe ministry account for Fred Bloggs and Mary Smith, simply type stfaiths+fredbloggs@gmail.com and stfaiths+marysmith@gmail.com into the email field when creating their safe ministry accounts. Our system will recognise both of these email addresses as unique addresses for each safe ministry account, but information for both addresses will end up in the stfaiths@gmail.com inbox.

Using this simple method, you can very easily have people with no email address create their own Safe Ministry Training account for online or face-to-face training, and one person (e.g., the Safe Ministry Rep or church Administrator) monitor the emails the system will send them.

If you are a couple who share an existing Gmail account:

Use the same method as above with your existing Gmail account to create different email addresses without setting up a whole new email account.

For example, if John and Jenny Smith share the email johnsmith@gmail.com, then

• John can type johnsmith@gmail.com into the email field when setting up his safe ministry account, and
• Jenny can type johnsmith+jenny@gmail.com into the email field when creating her safe ministry account

Our system will read both of these email addresses as unique addresses for each safe ministry account, but information for both addresses will end up in the johnsmith@gmail.com inbox.

More information on this technique can be found here: https://www.labnol.org/internet/multiple-email-addresses-in-gmail/17426/