Workspace Go
Google Workspace, managed for how churches actually work
Church of England benefices can get Google Workspace free. Workspace Go makes it work properly — role-based email, mailing lists, shared drives, and clean handovers when people move on.
Every church has the same email problem
People come and go — volunteers, clergy, officers, committee members. When they leave, their email goes with them. The new treasurer doesn't know what the old treasurer agreed with the heating engineer. The safeguarding officer who left took all the correspondence with them.
Meanwhile, the church is trying to communicate using a mixture of personal Gmail accounts, a shared Yahoo account nobody remembers the password to, and a WhatsApp group that half the PCC aren't on.
Google Workspace for Nonprofits gives every Church of England benefice free, professional email on their own domain. It's the same tool used by thousands of organisations worldwide — businesses pay £7 per month per user, while any eligible church can have as many users as they need for free.
The catch? Setting it up properly is genuinely complicated. The Google admin console is powerful but bewildering. And even if you get it right, maintaining it as people come and go is an ongoing headache.
- Email addresses tied to individuals, not roles — lost when people move on
- Important correspondence scattered across personal inboxes
- No consistent public-facing contact addresses
- Congregation mailing lists that are difficult to manage properly
- Former volunteers still receiving confidential minutes
- New role-holders starting from scratch with no history
Workspace Go sits on top of Google Workspace and manages it for you
Workspace Go is built in language that makes sense for how churches actually work, and focuses on just the things that add real value in a church context. Everything Workspace Go does, you could do directly in Google's admin console — but that console is built for IT administrators. Workspace Go is built for churches.
Connect your Google Workspace account to Workspace Go, and an import wizard pulls in all your existing accounts, groups, and shared drives. From there, Workspace Go manages everything going forward.
Email addresses that belong to the role, not the person. Handovers are clean and nothing is lost.
Congregation lists with GDPR-compliant unsubscribe, restricted sending, and open/click tracking.
Each team gets its own shared drive. Access is granted and removed automatically as membership changes.
When someone leaves, one button suspends their account, removes all group memberships, revokes drive access, and sets an auto-reply.
Built around the way churches are actually run
People come and go. Email stays.
treasurer@hillandvale.org belongs to the treasurer role. When Peter hands over to Janet, Janet gets access to that inbox — all previous correspondence included, from day one.
The right people get the right emails.
safeguarding@ forwards to your safeguarding team automatically. When your officer changes, you update the team in Workspace Go — the forwarding updates itself. No admin console required.
Your whole congregation can receive parish news — properly.
Congregation mailing lists with restricted sending, automatic unsubscribe links, GDPR audit trail, and open/click tracking. No reply-all disasters. Works with external email addresses.
Every team has its own shared space.
When Workspace Go creates a team — the PCC, the finance committee, the youth team — it creates a shared Google Drive for that team. Members join and leave; access follows automatically.
One-click offboarding. Nothing left behind.
When someone leaves, one button handles everything: account suspended, auto-reply set, removed from every group, drive access revoked, roles ended. The history stays. Access is removed cleanly.
Tasks that don't fall through the cracks.
A simple task tracker for each group. Assign a task, set a deadline, and Workspace Go chases it on a schedule you determine. You can import an existing Google Sheet task tracker to get started.
Workspace Go vs the Google admin console
Everything Workspace Go does, you could do directly in Google's admin console. But here's what that actually involves.
| Task | Google admin console | Workspace Go |
|---|---|---|
| Set up a role account with forwarding | 10+ steps: create account, wait for Gmail, set forwarding, verify each address, configure rules, test | Fill in the name, pick the team group, click create. Done. |
| Remove someone who's leaving | Suspend account, manually remove from each group, revoke each shared drive, end role assignments, set auto-reply | Click Offboard. Confirm. Done. |
| Hand over the treasurer role | No handover concept — share password, update 2FA, remember to change password after handover, update groups manually | Assign new holder. Unassign old holder when handover is complete. Access audit trail retained. |
| Set up congregation mailing lists | Complex routing rules for compliance; manual unsubscribe handling; no open or click tracking at all | Create the list. Unsubscribe links, GDPR audit trail, immediate removal, open and click tracking — all included, no configuration. |
| Built for | IT administrators | Churches |
Not just for churches
Workspace Go arose in a church context, but it's a great fit for any charity or non-profit with the same characteristics.
- Volunteers who come and go, with roles that need to stay consistent
- Public contact email addresses that need to be easy to manage and route
- Simple mailing lists, GDPR-compliant, without a full marketing platform
- Somewhere central to store and organise documents
You don't have to be a church — it's open to any organisation that qualifies for Google Workspace for Nonprofits, or that simply wants to make better use of the Google Workspace they already pay for.
Find out how Workspace Go can help your church
A short conversation is usually all it takes. If you don't have Google Workspace for Nonprofits yet, we can help you apply — it's free for eligible organisations.