Connect Your Post Collections To Planning Center

If your church uses Planning Center to manage your people database, Nucleus can automatically keep your Post collection subscribers in sync – right inside Planning Center People. No manual exports, no spreadsheets. Just subscribe, and they're there. This serves to ensure that the same people who sign up for your weekly bulletin or devotional series show up right where you're already managing your congregation 🤝

In this guide, we'll walk you through how the integration works, how to turn it on for each collection, and how to set up a matching list in PCO so you can start emailing your subscribers.

Here's what we'll cover. Click any topic to jump ahead.

How It Works

When someone subscribes to one of your Post Hub collections (like a weekly devotional or church announcements), Nucleus can send that subscription data over to PCO, updating their person profile or creating a new one altogether. Here's the simple version of what happens behind the scenes:

Someone subscribes to a Post Collection on your website.
Nucleus finds or creates their person record in Planning Center using their name and email.
Nucleus adds a checkbox value to their profile that matches the Collection's title under a field called Subscribed to:.
When they unsubscribe, Nucleus removes that checkbox value.

From there, you can use Planning Center's List feature to build your own subscriber list based on that checkbox data and it'll stay up to date automatically.

Note: Nucleus writes data to PCO. It doesn't (yet) read it back or take action based on changes made in PCO. Think of it as a one-way push that keeps your PCO people data enriched with subscription info.

What You'll Need Before Getting Started

Before you enable subscriber sync on a collection, make sure the following are in place:

PCO is connected to your Nucleus account. Head to your Integrations settings to verify. (Quick link here)
Your subscriber form is configured. PCO requires a first and last name to create a person record. An email address alone won't work. For this reason, Nucleus has made all three fields required in the Subcribe form, however you can edit the language of the form to match your church's voice.

Enable Subscriber Sync for a Collection

Once PCO is connected, enabling the sync for a specific Collection only takes a moment.

In your Nucleus Dashboard, go to Posts and open the Collection you want to connect.
Click into Settings for that Collection.
Under the Planning Center section, you’ll see whether your church-level Planning Center integration is connected.
Toggle the sync on for this Collection.
Save your settings.

That's it! 🥳 Once enabled, Nucleus will run an initial backfill syncing all of the collection's current active subscribers into Planning Center right away. After that, any new subscriptions, unsubscribes, and re-subscribes will stay in sync automatically.

Note: If the Planning Center card says there's no campaign configuration yet, it means this collection doesn't have a Smart Campaign set up. You'll need to provision one before the sync option becomes available.

What Gets Created in Planning Center

The first time the sync runs, Nucleus automatically creates the following in your Planning Center People account. You don't need to set anything up manually:

A custom tab on person profiles named Nucleus
A checkbox field inside that tab named Subscribed to:
A checkbox option for your Collection title

For example, if your collection is called Weekly Updates, you'll see a checkbox option called Weekly Updates inside the Subscribed to: field on any subscriber's profile in PCO.

If you sync multiple Post collections, each one gets its own checkbox option under the same Subscribed to: field. A person who's subscribed to three collections will have three checkboxes checked on their profile.

Good to know: If the Nucleus tab or Subscribed to: field ever gets accidentally deleted in Planning Center, Nucleus will automatically recreate them the next time a sync occurs.

Build a Planning Center List from Your Subscribers

Nucleus doesn't create Planning Center Lists automatically. That’s a quick, one-time setup you'll do in Planning Center. Here's how:

In Planning Center, go to People > Lists and click New List.
Give your list a descriptive name that’s related your Posts Collection, like Weekly Updates Subscribers.
Add a rule with these settings:
- Custom Tab: Nucleus
- Field: Subscribed to:
- Condition: includes
- Checkbox: (the exact title of your Nucleus collection — e.g., Weekly Updates )
Turn on Auto Refresh in Settings so the list stays current as new subscribers come in.
Save the list.

Planning Center will automatically include everyone who has that checkbox value on their profile, and the list will update as Nucleus syncs new subscribers.

A Few Things to Know

One integration, multiple collections. You can enable subscriber sync on as many Post Collections as you want. Each collection gets its own unique Subscription Value, so subscribers are tracked separately in PCO all under the same Nucleus Subscriptions field on their profile.

Renaming a collection updates Planning Center too. If you rename a Post Collection in Nucleus, the corresponding checkbox option in Planning Center is updated to match. So if Announcements becomes Church Announcements, Planning Center reflects that change automatically.

Unsubscribes remove the checkbox, not the person. When someone unsubscribes, Nucleus removes their checkbox value for that collection. Their person record stays in Planning Center, as Nucleus never deletes people from your database.

This is a one-way sync. Nucleus manages subscriber state in Planning Center, but doesn't read it back (yet!). If you add or remove a checkbox value manually in Planning Center, Nucleus won't pick that up or act on it.

Each collection is tracked independently. Every Post collection you connect gets its own checkbox option under the same Subscribed to: field. Subscribing to or unsubscribing from one Collection has no effect on any others.

What's Next?

Now that your subscribers are flowing into PCO, you can use PCO's built-in email and communication tools to send your Post updates out to them, or continue managing campaigns from Nucleus Messages. Either way, your people data stays clean and connected 🤌