Club membership admin software

Not paid for but provided by a member as a cut down version of something they had already written commercially.  Keeps membership records, creats and sends forms, emails newsletters, contact management records, enables searching and jobs to be done in bulk.

We find that a club website and email newsletters has helped reduce the cost and effort over the old days when we used to snailmail people.  New members also tell us they found us via the web, so I think this area is a priority - though most clubs I know do seem to have some form of website or other now.

We've also got spreadsheets with membership details, and the membership sec uses this as a basis to send out reminders etc. Not slick but it seems to work - quite a lot of manual intervention though.

In terms of duties, we're still in the dark ages and tend to spend ages at the start of each season agonising over the duty rota's, ie trying to match members to duties they are qualified for, trying to match family members to duties at the same time, and trying to get a balance of experienced and inexperienced members on duty together to effect some knowledge transfer.  There's probably a better way of doing this, its always a pain in the neck to do.

One of the most useful technology areas we've found though is providing the ability for members to pay for subs, socials etc via the website, eg through Paypal. This has been incredibly popular.

We use a system called Medusa. Those running our membership and duty rotas are very impressed with it. They say it reduces hassle, they use less time on admin and our records are now more accurate. Was also store extra infomation on the system such as the duties people are able to do, which duties they have done ect. We are starting to run Dutyman alongside it

Our admin team (all sailors volunteering) seem to think so. If you are keen and want to contact them I can give you an e-mail address.

Hi

The Medusa software looks pretty good.  I think the software we have covers pretty much the same ground, but our system does link more directly with our race management software.

The major difference if I understand the Medusa product is it is a desktop product which uses file exchange for synching database changes from different PCs.  The web based solution we have is a central database which any club officer can access and update (subject to controls on access permissions).  The Medusa product would be good for those clubs that do all the administration on site - most of ours is done by club members working from home, and I can't see them wanting to swap files each time a change is made.  I may have misunderstood how it works though.

Anyway - should have an open source offering out in the spring if anybody wants to give it a try.  Support will be on a best efforts basis though as I do have a day job.

If anyone has any specific "got to have" requirements please PM me - can't promise to add them, but at least I'll consider it.

Mark