Club membership admin software

   One of the plus points of  dedicated sailing club software is that it will best suit the needs of a sailing club.  However this is also its downfall,  the market is limited and club funds are often tight so development and support are going to be restricted.

Home brew solutions can also work well, but once the club IT guru moves on, such systems often become unsupportable.

The approach we have taken at Maidenhead is to identify an open source CRM system with a large user base and development community that meets pretty much all our needs - there may be some areas that are not fully covered, but the key aspects are there:
Membership & contacts database (including sub groups eg schools, scouts ) , family members etc.
Subscriptions, payments (online and offline).
Email lists
Web site integration.
Reporting
Geocoding

Being a fairly generic CRM and suited for non profit type organisations it can be tailored to meet requirements - it supports custom fields and tags. 
Furthermore we benefit from new enhancements as they come along.   

At the end of the day, whatever system you go for, what you really end up paying for is the  support of the system.  
The open source approach allows this to be provided internally on a volunteer basis, (ie "free") much in line with the ethos of many sailing clubs, however it also has the benefit of being able to outsource the support when a suitable person is not available in the club.

Poll Question: What does your club use to store member details and send out letters?
Poll Choice	Votes	Poll Statistics
Lots of bits of paper	1	[4.76%]
Spreadsheet	10	[47.62%]
Website we made or paid for	5	[23.81%]
Software we paid for	5	[23.81%]
We pay a firm to handle it	0	[0.00%]
You can not vote in this poll

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JohnW Send Private Message Find Member's Posts Really should get out more Joined: 17 Jul 07 Location: United Kingdom Online Status: Offline Posts: 552	Post Options Post Reply Quote JohnW Report Post Quote Reply Topic: Club membership admin software Posted: 11 Apr 13 at 3:25pm
	One of the plus points of dedicated sailing club software is that it will best suit the needs of a sailing club. However this is also its downfall, the market is limited and club funds are often tight so development and support are going to be restricted. Home brew solutions can also work well, but once the club IT guru moves on, such systems often become unsupportable. The approach we have taken at Maidenhead is to identify an open source CRM system with a large user base and development community that meets pretty much all our needs - there may be some areas that are not fully covered, but the key aspects are there: Membership & contacts database (including sub groups eg schools, scouts ) , family members etc. Subscriptions, payments (online and offline). Email lists Web site integration. Reporting Geocoding Being a fairly generic CRM and suited for non profit type organisations it can be tailored to meet requirements - it supports custom fields and tags. Furthermore we benefit from new enhancements as they come along. At the end of the day, whatever system you go for, what you really end up paying for is the support of the system. The open source approach allows this to be provided internally on a volunteer basis, (ie "free") much in line with the ethos of many sailing clubs, however it also has the benefit of being able to outsource the support when a suitable person is not available in the club.