With MemberClicks Professional and Job Board, VRPS has streamlined their technology, saved money, improved efficiency for their small staff and now earns more than $400 extra in revenue every quarter. Virginia Recreation & Park Society is a private, non-profit organization founded in 1953 with the purpose of uniting everyone in the field of regulation, parks and other leisure services in Virginia. On top of providing professional development opportunities and workshops, they also create professional networking opportunities for those in the industry. Having an easy to learn and use software for staff, and an engaging member website is key to making this purpose a reality for VPRS. Matt Spruill, 2022 President and VRPS board member, and Lori Haislip, Office Manager, started looking for an association management software that would do just this: make the lives easier for staff and provide added value to their 1400 members.
“Our software [before 2022] was definitely antiquated. It didn’t provide our members with the services we felt they deserved and needed. On top of that, they were actually going to stop servicing and updating the product software. For the level of confidence we need in our software – we rely on it for everything – we knew we needed to find a new provider. “
From 10 different programs to one all-in-one software
Stop for a moment here and think about the technology tools and subscription services you use on a daily basis. How many programs do you log in to if you want to send an email? How many spreadsheets do you need to update when a member changes their contact info? This was the exact challenge that Matt and Lori experienced on a daily basis.“Before moving over, we also had about 10 different services we were using and paying for. We were using Formstack, SurveyMonkey, Abila and Constant Contact. We also had a separate website and a separate job board. We were kind of all over the place with the different software. Each of these were different monthly subscription fees.” Those costs add up over time. Outside of the actual monetary costs, there’s the loss of time from team members from jumping between tools and double checking data across platforms. “When we demoed MemberClicks Professional and saw that this one software could do everything we needed, we knew it was the all-in-one package for us and that we could get rid of all the other software we were using.”Improving member value and experience
The software your team uses directly impacts the values you can provide your members. This comes through in your members-only portal, how much time your team has to focus on member events, and even how easy your software makes it for your members to plan and run their own groups.
“Our old software didn’t provide our members with the services... they deserved and needed. We decided to start the process to find a new provider and demoed a lot of products. Virginia Recreation and Park Society has a lot of different groups that meet and do programs and events. MemberClicks Professional gave us a better way for them to manage their own webpages within the website. Admins can update the information themselves instead of waiting on somebody in the office or somebody else who's doing this on a volunteer basis to try and update their pages. Putting that power in the hands of select members is incredible.”Aside from member initiative, though, there's a whole other set of member-experiences that are improved with a software partner like MemberClicks Professional.
“Members can self-register for events, classes or programs and get automated renewals that makes it easy for them to manage their own memberships on their side. They can pay online and see all their invoices online... That experience for the members is just incredible.”Outside of the all-in-one nature and reliability of MC Professional, there were a few key features that they called out as being really WOWs. Some key features VRPS just loves are:
Renewal reminders and automated features.
Lori, as the main admin worker for the entire society, raved about how the automation tools in MemberClicks Professional gives her time back in her day.“When we had our old system, it was not user friendly. Every month, it was a huge use of time to have to manually update memberships and send out renewal reminders. There was nothing automatic about it. It was difficult to do and would take me a long time.”
Forms for all
One of MemberClicks Professional’s best features is our forms. Our forms can be custom built to help you get the info or answers you need. You can build custom form templates, ask unique questions for applications or event registration. You can even configure forms to gather feedback or input from members.“The form center has been tremendous for us. We use it for event and program registrations, elections for board members, submitting programs and continuing education session proposals. Plus, it all connects on the back end. The dashboards make it easy to find information about registrations and connect form fills to member profiles. It’s streamlined everything for us.”
The admin dashboard
For Matt, as a board member and 2022 President of the society, the dashboard is a real gem. “I’ll log into it three or four times a day just to get a quick look at, ‘hey, did this payment come through?’ or, ‘what’s our registration like?’. It’s all right there, at my fingertips. I don’t have to jump through reports or dig through data for it. And it all updates in real time so I can trust it. It makes the job easy. That’s what we’re looking for. Just make it easy.”Job Board for added revenue
Along with MemberClicks Professional, VPRS also chose Job Board as an add-on feature to their AMS. Lori, who was responsible for managing their old job board, had nothing but praise for Job Board by Personify.
“We are so glad that we opted to add Job Board. Our old website had a job board that was horrendous because it had to recognize you as a member or it would charge you. But it didn’t recognize members correctly. I always had to go in and approve every job that came up because I had to make sure that they were members. Now I don't even look at it unless I need to go there to do something. Again, automation here saves me so much time. Now, members can easily post and promote their job listings. The revenue share that we get from it is incredible. Someone features their ad and promotes their listing, and we get added revenue. So far, it’s been over $400 every quarter... which we weren't getting before because no one could figure out how to use our old platform. It's nice looking and people really like it.”
