Management of Membership Records for a Small Swim Club
July 14, 2017 7:28 AM
I need a system to manage membership & payments for members at a nonprofit neighborhood pool, along with a gate check-in system so that we can monitor pool use.
This is a non-profit neighborhood pool. I am the volunteer Membership Chair who took over the records last spring. I was immediately slammed with incoming annual dues for our 450+ member families right before pool open. I'm tracking contact info, member family names, and dues payments which arrive at my house in check form. Currently this system is a handful of Excel spreadsheets that I've cleaned up and optimized, but I need them to be in a database.
Then the pool manager desperately wanted an online check-in system for the front gate so she could track daily entry numbers to help manage her staff of lifeguards better. I ended up exporting the final member data from Excel into Google Sheets, and set up a Google Form with FormRanger to populate the membership records so that the guard staff at the desk can check in each member family and we can track numbers of members, guests, etc. This is working okay given that it's running on a donated old Chromebook and they are entering 100-250 forms every day. I really didn't think it would be that robust.
We'd like to move more of our operation online for 2018. I'd like to have an online database that can manage the membership records. I'd like to have that linked to a form where the guards can do check-ins, and I'd like to be able to better manipulate the data that comes out of those check-ins (but if I have to export to Excel for manipulation, that's fine). I'd like to be able to accept online payments where families have a login/password and can see their account history with us and get confirmation emails. I'd like families to be able to sign up for swim lessons and swim team, and have the swim volunteers be able to track that data. The Treasurer manages the budget and payroll with QuickBooks, so if this all linked to QuickBooks, then that would be great.
However, we just don't have that much budget, and when I start to tie together the kinds of services we'd need (such as running WooCommerce with our bank system for thousands of dollars in online payments through WordPress, or using AirTable with 20,000 records per summer), we quickly get into a lot of money for services and systems, not to mention the fees for taking credit card payments online. It would be possible to charge a small convenience fee to cover our costs. But it gets so complicated that it feels like I'm basically swearing myself into this volunteer role for life because I'd be the only one who knows how it all works.
Do you know a system that would work for us? Do you have any suggestions about how we move forward? Do you read all of this and think, "it's not that complicated- just use X!" Do you read all of this and think, "well, actually this is even more complicated because you're not considering X!"
Help us figure out how to move our system into the 1990s!
This is a non-profit neighborhood pool. I am the volunteer Membership Chair who took over the records last spring. I was immediately slammed with incoming annual dues for our 450+ member families right before pool open. I'm tracking contact info, member family names, and dues payments which arrive at my house in check form. Currently this system is a handful of Excel spreadsheets that I've cleaned up and optimized, but I need them to be in a database.
Then the pool manager desperately wanted an online check-in system for the front gate so she could track daily entry numbers to help manage her staff of lifeguards better. I ended up exporting the final member data from Excel into Google Sheets, and set up a Google Form with FormRanger to populate the membership records so that the guard staff at the desk can check in each member family and we can track numbers of members, guests, etc. This is working okay given that it's running on a donated old Chromebook and they are entering 100-250 forms every day. I really didn't think it would be that robust.
We'd like to move more of our operation online for 2018. I'd like to have an online database that can manage the membership records. I'd like to have that linked to a form where the guards can do check-ins, and I'd like to be able to better manipulate the data that comes out of those check-ins (but if I have to export to Excel for manipulation, that's fine). I'd like to be able to accept online payments where families have a login/password and can see their account history with us and get confirmation emails. I'd like families to be able to sign up for swim lessons and swim team, and have the swim volunteers be able to track that data. The Treasurer manages the budget and payroll with QuickBooks, so if this all linked to QuickBooks, then that would be great.
However, we just don't have that much budget, and when I start to tie together the kinds of services we'd need (such as running WooCommerce with our bank system for thousands of dollars in online payments through WordPress, or using AirTable with 20,000 records per summer), we quickly get into a lot of money for services and systems, not to mention the fees for taking credit card payments online. It would be possible to charge a small convenience fee to cover our costs. But it gets so complicated that it feels like I'm basically swearing myself into this volunteer role for life because I'd be the only one who knows how it all works.
Do you know a system that would work for us? Do you have any suggestions about how we move forward? Do you read all of this and think, "it's not that complicated- just use X!" Do you read all of this and think, "well, actually this is even more complicated because you're not considering X!"
Help us figure out how to move our system into the 1990s!
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ActiveNET - http://www.activenetwork.com/solutions/active-net
ZenPlanner - https://zenplanner.com/
Perfect Mind - http://www.perfectmind.com/business-type/recreation-management-software/
Here's a search too http://www.capterra.com/parks-and-recreation-software/
posted by warriorqueen at 10:01 AM on July 14, 2017