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A club thrives on and with its members — these must be managed and structured with high data quality and security. In this article, we get to the bottom of questions surrounding the organisation of your own members.
Good master data management, also known as club CRM, is necessary to enable you to organise and contact a wide variety of processes. In the club, think about what data you need from your members (in terms of the purpose of the cub) and only obtain data that is really relevant. Personal data is sensitive data and you as a club should therefore handle it carefully.
Only people who really need members' information (e.g. the board of directors or senior officials) should have access. For individual groups/teams, there may also be leaders/coaches.
Consider how you can securely collect members' data and pass it on to the relevant people in the club. Ideally, do not send it via tools such as WhatsApp, Facebook or other messengers from American providers.
How can you avoid redundant data? How do you keep member data up to date and how can you achieve meaningful joint work with master data (authorization system)? Have you dealt with the topic of the GDPR? These are all questions that you need to consider beforehand. The answers to these questions are usually easier than you think and we'll cover most of them in the course of this article.
With Vereinsplaner, you have bundled all member data in one place — from contact details to roles to contribution status. In this way, the overview is maintained at all times.
This is one of the fundamental questions before using Member administration and both options have their charm and benefits. First, let's look at what is probably the most common method of member management among clubs – management using Excel. Whether as a desktop version or as a shared document in Google Drive, Excel gives small clubs a cost-effective way to save and share their members and the associated data.
Whereby sharing lists among officials of an Excel document can quickly lead to problems because you can no longer ensure which ultimately the latest document is — data quality can suffer greatly as a result. But it's quick to set up and (almost) everyone is familiar with Excel.
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Please note that data stored on Google Drive or Microsoft Office Online is located on servers belonging to American providers. With the offline version, please also note that several backup copies have been made (please keep them up to date), otherwise data loss is inevitable.
Downloading and using prepared Excel templates from the internet pays off in very few cases, as Excel is set up very quickly in a small club and club software is better used by larger associations.
Cloud software for club administration, on the other hand, is mostly on domestic server locations and has focused on the management of club data. Before using membership management via cloud software, it is recommended to take a test subscription to see for yourself whether it is really the right thing for your own club. Most software offers such free testing — we from Vereinsplaner as well, of course.
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With cloud software, the data is usually stored in a central database and officials have shared access to member data depending on their authorisation, which significantly improves data quality compared to Excel. This is because there is only one current version. The data is stored securely and protected against unauthorised access.
Cloud software in practice
Digital applications for clubs combine all member data in a common database. As a result, information is not only more easily accessible, but is also maintained more consistently, regardless of who is currently responsible in the club.
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Why is it so important to mention this difference? Because a club lives with/from both types of members and software must fit the club accordingly, provided that there are many active members. The question should therefore actually be, how can you represent both groups in a meaningful way?
We've got a simple answer here. But first about the difference: Active members are people (such as officials, athletes, singers, musicians, helpers, coaches, organizers,...) who work in the club regularly or participate in club events. Passive members, on the other hand, are honorary members, sometimes people to be informed or simply interested in the club. In other words, all those who do not actively and regularly participate in club life.
Comprehensive management of membership fees and more
Vereinsplaner can do a lot and we would like to present a feature to you here: Create individual memberships, record the associated membership fees and assign them to the members. You can then generate membership fees and send them directly to the members concerned. Save yourself so much time and money. More information about Membership fee management.
But now to our answer on how to integrate both groups effectively using software. With Vereinsplaner, this is achieved through efficient membership management, where data records of inactive members can be managed independently by the relevant club officials. Active members, on the other hand, have the option of managing their own master data via a member account (e.g. mobile app) and keeping it up to date. Both groups and their data end up in a joint database and club officials naturally have access to all data.
The advantage, however, is that active members can participate in much more “club events” than just managing their own data. You can actively participate in appointment mailings, surveys, news and in chat. Active members can of course become passive members just like in real life and vice versa. Our club software ensures that the data is always clean.
That, as I said, is just our way of approaching this problem with a holistic solution — other software does it differently and as a club you have to decide for yourself how you need it.
Digital admission of new members
A digital membership form makes it easy and structured to register new members. The data entered is transferred directly to the member administration. This reduces sources of error, saves time and ensures that information is immediately available in central administration.
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It is difficult to say this in general, because every club is a bit different. It depends on how many members you want to manage with it and whether you want to intelligently link data with other features (such as scheduling). Costs also play a role, of course.
But there is a good rule of thumb: Without overwhelming you as a board member and pushing yourself into a complicated solution, the administration should feel fast and the data quality should be kept feeling high. Translated, this means: If you feel overwhelmed with administration or notice that you simply cannot keep the data up to date, then you should look for an alternative.
Small clubs usually manage quite well with a simple, free Excel spreadsheet. At least until they grow larger or want to link additional functions, such as financial administration, to Excel or send out appointments automatically. As a “normal” Excel user, you quickly reach your personal limits.
Club software can also be free of charge for small clubs and is often relatively cheap. Passive members can be created in Vereinsplaner in unlimited amounts — i.e. the pure club CRM is absolutely free of charge and without restrictions. For members who also want to receive information or have their own account/app, Vereinsplaner for clubs with up to 50 members costs €119 per year (see prices) with full functionality. You save the equivalent of many hours of effort over the year, so the initial costs come in quickly.
These should not only be three “buzzwords” thrown into the room, but that should also be the focus of a decision made by you in the club when it comes to managing master data. One argument that should not be neglected is the distribution of data to those people (board/functionaries/trainers/managers) with whom it is really in the right hands. This also makes it possible for you to do work for each other.
Simple practical example: A new member wants to join your club. You on the board receive the information via a form, but the person responsible is currently having hectic working weeks and constantly forgets to enter the data. This can last for weeks and at some point it will be completely forgotten. Unfortunately, that doesn't happen too rarely. The same can happen when adapting existing (member) data.
Ideally, the member registers using an online form and, once confirmed by the executive committee, the member is automatically added to the master data. Then you won't have any more effort at all. Another option would be for you, as a board member, to import entire Excel lists so that the transition from Excel to software can be carried out quickly. This is called cost and resource efficient work.
Anyone who has already dealt with the issue of data protection in the club knows how important it is to take good care of personal data. You are always better off with professional software because it allows you to make fewer mistakes in the application.
Messenger services such as WhatsApp are widely used in all layers of our society, but that doesn't make them any less controversial. Consider what a free service like Whatsapp actually aims to do — to use the data for advertising purposes. Here, you and the club should think about alternatives. Our Vereinsplaner chat may be such an alternative.
As mentioned above, data quality will automatically improve if you create clear structures and store the data centrally but enable shared decentralized access from anywhere. Nothing is faster than creating the member yourself via a mobile app and missing information is automatically added to the account of an active member himself.
You would like to know what advantages our club software has, especially for medium-sized and large clubs, and how you can use it in your own club? This video answers your questions.
A member administration forms a strong basis. It then depends on how you sensibly combine them with other requirements from your club. The following links can be useful and exist with Vereinsplaner:
Here again, it depends on what your club really needs and what is essential for you. Not all club software covers all functionality to the same extent. Outline your existing processes on a white sheet of paper and prioritize requirements in “must-have” and “nice-to-have”.
As you can see, the decision on how you want to finally handle things in the club depends on many individual factors. It may be that one administration fits for one phase in your club and a completely different one for another phase. Then it initially means a hassle to change the tool, but in return you are “clean” on the road again.
The more properly you set up a tool, the fewer mistakes you will make in administration and the better your data quality will be. It won't help if half of the saved data is incorrect or incorrect. We are happy to give you help on this topic and also help you with the transition if you need help.
If you are not sure, get in touch with us at Help center and we'll give you a very objective answer. We know exactly when professional club software really helps — anything else would help neither you nor us.
We hope to have helped you with this post and wish you every success with the implementation.
