We have a series Customer Case Studies, in which we take your stories and share your challenges and successes as a learning tool for other RunSignUp users. This Gulf Coast Runners Case Study focuses on Club Member Management, Social Event Signups, Donations, and operating as a guide for Charity Races.
View the PDF Version of the Gulf Coast Runners Case Study
Overvi
ew: Shawn Duffey, the IT/Timing Director for the Gulf Coast Runners uses RunSignUp to manage club membership, offer Race Registration for the club’s 20 annual Races, create signups for social events, and more.
About the Gulf Coast Runners: Just shy of 1,000 members, the Gulf Coast Runners are a 40 year-old Running Club in Naples, Florida. They offer Training Runs, Multi-Sport Training, Social Events, and discounts for their members. Beyond their member services, GRC works with local charities to manage and time more than 20 races per year to help raise funds for community organizations. Shawn Duffey, the IT/Timing Director for GRC has worked with RunSignUp to streamline member management and race consultation and timing.
Basic Member Management
GRC uses a simple, straight-forward setup for managing their membership options. All memberships are set from date of joining: they offer Individual & Family Memberships for 1 or 3 years, as well as Student Membership and a Gold Club Membership – a 1-year membership that indicates a $100 donation to their GRC Youth Development fund in place of the regular $25 membership fee.
Aside from selecting the membership type, members answer just 2 Custom Questions:
- Whether they are a new or renewal membership
- Whether they prefer to receive their GRC Newsletter Electronically, via Snail Mail, or No Newsletter needed.
During registration, members are also prompted to consider making an additional donation to The Youth Development Fund. The GRC Member Registration is free from barriers is easy to navigate and very fast, with a limited number of questions and options.
Social Event SignUps
GRC hosts a Holiday Party, happy hour events, potlucks, and a multitude of other social Member events. They use RunSignUp to handle social signups as well – members are already familiar with the system and process, and it keeps all club data in the same place.
“I treat an event like it is a race – we had our Christmas Party through RunSignUp – and you just set it up as a race and take registrations like you would for any other event. It’s very easy.”
The Role(s) of the Gulf Coast Runners in Local Charities
Community involvement is integral to the mission of the Gulf Coast Runners. They use RunSignUp to help them achieve their goals in a couple of ways:
Donations: GRC does not use a hard sell on fundraising. Instead, they have found that simply offering a donation option within registration for both Club Memberships and Races is an easy way to raise funds. Their donation collection is non-intrusive, and set on basic Bronze ($5), Silver ($10), Gold ($25) and “Other” for donation levels. This method of collecting small donations encourages people to donate with a relatively low level of investment, and allows for small donations to accumulate.
“In the past, we never really included donation in the registration process, and since we added it into our registration with RunSignUp, we’ve had a surprising number of people who will just throw an extra $5, $10, into their registration without thinking about it, and we’ve been able to increase the amount of donations that we get from all our races significantly since adding that feature…and it’s very, very easy to do.”
Race Setup: One of the main roles of GRC is to support local charities by aiding in the setup and timing of their running events to maximize the fundraising effect of those events. Shawn guides the Charity Races that they support through RunSignUp to give them access to “Big Race Features” that are easy to set up and easy to manage.
“Our main role is just to be a facilitator for local charitable organizations, to help guide them through the race process. They have taken our advice as far as registration goes – we steer everybody through RunSignUp – and they like the features that they get. Even a first tie Race Organizer can come off looking professional because we run their race through RunSignUp.”
Why RunSignUp?
As the IT/Timing Director, Shawn has worked with several registration services. He has a few main differentiators that he believes have made their relationship with RunSignUp successful:
If you have a success story about your race, store or club, big or small, email us
…we’d love to explore a Case Study on your topic!