The big advantage of RunsignUp Clubs is having a single database that holds all changes and all information. All Club Officers can see the current information, and more importantly, club members all can see it as well. If a club member updates their personal information because they moved or changed emails, that is known to everyone immediately. This is a big improvement over the old methods of transferring an Excel spreadsheet between Club members. Then the spreadsheets get out of sync when one copy gets new people entered while there are other copies out there.
When clubs move over to RunSignUp, there is always a tendency to hold onto the old Excel spreadsheet as well as use the new system. THIS IS A BIG MISTAKE. It means that you have multiple databases, and one of the big benefits of having a single database is now gone! No matter how hard you try to sync the spreadsheet and the database, you can never catch up. Take for example the scenario above where a member updated their information – this is now out of sync with the Excel spreadsheet with no easy way of finding the change and putting it into the Excel sheet.
This is often a tough change to make, especially for the membership coordinator who might not trust the cloud as much as their own PC. But it really is the best move to get to that single database as quickly as possible!
This will be extremely useful to our club, though I’m kinda guilty about keeping a duplicate roster in Excel, well, actually, it’s in Lotus 1-2-3, I’ll stop right now !! *grins* I have some questions/suggestions about the club member email feature. 1) Can clubs send out custom messages to members ?, i.e. a request for volunteers at a future event (I get lots of these kinda requests) . 2) Can a club distribute a digital newsletter via email to the membership roster ? 3) Will it be possible to, in addition to a message to a new club member, attach a file such as the last issue of the club newsletter ? Keep up the great work !! 🙂
We do not have general email capabilities for Clubs at this point in time. We are working on a new email system for races and hope to roll this to Clubs as well over the next several months.