4 Reasons to Move your Club from a Spreadsheet to Clubistry

Is your club still using spreadsheets to manage its members? It’s normal for smaller organizations to start out using spreadsheets to track new memberships, renewal or join dates, membership types, etc. But spreadsheets can only take you so far. As your club grows and evolves, you need member management tools that can keep up.

How do you know when your club has outgrown using spreadsheets for membership management? Here are four signs that it’s time to take the next steps and move on to a more modern club management system.

1. Every week you are handling more data and members.

Your club isn’t as small as it used to be. Your membership has grown, and you’re handling more data. You may find that your spreadsheet is becoming problematic, hard to keep up and outdated easily. You may have even moved to using a combination of multiple spreadsheets and other systems to solve the complicated challenges of managing a club. It’s becoming more difficult to pull together a complete view of your membership because data is in too many different places. Generating a list of all members with their renewal date and how much they have to pay is a huge undertaking.

2. Membership processes are getting more complex.

Your membership management processes have evolved and matured. More members are joining and it's hard to keep up with all the applications, onboarding and documents they need to view and maybe fill to return. All these processes start to take increasingly more time until you maybe need a dedicated person to manage all this. Your team is spending time on manual processes that could be better spent developing member programs and benefits with a club management software.

3. The demand for member reports has grown.

Since your club is growing, administrative staff and board members start asking for more information. You’re being asked for increasingly detailed reports on things like member applications, renewals or lapsed members. You’re finding it increasingly difficult and time-consuming to pull those reports.

4. Your members are asking for more.

Your members have started asking for more benefits. They want features that can be found elsewhere and everywhere such as online payments, custom forms for special activities and a modern website that looks great on mobile phones. You simply don’t have the tools to provide these benefits.

If one or more of these signs sounds familiar, it’s time to move to a system that’s built for clubs at your stage of growth. Taking this step can help your club operate more efficiently, board members being less stressed and overall happier members which increase engagement and retention.

Clubistry is built for small and medium sized organizations like yours that always face these challenges when they outgrow spreadsheets they used to start their organizations. With Clubistry you can streamline your processed using simple tools and increase member happiness. It shines with a cloud supported member list, automated membership renewals, online payments with credit card, modern website builder and many more features.

Need help convincing your club it’s time to move forward? Read this case study on how the Scent Works Club of San Diego is using Clubistry to simplify their club management needs.