Membership Tracking Options

[GrimRiposter]

Greetings, everyone.

My club is looking into options for tracking it's members. When we started the club six years ago with just a few people, it was easy to tell who was a member and who wasn't. Keeping track of dues and who was behind was a very simple task for the treasurer.

Now, with 60+ people walking in each night, it's not so easy! And we're continuing to grow. My treasurer is getting swamped.

One option that we're exploring is to have membership cards, similar to a health club. We've got a club computer we can hook a scanner to and then just scan cards as people come in the door. Ideally, it has an option to either interface with Excel or some other such system so that we can hook in our dues information. Then we can tell if the person walking in the door is paid up and ready to fence, or seriously delinquent and needs to get current before donning their whites.

If the system does inventory control, even better.

Does anyone have anything at their place that works well? Anyone have any good/bad experience with a system like I described?

Our growth has been great and it's a good problem to have, but it's still a problem! If we don't get this nailed down and simplified, it's going to be very difficult keeping someone in the sec/tres position because they keep getting burned out!!

Thanks in advance,

The Grim Riposter

[scarlet_woman156k]

My club recently had a changing of the guards of sorts, and I was given an Access database of very outdated membership information that I'm currently updating (as I'm now the one handling all aspects of membership). But the few reports on there are very limiting. My husband is one of those computer guru types and has offered to write reports to do myriad of things. Such as, full list of members, a report that can be run the beginning of each month to see who is due, history of payment of dues, etc. We can request to break out certain data and he'll write a report for us we can then run. I don't see why we couldn't then make it a "basic" program for fencing clubs who would want it, if there is an interest for it.

Also, his brother has developed a program that can easily be transfered to the fencing world. I will also be looking into that as well.

Membership cards are an interesting idea. I'll see if there is some way we can create something on the Access database currently in place or the program my brother-in-law has created to do something like that. It's an idea worth exploring.

[Craig]

The rock climbing clubs in my area have this kind of a system. Don't know what they're using.

Look up "Atlanta Rocks" and call them to ask what they're using as the software has all the capabilities that you would want. (Allows you to sell monthly as well as "punch card" memberships, hardware for creating membership cards - in this case something that hooks onto the key chain.)

Craig

[veeco]

The French Fencing Federation has some software available on their website to track members of a club. I don't know how good it is (have never used it) and I don't know if it supports English and USFA requirements. But you can take a look at it there:

http://www.escrime-ffe.fr/telecharge...Wclubs2003.zip

Instructions (in French, but pretty short and easy) are there:

http://www.escrime-ffe.fr/telecharge...chargement.htm