Put your organization on autopilot. Get your sanity back.

Wild Apricot Newsletter - October 2007

8 Ideas To Promote Your Association's Website

Did you know that most visitors leave a website within 10 seconds of landing on the home page? And they may never return to the same site. What's worse is going though all the trouble of creating a professional association web site that nobody comes to visit! To keep your website visitors stay longer, you need to engage them. This article provides eight free tools to drive traffic to your website and explains how you could benefit from using blogs, video broadcasts, rss, surveys, photo sharing and social networking.

Case Study: Songsalive!

Songsalive!Ž is a non-profit organization dedicated to the nurturing, support and promotion of songwriters and composers worldwide. Founded in 1997 by Gilli Moon and Roxanne Kiely, in Sydney Australia, Songsalive! is run by songwriters for songwriters and now has over 20 chapter cities around the world.

To better achieve the organization's goals, Songsalive! used the Wild Apricot Software as an addition to its offical Songsalive! website to implement an effective CMS that provides a more effective and easier means to manage its member songwriters and the public.

Before using Wild Apricot, Songsalive! has been using a very archaic system for processing and storing members' details. Simply using an excel database sheet. Then they would manually send welcome letters and renewal letters. They also used Paypal for processing credit cards. The new Songsalive! Wild Apricot website provides a powerful tool to manage their membership database and assists them in their continued growth as well as creates a Backstage online portal for members to log in to and access members only exclusive opportunities.

The features and tools that Songsalive! found to be of most help include:

Updating membership renewal and payments.
Contacting other members through the member directory.
Pitching songs through Songsalive! Songshop online, where music business professionals, artists, film and tv supervisors, and publishers are looking for music for their project.
Building a tour through the Songsalive! Touring Map of the World through our online resource center.
Accessing discounts from Partners, exclusively for members.
Participating in the online Forum, where classifieds, chats and networking takes place.
Reading Songnotes, the regular monthly newsletter exclusive for members.
Reading their daily Blog, for up to the minute news.
Reading educational and informative articles on songwriting and the music business.
Booking a gig and apply to perform at a Songsalive! showcase.
Members can access Member Tools to sell CDs through the online CD Stores and add their web link to the Members page.

The Songsalive! Wild Apricot website can be found online at http://Songsalive.memberlodge.org (http://www.songsalive.org/)

Read full Case Study

Wild Apricot Info Zone

Since our last newsletter we have released a new version on October 1st.

Here are the highlights:

Member Pictures - you can now add picture fields to member database (even multiple pictures - photo, logo, avatar etc.) and members can manage these pictures via their profile page. Pictures can be shown in member profile pages in member directory as well as used in the upcoming discussion forum.
Payment report drill down - now it is much easier to reconcile the transactions. Click on any number in the Payments report to see underlying transactions.
Ability to undo last web page save. We had several cases when people accidentally overwrote their webpages - as well as some people loosing webpage content to unexpected glitches. So now we have added a safety net - previous version of your page is stored and you can revert to it with one button click.
We are working to speed the system up so that it keeps up with our growing client base. Member list (admin view) has been redesigned - now loads much faster. A number of other speed improvements will be released October 29th - and we are upgrading our servers in a few weeks.
Limit number of event registrations - this has been requested quite a bit. Now you can set a limit to event registrations and event registration will be closed off automatically once the limit is reached (and you will be notified).
Totally redesigned event registration process. Now members can get member-only price simply by using a registered email, without logging in. Member can now enter multiple registrations. We know that quite a few of our clients had a problem with members not logging in before registering - and thus getting incorrect prices. This should be the thing of the past.
Multiple member directory pages now can be setup - e.g. one with regular members, one with sponsors etc.

The next version has finished development on Oct 19th and we should complete the QA (testing) and release it by October 29th. It includes two major items:

Discussion forum pages - create as many discussion forums, topics within each forum so that your members can engage in the dialog.
Group membership levels - you can use them for families, corporate members or chapters within your regional or national organization. You can limit how many members are in the group. Each group has a dedicated group administrator who can manage members within his/her own group.

And many other enhancements, including:
You can now specify reply email address for each email blast.
Administrator now has an option to switch off all emails to given member (email blasts and all automatic emails). This is handy for members who do not have emails at all and are stored in the system with some fake/dummy email addresses (since Wild Apricot does not allow member records without email filled out).
Member directory redesign to speed it up.
Content editor code redesign to improve speed.

As always - go to http://help.wildapricot.com/display/DOC/Release+history for more details

What are we working on right now - to be released in second half of November:

Customization of member directory fields
Ability for members to cancel pending renewals/upgrades and try again without administrator involvement
Log of all email blasts and ability to send new email blast by copying content from an old one
Calendar view of events page
Multiple blog pages
More options for membership periods (which will be soon followed by automatic credit card charges option)

How to Use the Social Web for Social Change

In the nonprofit sector, online activism has become much more than sending an email to Congress or making a donation. Organizations today are engaging their constituents to upload pictures, text and videos and share their story with the whole world. In this article, Britt Bravo of Have Fun * Do Good walks you through four steps that will help ease you into using the social web activism.

N4P Dose of Humor

The rewards of working in the nonprofit sector :-)

Subscribe to the Wild Apricot blog today!

The Wild Apricot blog is constantly publishing articles, interviews and case studies about web technology and social media tools for associations, clubs, charities and other non-profit and member-based organizations. Our focus is on issues relevant to volunteers, administrators, webmasters, and managers. You can subscribe via RSS or email.

For comments, requests, questions and contributions to our newsletter: soha@wildapricot.com