It was with sadness that recently Mark and Shelly Romans informed the club committee that they would have to stand down from being the membership secretary.(they had been doing it combined since the beginning of this year)

Over the last 2 months I have been looking into introducing an on-line membership registration system. That is now ready to go, and because of my involvement with that I decided to offer my services as the membership secretary as well as continuing with the communications role. This evening the committee approved my taking on the new role and so from today I am also membership secretary. It is my hope that the membership secretary work will be less arduous in the future once on-line membership is fully rolled out. Don't worry, we shall still keep the option for members to join and pay offline since online does not suit everybody.

The online membership system will have many benefits:

  • It will ensure our information held about members is accurate and complete. Members will be able to enter it themselves and update it at any time. For example you might change your email address.
  • It will reduce errors in the handling of membership registration since at the moment it has to pass through several hands manually. The online system is completely automated and allows the Club Treasury to automatically produce financial reports from it.
  • It will provide an easy way for members who don't attend Wednesday evenings to easily pay their membership dues.
  • When membership renewal comes up (end of March) , the system will send out an email to all members with a link which they can pay their renewal through. No hassle and straightforward. It will also send out reminder emails, which could be useful for some of you!
  • Collection of UKA membership fees and automated production of list to send to UKA.
  • The system will also allow us to collect money for club events eg team races, club meals\parties etc
  • We shall be able to consider having more complex membership categories than we currently offer. For example, there could be a family membership option, student membership etc.  To be decided by the committee of course. Ideas from club members in that regard would be useful.

 

Keep on running

John