Colorado League of Charter Schools
The Challenge
For many years, the League team had been treading water, using many disjointed systems to support their members and manage their complex finance processes. As CLCS staff left the organisation, their knowledge of systems went with them.
A lack of product documentation meant entire areas of the CRM and AMS were underused. With a basic online experience, there was little incentive for members to log in and access benefits.
Duplicate and inactive records continued to grow, creating an inaccurate picture of the membership. When the League contacted their AMS provider for help, their messages would go unanswered for weeks, and what little trust they had left in their old technology disintegrated. Further, the company began billing based on the number of records.
A dynamic team of changemakers at CLCS decided it was time to evolve...
The Approach
The discovery phase was a breath of fresh air for the CLCS team. Understanding the project's initial complexities, ReadyMembership brought together a multidisciplinary team of developers, data experts, and consultants. Online workshops took place, where staff processes and membership journeys were mapped out, datasets were investigated, and complex areas of the project, like the finance requirements, were explored in depth. Peter Mason, VP of Communications at CLCS found the process highly engaging:
“I was really impressed with how the team listened to our needs from the beginning and worked with us to reach the right solution. They were flexible and brought a high level of knowledge and strong execution. They were well-organised and communicated with us constantly - keeping us up to speed at every stage. It wasn’t one way - us telling them - it was and is a proper collaboration.”
The League had unique requirements which meant the team needed to develop a new feature now part of ReadyMembership. The charter sector in Colorado has intermediate organisations called Networks that operate multiple schools. The Chief Financial Officer at a Network might be a contact in 10 different schools. CLCS needed their Network contacts to easily receive subscription bills from each school and aggregate them into one master bill when required. In some circumstances, schools pay together, in others, they don't.
The team configured ReadyMembership so that contacts can belong to multiple organisations (and have different roles and permissions assigned to them) - a feature that will benefit all platform users. Automatically calculating subscription fees and invoicing is saving the CLCS team time and effort and making it easier for members to renew.
Benefits
These collaborative efforts transformed the user experience for CLCS members. By transitioning from disjointed backend systems, staff now have a single view of their entire membership and are giving their members more value. Although members have had to adapt to logging in and doing more online, they are feeling the benefit of new self-service tools. This includes seeing their event booking history at a glance, the training available just to them, and managing their job board postings.
A data cleaning project is also underway to reduce the total number of records from 35k+ to 25k. With 15 - 20% of staff moving between Charter Schools each year, keeping data up to date is challenging and important to the CLCS’s operations:
“Our previous systems were too ‘open.’ Anyone in the organisation could download and upload data without quality assurance. ReadyMembership has robust checks and balances to help us clean our data and ensure it is mapped and maintained accurately. It feels like wiping the slate clean and starting again with an accurate database of people with whom we can start to build a community.”
A new jobs board feature enables CLCS to act as a trusted hub, building a community for job seekers and employers. It provides an additional income stream for the League, with a longer-term goal of encouraging non-member schools who pay for the listings, to join the organisation. With ReadyMembership they can customise who has access to the board based on organisation type or condition - such as purchasing a product in the last 30 days.
With a host of events, and a potential federal grant to deliver more training to Charter Schools, the League needed an accessible event management system, both for its staff and members. The ReadyMembership events centre has empowered members to manage their own bookings, while the awards centre provides a clear workflow for staff review, as Peter confirms:
“Our Annual Conference grew ten percent this year. We attribute this to a better user journey. Our members are now in control of their booking. Rather than waiting for us to confirm their attendance, they can log into their dashboard, pay online, and print all the information themselves”.
Results
Impressive results seen so far include:
- 25% of time saved managing conferences & events bookings (estimated 120 hours per year)
- 40% time saved managing subscriptions and renewals (80 hours saved per year)
- 10% increase in conference bookings (2024 vs 2023)
- 15% increase in other event and webinar bookings.
- 91% retention rate - holding steady through new platform implementation
The CLCS also has visibility of member logged-in activity for the first time. Previously there were no stats on usage and no incentive for members to login - now the team can track this and create a baseline from which they can grow and improve.
ReadyMembership superusers are emerging among the team, creating documentation and step-by-step training guides that will help the League in the future. With a small staff, it was important for the League not to try to do everything at once and bite off more than it could chew. Instead, it has been incrementally doing more with ReadyMembership to add member value. It is looking forward to adding more personalisation and moving its other WordPress websites into one platform. Peter and the CLCS team are excited for the next stage in their evolution:
“Eight months after going live we have already seen huge benefits. We’re building a community of engaged schools who now have the ability and see the value in interacting with us online. I’m excited about the capabilities of ReadyMembership, and really looking forward to delivering even more personalised experiences for our members”.
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