Re: Membership Record Keeping
Re: Membership Record Keeping
- Subject: Re: Membership Record Keeping
- From: Jim Foster <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2003 18:34:55 -0500
On 5-Dec-03, at 7:47 PM, Mac Carter wrote:
1. If you use software, what program do you use?
Our MUG has used FileMaker for many years.
2. However you do it, what data do you record?
Basic contact info, plus some info on what Mac hardware the user has,
plus software preferences, industry within which the user works, and
job type. Most of this "demographic" data becomes hopelessly out of
date, despite the fact that we give each member a complete print out of
their record each year at renewal time and ask them to provide any
corrections, updates, or addiitions.
Database also tracks the dates and dollar amounts which the user has
paid for memberships over the years.
3. In what ways do you use the data?
Data is used to contact members by mail, on the odd occasion when we
use snail mail. We have also used it to output a list of email
addresses which we then used with EMerge to generate an email listing,
such as for meeting reminders. We have used the postal code info to map
the distribution of our members around our meeting site. Periodically,
we will contact folks who failed to renew their memberships in the past
year or two, just to let them know that we are still alive and kicking
and to encourage them to come back.
The original FileMaker database that we adopted was prepared many years
ago, either by Apple or the User Group Connection. It had all sorts of
bells and whistles designed to remind you of member birthdays,
membership renewals coming up, etc. Unfortunately, there was never any
kind of a User Guide generated for this database so a lot of its
potential features were ignored by our group. In fact, we have
eventually stripped out a lot of the fields and layouts because we
simply were not using them. This template was designed for a membership
system where each membership becomes due 12 months after the date the
person joins the club. Our club does not follow this scheme, opting
instead to sign up folks throughout the year but run ALL renewals at
the end of March of each year. This made a number of the database
features of no use for us, thus the reason we disposed of them.
I'm afraid I no longer know where one could find that original Apple
User Group Database template for FileMaker.
Good luck!!
Jim Foster
President
Macintosh Users East [MaUsE]
http://www.mause.ca
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