Wild Apricot Monthly Newsletter

June 2014

Wild Apricot Ranked #1 Membership Management Software

We’re proud to note that Wild Apricot was ranked #1 on Capterra’s Top 20 Membership Management Software list once again. For details, read the full blog post here.

Software News June 2014

by Dmitry Buterin (Chief Apricot)

We’re in the final stages of our Version 5 gradual upgrade process - with just one more group of customers scheduled for Saturday, June 28th.

In addition, along with all of the other product enhancements we talked about last month, our teams at Wild Apricot have been busy with many other initiatives, including our Small Membership Survey (report coming soon), our Small Membership Advisory Community meetings and blog posts, and a whole host of planning for enhanced onboarding designed to help you get more “mileage” out of Wild Apricot, grow your membership, and have an easier time bringing your new staff and volunteers up to speed.  Read the full post here

 

Small Membership Advisory Community Update

This month we’ve continued to hold conference calls with a number of groups from our Small Membership Advisory Community.

Based on the feedback we received in May from call participants, one of the key changes we have made this month is segmenting the calls by a particular category (e.g. association type, industry etc.)

This month we had 2 such calls and they focused on:
  • Professional Associations
    • E.g. Nurses, Pilots, Lawyers, Financial Advisors etc.
    • Topic: How they maintain engagement and participation given that their members have such busy professional lives.
  • Community Associations
    • E.g. Neighbourhood associations, community initiatives, social issue committees
    • Topic: How they find volunteers and incentivize them to sign up and contribute.
In addition, we’ve also launched the first in what will be a regular blog post series: Advisory Series: 3 Ideas for Growing Your Association Membership. Stay tuned for more blog posts and feel free to visit our Advisory Community forum to get involved.
 

In Case You Missed These

Here is a sample of the resources available in our Blog and Membership Knowledge Hub:

How To Avoid Hearing "I'm Busy" From Association Volunteers
Here are some ideas that might help you avoid hearing that dreaded 4-letter word from potential volunteers: "busy". Read this post from the Wild Apricot Blog.

Top 10 Topics for Small Membership Organizations
Our Small Membership Survey provides a wealth of benchmarking and best practices information about small membership organizations and also offers an opportunity for the volunteers and staff to share with and ask questions of their peers. Here's a sneak peek at some of the insight from our 2014 Small Membership Survey - and the top 10 topics your membership peers most want to know about. Read this blog post from the Wild Apricot Blog.

Link Love Friday: Number-One Fans, Association Boards and more
Are you building fan-like loyalty among event attendees? Do you have a diverse, inclusionary, and distinctively talented board? Are you helping your members see the future? This link  round-up includes 5 posts that offer answers to those questions and much more. Read the post from the Wild Apricot Blog.

Starting Volunteers Off Right
Since we’ve been talking about onboarding initiatives, here is an article that outlines critical steps and offers tips and resources to help you develop a new volunteer welcome and orientation process or fine-tune your existing procedures. Read the article in our Membership Knowledge Hub.

Upcoming Product Webinars

Here are the free product webinars (with live Apricot Q & A) that we’re offering in the coming month:

Getting Started With Your Wild Apricot Account:

Managing Your Membership Database in Wild Apricot

 

What Say You?

On our annual survey, we ask customers how they would describe Wild Apricot to their industry peers. Here are some comments we’ve received:

"The membership is great. Prior to having WA, doing it through databases and spreadsheets was a nightmare."

"It has everything a non-profit needs to function effectively. When volunteers are changing every couple of years, it makes it easy to train new people."


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