The Challenge
I had been a Committee member in IVC for a number of years before the internet arrived. Since the mid 90’s Basingstoke and North Hampsire IVC (BNHIVC) has looked for new ways to improve communications both with members of the club and other IVCs. We have felt it is important that administrative tasks can be shared among the committee to reduce the workload on individual volunteers.

Our most significant issue has been making the production of our printed monthly events bulletin easier. We wanted to be able to enter the events using a number of volunteers and thus reducing the time down by at least half for the people involved. We also wanted the same event information to be available on the web so that it could be used for the monthly printed events listing.

We also needed to be able to share membership and subscription database with all the committee. However, the Membership Secretary was the only one with ready access to this database held on their PC at home. We therefore wanted a system that we could all access and would help with exchanging subscription information between the Membership Secretary and Treasurer. We also wanted to ensure we could email the membership using an upNames and addresses to date database.

• Event Management
• Names and addresses
• Subscription payments
• Email capability
• News Pages

Project Details
The club includes full members and trial members. The trial membership gives us the opportunity to offer potential members a trial period.

The people involved in the club organise around 15 – 20 social, leisure and sporting events per month plus we publicise events organised by other organisations. All these events are published in a monthly events bulletin.

In dealing with easing the production of our bulletin, we wanted to be able to keep the event list on our web site uptodate. This is important to us because it is information to which our members often refer and helps promote the club to prospective members. It was a requirement from the outset that we would only have to enter event data once to meet both of these requirements. The system also needed to be easy to use so that all Committee members could contribute to compiling event details for the club bulletin and web site.

It has been important that all Committee have access to the name and address list so that we can effectively manage the club events diary. The diary officers in particular needed to have ready access to member contact details so they can phone or email the members to check the details of the events supplied are accurate and complete.

Managing the club subscriptions has become much easier for the Treasurer and Membership Secretary? they can now both see the list of subscriptions paid. This has helped the Treasurer keep the accounts up to date by seeing immediately when renewal cheques have been received rather than having to wait until the Membership Secretary provides a payments list. It has also helped the Membership Secretary and Committee to see the details of occasional cheques that get sent directly to the Treasurer. Conclusion
A major benefit we get from the system is that new enquiries can enter their own details directly into our membership system. This is followed up by the system sending emails to all group officers when someone enquires. This means we can respond to these enquires more effectively and thus gaining new members.

The availability of all the clubs information online means that it is now easy for members of the Committee to swap tasks to take account of holidays and work commitments. This has contributed significantly to ensuring that we maintain a full level of activities by sharing the demands on individual officers. The system has also helped us to create one of the most comprehensive web sites in the Association of interVarsity Clubs.

Today over 80% of our members have access to more club information through the club web site. We can also respond much more rapidly and at lower cost to changes in event arrangements.

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