Membership Management for the TRF
The Trail Riders Fellowship is a campaigning rights of way organisation that has taken its case all the way to the supreme court – and won. They also work with local authorities to repair and maintain roads often referred to as “green lanes”. The time had come to streamline the joining process and improve membership numbers.
Brief:
Demanding conversion of historical data as part of new membership system is performed with hardly anyone noticing!
Client:
TRF, national rights of way organisation
Skills:
Membership and payment systems, data handling, theme development, CiviCRM development, testing
Challenge:
The previous membership system was close to a decade old, contained a large amount of data including historical payment data and was absolutely mission-critical for the TRF because it was the main source of funds.
The web had moved on and there was an opportunity to improve the joining process. We would need to transfer contact, membership and payment data as well as deliver a streamlined sign-up process using two new payment providers.
The TRF is quite unusual in membership terms because it allows couples to sign up as a “joint” membership type.
The objective was to increase membership with a modern membership management system that made it easier than ever to join up.
Solution:
We decided to use the open-sorce constituent relationship management system CiviCRM. CiviCRM is used around the world by organisations varying from local charities to global NGOs that want to own and control their own data. The system supported GoCardless and Stripe payment providers via extensions and the membership module could reflect the membership types and relationships important to the TRF. Civi comes bundled with features such as reporting and scheduled reminders.
We undertook an in-depth export and data cleaning exercise, identifying a number of Key Performance Indicators when we came to perform the matching import into the new CiviCRM system.
Alongside this work, a multi-disciplinary team was building a new site dedicated to the members that would house the new join-up process.
We developed a plan for the data migration, new site and new join-up process to go-live at the same time with the minimum of disruption.
Outcomes:
- Minimal disruption to fund raising because the data conversion and deployment of the new system was done in a matter of hours.
- Membership sign up is now a slick process.
- Big reduction in the amount of support around the joining process.
- Membership is up approximately 20% and growing.