Bring Your Chapters Under Your Association’s Online “Umbrella”

As our blog grows and we add more information, from time to time we’ll invite guest bloggers to write posts for the Avectra blog. 

We’re pleased to provide our first guest post from Paul Schneider from Socious, an online community provider, with some insight for national organizations dealing with chapters and how those chapters manage their web efforts.

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Bring Your Chapters Under Your Association’s Online “Umbrella”

As an Avectra partner, we were able to exhibit at the Avectra Users and Developers Conference (AUDC) in Orlando. In addition to the great weather, we were able to talk with a lot of Avectra customers and see what they are looking for in regards to online communities.

There was a recurring theme we heard, and that was the desire to bring the associations chapters and components within their website. When you think about it, leveraging the netFORUM association software and online community functionality across all facets of your organization makes a lot of sense.

Currently, many chapters of associations, even though part of the group, are run as almost separate entities. Some will utilize the dues features of the national organization and netFORUM, but many are collecting their own dues, using different tools to run events, using Google Groups or Yahoo! Groups for communication and Google Docs for file storage.

They pull it all together with a website that was created in FrontPage and hasn’t been updated in weeks. This is no fault of the chapters, these are passionate volunteers that are doing the best they can with the limited resources that they have available to them. However, as an organization, you can continue to allow them to use tools that cause them to take more time managing technology than they are forwarding the cause of your organization and members.

Or, you can utilize the Avectra association management software, integrated with an online community to enable your chapters to run like well oiled machines that put a polished look on your organization at the national AND local levels.

There are a number of benefits when you look at doing this:

One central place for all organization communication & collaboration

With association software like Avectra’s connected to an online community system, your members can access their dues information from the membership database, annual conference or other event information, general member communication and information, chapter and committee communication and collaboration all with one login and within your membership website.

 

The chapters then get all the features of the full online community at the chapter level. This includes integrated forums and listservs, file storage, poll/surveys, wiki platform, blog platform, media libraries, advocacy tracking, marketing pages, event management, calendars and more.

 

So by coming under the ‘umbrella’ of the organization, the chapters get much better tools. The organization now has all communication and collaboration in one place, so it is much easier to manage, support and see trends in those communications from one tool.

 

Consistent Look and Feel

No matter if a user goes to a chapter site, your main site or an event marketing site, you want the same consistent look and feel to present your brand in the best light. If they go to a chapter forum, or your main forums, you want them to be consistent. If they are looking for a file, no matter of it is a chapter, member or committee file, you want it to be easily found, accessible and searchable in one place and with the same format. The only way to do this is to have all of this in one integrated web presence.

 

Secured Information

When your chapter leaders are using these free sites to manage their communications and file storage, do you have any idea if it is secure? Are you allowing access to information that would put your organization at risk? When you link an online community system to netFORUM, you can be assured that no one outside of the organization will have access to sensitive information because access is controlled by the permissions authorized by the association management system. You can also manage, directly within netFORUM, who can have access to areas of the online community so the right people get access to the right information.

 

Simplicity of Support

When your chapters are all using different tools, support can be a nightmare. Your chapters are all trying to accomplish the same things, so give them the same tools that are powerful, yet simple to use. Your support people will thank you and now chapters can actually help each other, because they are all on the same tools. Through the online community, chapter leaders can have their own support forums and files areas to help each other.

 

No matter what online community partner you use, the benefits for your organization are profound when you look at bringing your chapters and components under your ‘umbrella’.

 

Paul Schneider is the Co-Founder of Socious, an online community software company that specializes in working with associations. You can read his blog at: www.socious.com/paulschneider or you can learn more about Socious at www.socious.com