Challenging times call for creative solutions. As club software developers, we wanted to highlight some of the best ways to handle registration and club management during the pandemic.
We’ve already shared our Return to Play Guide which provides key insights and operations tips and tools. As a result, this article won’t dive into those recommendations. Instead, we’ll highlight season scheduling, service delivery methods and software support for running your club during this challenging time.
The social value in keeping your club operating
The biggest value of operating your club during this challenging time, is maintaining a meaningful connection with your members. As day-to-day life remains challenging, keeping a connection with friends and coaches can bring a lot of value to athletes.
Mental health impacts have been felt by all ages during this pandemic. As a result, many parents will be pleased to keep their children enrolled in your positive club environment.
However, not all parents will be comfortable putting their kids back in sport right now.
If a family is not ready to return to play they will still want to follow along with your club’s reopening. With this in mind, it’s important to continue to post updates and keep all members informed.
Let all of your members know the measures you’re taking to operate safely, and let them know how your club has progressed. If you keep your membership informed, it will be easier for everyone to rejoin your club once they’re ready.
1) Running 4-week seasons
One trend continue to see is that some clubs are choosing to operate with 4-week seasons. This time-frame allows clubs to offer a season that’s long enough to accomplish impactful training but short enough to take a pause without significant financial deferment or refunds in the event of a government mandated lockdown.
A 4-week season is also an easy length for parents to wrap their heads around. It’s a short time commitment that gives them the flexibility to evaluate the pandemic alongside their child’s activities.
If your club chooses to move forward with 4-week seasons, it will mean a significant increase in registration periods. Instead of holding a single registration for an eight-month season, clubs will find themselves holding eight separate registrations.
With an eight-fold increase in registration sessions, your club needs efficient and easy-to-use registration software.
In order to operate efficiently, administrators need registration software that allows them to quickly setup a new registration season. With Uplifter, administrators can easily copy a previous season with all of it’s registered athletes. Once copied, your athlete’s will sit in priority registration status in your newly created season until they confirm their place and make payment. It’s a huge time savings.
Innovations like these are the reason we’ve helped clubs like the Ice Palace reduce their admin time and costs by 75% for registrations.
On the member side, parents want a system that will enable efficient registrations. That’s why Uplifter allows parents to register multiple kids for multiple classes on a single invoice during one registration session.
Plus, parents can easily sign COVID-19 policies and agreements, pay yearly association membership dues and apply discounts in one streamlined transaction.
Connecting with association and governing body databases
With a potential eight-fold increase in the number of registrations your club completes, your association’s database also becomes that much more important. Clubs need a simple way to connect to their association’s database to verify that a member’s dues are either paid or owing.
Using a registration system that directly connects to your association’s database is the best way to handle member dues. When your registration software automatically verifies the status of membership dues, your club administrators save time.
With a connected system like Uplifter, checking a member’s status is automated and fast. There’s no need to manually phone or email a governing body looking for dues’ status. And there’s no need to manually create additional invoices to collect member dues. As a result, you can trust that your athletes and your club are properly insured.
2) Running a regular season with monthly subscription or installment payments
If you’d like to run a season of normal length, consider using monthly subscription or installment payments. These payment methods will allow your club to simply pause or delay payments in the case of a lockdown or class size restrictions. This offers peace of mind for parents and administrators alike.
For parents, installment or monthly subscription payments mean that their family is able to budget small regular payments, instead of one lump-sum. These methods also give families comfort in knowing that they won’t have to inquire about refunds or club credits in case of a lockdown. Instead, parents can confidently adopt a monthly pay-as-you-go expectation.
Club administrators will also benefit from offering subscriptions or installment payments too. On one hand, these small consistent payments can help regulate cash-flow throughout the year. On the other hand, in the case of another lockdown, it’s simple to pause or delay payments for members.
As a result, administrators won’t be overwhelmed with issuing mass-credits or rescheduling classes. They can simply pause and resume regular payments once classes are up and running again.
Planning and refunding during mandated lockdowns
Even if you use subscription or installment payment methods your club needs to have a clearly communicated plan for handling another government lockdown. You’ll also likely want to require your members to sign an agreement stating that they understand and agree to your plan. Communicating a clear plan upfront will help parents feel confident in your club’s continued operations.
If your club does need to process mass-refunds to your membership we have the tool to get the job done quickly.
During the mandated lockdown of Spring 2020, Uplifter created a new tool to handle refunds in large batches. Our Batch Invoicing tool allows admins to credit or refund entire classes or groups at once. It’s a tool that drastically decreases the time it takes to issue refunds and credits for multiple students.
If your club uses Uplifter you can also receive credits on transaction fees. That’s just one of the many ways we go above and beyond to support our clients.
Increasing class sizes as reopening continues
If pandemic trends are positive and government mandated restrictions continue to ease, you can easily alter class sizes for an existing season with Uplifter. Simply increase class sizes or add drop-in positions so that new members can be added as desired.
As an additional bonus, Uplifter’s drop-in feature comes with automated capacity management.
Automated capacity management empowers your club to maximize revenues with automation while abiding by class size restrictions. It’s a win-win.
3) Private coaching
If your club cannot offer large enough classes right now, private coaching is a good way to stay connected with your membership. For many smaller clubs, private coaching can act as a bridge to keep some members active from now until regular classes can resume.
When offering private coaching, elite level coaches may be booked-up quickly. In these cases, even one-on-one basic training with regular instructors can still be beneficial for elite athletes.
Pricing may differ between elite level and regular coaches but keeping athletes and coaches connected will help foster long-term engagement when regular classes resume.
With registration software like Uplifter, it’s easy to create individual private classes for each coach. And much like regular classes, Uplifter’s automated waitlists can also help ensure private coaches stay booked!
4) Offering virtual classes at your sports club
If you haven’t done it yet, consider offering virtual classes for your club. Virtual classes can be a great way to supplement an athlete’s training. Much like private coaching, it also allows clubs to stay connected with their members while helping them stay active.
As we mentioned in our 7 Tips for Virtual Training blog, coaches may become so effective at virtual training that virtual classes become a long-term supplemental offering at your club. So it’s important not to limit virtual classes as a short-term option.
There are numerous best practices to adopt when offering virtual classes. We outlined many of these best practices in our Zoom Best Practices blog. However, it’s also worth restating that you can help prevent uninvited guests from gaining access to your classes by sharing class links behind your password protected registration software.
When adding a virtual class link to your class in Uplifter, administrators can set automated reminders. These reminders notify anyone who’s registered and logged into Uplifter when their class is ready to begin. Tools like these can help make the transition to virtual classes safe and easy for your members.
Note: It’s always important for clubs to check with their insurance provider and/or their governing body to ensure their insurance covers virtual instruction and programming before proceeding.
There are many ways to keep your club running
Clearly there is more than one way to keep your club running during the pandemic. The methods we’ve outlined above can help you stay connected to your membership and keep your members active.
No matter which method is right for you, registration and club management software will help improve your operations. Whether it’s providing an extra layer of security for virtual classes or eliminating hours of extra work with season cloning features, good software will make things easier. And the easier it is to run your club the more you can focus on training and engaging members!
