— Gloucester Skating Club

Tara McGowan has been the Gloucester Skating Club Treasurer for 7 years. Having worked in the finance world for a great part of her career, she wanted to bring her expertise to the club. She was looking for an all-in-one software developed for sports and recreation organizations in order to simplify their management. When she found Amilia, she had it tested by the staff and the volunteers and they all agreed that it was the best solution out there.

THE STORY

Gloucester Skating club has been committed to the skating community in Ottawa since 1971. It is the 6th largest club in Canada, with over 1000 clients, young and old alike. The club has two main focuses: to offer support and technical skills to their competitive figure skating athletes and to provide a fun and safe environment for their recreational classes.

Tara McGowan, the club Treasurer, became really involved in the sport when she signed her daughter up for classes at the Gloucester Skating Club. She enjoyed watching her daughter and she found out that adults could join the synchronized skating team, she decided to give it a go. 7 years ago, when a seat on the board for Treasurer became available, she decided to get more involved and offered her expertise. Her goal as a Treasurer was to improve the financial reporting for the Board of Directors and to introduce online registration.

THE CHALLENGE

In most sport programs, the costs to parents can accumulate quickly as their young athletes develop along the path from learning a new skill to training to compete. Therefore, one of the challenges Tara faced was to control costs in order to keep classes affordable. The club needed a solution that would reduce the administrative cost and effort and provide an intuitive and user-friendly system for parents to use.

Volunteers are another key resource that the Gloucester Skating Club relies on to keep costs down. Many volunteers help to run club events as well as manage social media and communications. Recruiting volunteers to manage those tasks has been a constant challenge for Tara.

Lastly, they needed a tool to simplify the process of putting together effective fundraisers. This money is used for skater development and helps pay for coach travel costs when a skater qualifies for competitive events. The fundraisers keep costs down for parents.

THE SOLUTION

Before using Amilia, the club was working with another very technical software - only a few people could use it properly and training new volunteers on the system was difficult and time consuming. It was obvious the software was not specifically developed for skating clubs or even sports and recreation organization. Some tasks were tedious and added even more to the already heavy workload of volunteers.

Tara decided it was time for a change and conducted an internet search for various online registration software as well as a review of the software solutions used by other clubs. She presented 3 options to the club executives and office staff. An important factor in the decision-making process was the ability to test the system in a trial environment. After the free trial, the staff thought Amilia was the easiest to work with and was the one that fitted their needs best. The final selection was approved by the Board of Directors.

THE RESULTS

The transition took less time than anticipated. The Amilia system provided excellent guidance in configuring the new solution and the customer service team was always available to answer their questions. Amilia has saved the club time in:
• Managing preauthorized payments;
• Using summary reports to enter sales summary information in their bookkeeping system (Quickbooks);
• Automating drop-in registrations;
• Office administration – making changes for parents in few clicks.

With Amilia, the volunteers have a better understanding of the platform and it takes them less time to accomplish administrative chores. They have more time to carry out rewarding tasks and build a sense of community among the Club.

Even though Gloucester Skating Club manages 953 member accounts and has generated over 9844 invoices since its activation, the staff hasn’t had to work any additional hours. Customers are delighted with an easy system that lets them register and pay online. Over 96% of their payments are taken online by credit or debit cards.

If you are interested to learn how SmartRec could help you and your organization succeed like it helped Gloucester Skating Club, just reach out to our team. We would be happy to discuss it with you!