Team Management / Email / CRM Software

[Aerosmit]

We struggled last year with team communication, parent communications, event/trip management and taking payments; most through Google Docs. So this year we would like to head some of that off by looking at software to help us manage the team a little better. I have conducted an initial research on Google and have come up with subscription software like Wild Apricot and Memberclicks. These seem to be costly in the long run. I also had CIVICCRM and SugarCRM suggested.
I would love to hear from other teams about what you use and best practices your teams have put in place to systematically manage the team, email lists, meetings events, etc.

Thanks,

Mark Smith
KleinBOTs 3735

[zcohen]

The Power Hawks use a mix of Google Drive and MailChimp.
We use Google Drive to all of our documents, especially using Google Forms for students to fill out for pretty much any event we do. That way we have signups already in a spreadsheet which we can link to others to track payment, paperwork, etc.
We then use www.mailchimp.com to manage our team emails. It allows us to maintain a list of every email we've ever sent, see who has opened emails and even who clicks on links. We can also use it to manage alumni and community email lists, plus it allows you to create really nice looking emails really easily. As an example of what you can do, this is a community email we sent last year that looks similar to what we use now. Easy to put together, and very nice looking. http://eepurl.com/UupQT

[GeeTwo]

Originally Posted by Aerosmit

We struggled last year with team communication, parent communications, event/trip management and taking payments; most through Google Docs.

If you struggled with Google Docs, consider specifically what was not working. Was it a problem with the software, or with your processes or training? View this upgrade the same as you would when designing an improvement to an underperforming robot - what isn't working? What features are required to fix it? Can you fix it with driver practice (or mentor/student/parent training)?

For example, if the problem was that many people did not log in to GD regularly, and you feel it unlikely that you will change that behavior, then an important feature of your software solution might be to distribute e-mail/text/twitter/whatever to get the word out to as many people as possible, preferably from initial "posts" in as few forums as possible.


And OBTW: How much training will it take each class of people to learn to use the new software/system? Once you have an initial set of possibilities, also look for deficiencies that may cause your experience to degrade further.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Aerosmit

We struggled last year with team communication, parent communications, event/trip management and taking payments; most through Google Docs. So this year we would like to head some of that off by looking at software to help us manage the team a little better. I have conducted an initial research on Google and have come up with subscription software like Wild Apricot and Memberclicks. These seem to be costly in the long run. I also had CIVICCRM and SugarCRM suggested.
I would love to hear from other teams about what you use and best practices your teams have put in place to systematically manage the team, email lists, meetings events, etc.

Thanks,

Mark Smith
KleinBOTs 3735

If you're interested in Basecamp they have a teacher program and are more than willing to work with FIRST teams (I just got finished emailing them to verify this) That at least solves the cost problem.

[Aerosmit]

Thanks for the replies. I have to agree that digging in and documenting what didn't work and going the process improvement route makes sense and will likely be apart of requirements gathering for a new system. I am hoping for an integrated system to save time and training in manually integrating data from Google Docs (we do use Google forms today), email systems, and web.
I would like to integrate SMS into the application as well as I have found most students don't look at their email often and sometime not at all, but see TXT messages in an instant. We used Remind.com at the Dallas regional last year for SMS communication and I have to admit it worked really well.

I'll take a look at Basecamp, I also Trello from some coordination we are doing at church. I have to admit, Wild Apricot is my favorite so far. It also has integrated payment processing.

Mark

[Rick]

Originally Posted by Aerosmit

...I have to admit, Wild Apricot is my favorite so far. It also has integrated payment processing...

+1 for Wild Apricot. We use it to track members, donors, events, alumni, etc. Depending on how big your organization is, Wild Apricot can solve a lot of issues.

Our referral link: https://register.wildapricot.com/?refcode=3T6H1F8K7S

[thatprogrammer]

We use basecamp. I'm not sure how much this costs, as our mentor/sponsor provides it to us for free. We're able to share code, cad, plans, pictures, and updates on this platform.

[Citrus Dad]

We tried Asana and Box a couple of years ago, but the training and retraining was too much. We ended up at Google Docs, in part because it provides at least rudimentary online Office-like applications. We also figured out how to link files and now run our purchase orders directly into our accounting system.

For emails we use Google Groups. We have different lists for students, mentors and parents. We use MailChimp for sponsors, community and newsletter emails.

[Aerosmit]

Citrus Dad, your solution is our likely next step if we don't go to an integrated solution. The Google Groups is a good suggestion.
Thanks

[sanddrag]

Originally Posted by Citrus Dad

We also figured out how to link files and now run our purchase orders directly into our accounting system.

Can you elaborate on this?

[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

Can you elaborate on this?

Let me get our team members to write a white paper about how they ran this system. It took a fair amount of design work, but then it was a godsend for managing finances.

[bobl]

Originally Posted by zcohen

The Power Hawks use a mix of Google Drive and MailChimp.
We use Google Drive to all of our documents, especially using Google Forms for students to fill out for pretty much any event we do. That way we have signups already in a spreadsheet which we can link to others to track payment, paperwork, etc.
We then use www.mailchimp.com to manage our team emails. It allows us to maintain a list of every email we've ever sent, see who has opened emails and even who clicks on links. We can also use it to manage alumni and community email lists, plus it allows you to create really nice looking emails really easily. As an example of what you can do, this is a community email we sent last year that looks similar to what we use now. Easy to put together, and very nice looking. http://eepurl.com/UupQT

We are looking for some of the same things to ease communications for team members, parents, sponsors , alumni, etc. I checked out mailchimp and your newsletter. Very nice!

I also like the idea of smile.amazon.com. (First time I have heard of it) Does your team have a 501(c)(3) classification? Are you using a parent organization to obtain it?

Appreciate any insight. Thanks.