Australian Association of Voice Actors

 

Who Is The Australian Association of Voice Actors?

 

The Australian Association of Voice Actors, or AAVA, is a professional association that advocates and promotes Australian voice actors. They strive to provide education and community to voice actors while advocating for the entire field on a political level. 

The Australian Association of Voice Actors (AAVA) was founded in early 2024 to address the threat AI poses in their industry. Shortly after its establishment, the AAVA was pleasantly surprised by the number of members eager to join. It was a clear sign that their community needed a way to connect with fellow voice actors and someone to advocate for their profession. Soon, the AAVA realised they needed a system in place to help them manage this new growing association. After much searching for a CRM to suit their needs, they settled on Member Jungle. 

So, in early 2025, I hopped in my car and travelled to Sydney to meet with their president, Simon Kennedy, to learn more about them and their experiences using Member Jungle. 

What Problems Were The Australian Association of Voice Actors Trying To Solve?

When the Australian Association of Voice Actors first started, it organised everything via Google Workspace. It set up membership forms via Google Forms, kept member data in Google Sheets, and stored information in Google Drive. While Google Workspace is great for teams, it soon became a struggle for the AAVA to organise its association via it. 

Here, Simon Kennedy explains what happened in his own words. 

“We got to a point where our membership grew into hundreds very quickly, and sending emails out, there was a lot of cutting and pasting, and we couldn’t send it to everyone at once, as our email system wouldn’t allow that many emails at a time. It became a bit of a manual nightmare,” 

“Then it occurred to us that when everyone’s memberships are up in one year, at various times, we’re going to have to manually go through and try and renew memberships. The idea of that was not making me happy, so that’s when we went, ‘okay, we’re going to need a system here’,” Simon explained. 

You can watch the full video of our interview with Simon Kennedy here: Streamlining Success: The Australian Voice Actors Association & Member Jungle

 

 

How Did The Australian Association of Voice Actors Go About Finding A System To Help Them? 

So, now that the Australian Association of Voice Actors knew they would need a system to help them manage their fledgling but rapidly growing association, they began researching all of their options.

Simon recounted this process, “I did a lot of research; our committee did a lot of research. We were looking at CRMs from around the world; some came close to what we needed, some did some things but not other things, and some were just so expensive, and I’m talking about 20 grand a year expensive,”

“So we were really looking around, and Member Jungle was in that list, and Member Jungle provided more of what we needed in one place than anything else,” 

“The things we were looking for were automated renewals, being able to stay in contact with the members and send emails out, providing member-only portals within our website so that we could have a walled-off section just for members. When we started researching, Member Jungle seemed to be the only one who would do all of those things and do them all at a price that was acceptable,”. 

As you just read, after their extensive research, the Australian Association of Voice Actors decided that Member Jungle was their best option, so they went ahead and signed up with us. 

How Did The Australian Association of Voice Actors Find The Onboarding Process With Member Jungle? 

The Australian Association of Voice Actors took a hands-on approach when they joined Member Jungle, opting to set up and build their new website and system themselves.  Within just two weeks, they had successfully migrated their member data, launched their new website, and begun accepting payments through the platform.

“Signing up was easy, it was very simple. I have found that when I've had a bit of a question, something a bit technical and I’ve thrown that at the [Member Jungle] team they’ve been pretty helpful. I think for us having the support in Australia is actually great, no one likes timezones,”

"All of our membership data was sitting in Google Sheets, so that [moving member data into Member Jungle] wasn't too tricky. I made a couple of mistakes, but they weren't mistakes I couldn't walk back. So, that system was pretty well explained, and the Member Jungle guys were definitely helpful along the way. I was actually surprised at how easy that was."

"It was pretty easy for me to use. I think if anyone has used a website builder, the Member Jungle system isn't too hard," Simon said.

What Changed After The Australian Association Of Voice Actors Joined Up With Member Jungle?

When I met with Simon to discuss his experiences using Member Jungle, the Australian Association of Voice Actors had been utilising their new system for several months. This gave him plenty to share about how things had been going with Member Jungle so far.

Simon first explained how they have organised their events with Member Jungle.

“The event system is something we’ve used quite a lot. As we have at least one webinar a month that we like people to register for. I found that to be great. The system where you set up your event, people register for an event and you can set up automatic emails maybe a week before or a day before and they get a reminder, that’s been really great,” 

“We offer free events and webinars for our members, but they are people who aren’t members who take an interest in some of the webinars we do. So, we have a ticket price for non-members. So, the ticketing system has been great as it’s actually added a bit of extra revenue as well. Hopefully the more that happens it might translate to more members,”. 

Simon then explained a little about how the system helps him by giving him extra information about how his members interact with the association. 

“I love being able to see how many people have read or engaged with an email. As that gives you an idea if people are paying attention or not. So, that’s been good, those little extra bits of information that you wouldn’t normally hear about or know."

Final Thoughts  

Finally I asked Simon if he would recommend Member Jungle to a club or association who was considering signing up to it. This was his response. 

“I think if you’re an association of over 100 or 200 members, I can’t imagine you would want to deal with renewals and that sort of thing manually. I think it’s a no brainer. I would recommend Member Jungle because the price point is good especially for small to medium associations," 

“One thing an association or a club doesn’t want to do is spend most of their membership revenue on managing the membership. So for us, that was a massive thing, the price point, as well as the functionality. The price point says to me that Member Jungle understands who the people are that are using it,”