How Member Jungle Can Help Dog Clubs Run More Effectively

Many dog clubs are already experiencing smoother operations and enhanced efficiency by utilising Member Jungle's membership management system. This specialised club management software helps these organisations streamline their administrative tasks, allowing them to focus more on their members and activities. By adopting Member Jungle, dog clubs can manage memberships, communications, and events more effectively, ensuring a better experience for both administrators and members.

Who doesn't love dogs? For me, they have been a constant comforting presence throughout my life. I grew up with dogs, so much so that my first word wasn't 'mum' or 'dad', it was my dog's name. One of my earliest memories is being taught to swim, only for that same dog to mistakenly think I was drowning, jump in, and pull me to safety. 

 

 

They are really mankind's best friends. Given this lifelong bond, I understand the passion behind running a dog club, and I’m far from the only one. 

Not only does everyone on the Member Jungle team love dogs, but Renee Krischer, our Project and Account Manager, actually breeds and shows pedigree dogs herself, and is an active member of the Golden Retriever Club NSW. Renee is also the very person who builds and designs new sites for Member Jungle customers. So, if you choose to use Member Jungle, you can be confident your site will be crafted by someone who truly lives and breathes dog clubs.

That's why, today, we're going to explore how Member Jungle can help dog clubs run more efficiently, allowing more time to be spent enjoying our fluffy friends and less on tedious admin tasks.

How Can Member Jungle Help Dog Clubs - An Overview

Before we dive into the specifics of all the different ways Member Jungle can support dog clubs, let’s take a brief look at what Member Jungle is and what it does.

Member Jungle is an all-in-one membership management system designed to automate large parts of clubs' operations. This means streamlining tedious tasks, such as communication, membership renewals, and ticket sales, freeing up time for the people running the club. Essentially, Member Jungle aims to remove the administrative burden, allowing committee members and volunteers to get back to truly enjoying their passion.

Here are some of the key things Member Jungle does and provides:

• Online Membership Management: Automates sign-ups, renewals, and member data management.
• Integrated Communication Tools: Offers emails, push notifications, and chatrooms for easy member communication.
• Event Management: Simplifies event setup, ticketing, payments, and check-ins.
• Member Only Areas: Lock down areas of your website for only members or course instructors. 
• Website Hosting & Design: Provides a professional, customisable website for your club.
• Financial Management: Streamlines online payments, invoicing, and financial reporting.
• Custom Data & Reporting: Allows you to track unique information about your members and generate insightful reports.
• Online Store: Enables easy sale of merchandise and other club items.

 

What Member Jungle can do for dog clubs in particular goes beyond just some of these basic things that apply to all organisations, so let’s have a look at them in closer detail. 

Datasets For Tracking Dogs In Your Dog Club

Member Jungle’s datasets and data reporting tools are an invaluable asset for dog clubs as they allow you to not only keep track of your members but also their dogs and who each dog belongs to.   

While the system automatically tracks standard member information like age, gender, and event attendance, custom data sets excel at tracking all those unique details specific to your dog club members. For example, you can customise the info that you collect from members, so you can also get information about their dogs. Crucially, this information is separate and searchable but tied back to your members, allowing you to search by dog as well as by member. 

Using custom forms like this means your club can gather and organise all the necessary information on both the dog and its owner; dog names, breeds, sex, registration numbers, or even specific training certifications. 

You can then use the custom report feature to get really tailored insights into your members. Want to know how many German Shepherds are in your dog club, or what percentage of your members participate in agility competitions? You can easily run a custom report to find out in moments. 

 

Let's say you're an all-breeds dog club considering an event just for the Staffies, probably something like "Who Can Be The Stubbornest Little Couch Hippo?" competition. Before you plan, you'll need to check how many Staffies are in your club to ensure there are enough to make it worthwhile. Because your dog data is separate from your member data, you won't need to go through each member's information manually looking for who owns which dog. You can simply run a custom report to bring up all the Staffies registered in your club instantly.

 

 

And because that dog data is separate but linked to the owner, you can then easily send an email directly to all of your Staffies' humans, alerting them to your upcoming couch-hippo competition.

This ability to understand exactly who your members and their dogs are, how they are interacting with your club, and what's most popular helps you constantly adapt and improve the member experience, directly leading to increased sign-ups and retention for your organisation.

Tracking Vaccinations Via Datasets

You can also set up your custom datasets to help you track when dogs are due for check-ups and vaccinations. This allows you to monitor when a dog needs to be vaccinated and when their vaccination certificates need to be updated in the system. Crucially, because you're tracking this information, you can then send targeted bulk vaccination reminder emails directly to all members whose dogs' vaccinations are approaching.

For more information on data reporting and how it can benefit your club, check out Why Your Club Or Association Needs Data Reporting.

Lockdown Parts Of Your Website To Be Member-Only

With Member Jungle, you can lock down different sections of your website for members only. Meaning that you can have events, training libraries, articles, videos,  downloads etc. That only your members can see. This is a great way to add extra value to your membership, as you can offer a whole library of information and resources that people need to join to access. 

 

 

I’ll be the first to admit, I had way too much fun turning this James Bond poster dog-centric. 

You can also have areas that can only be accessed by your admin staff of instructors. Allowing you to store your course layouts and rules somewhere secure, where only instructors can access them. 

Using Member Tags To Organise Your Members

Member Tags essentially do what they say on the tin; they allow you to easily tag members as belonging to one group or another, enabling you to group members into select subgroups to make organising and communicating with them easier and more efficient. You can categorise your members by type, by dog breed, by the sport they do with their dogs, and pretty much any other thing you think is worth segmenting. 

In practice, this allows you to communicate with select subgroups only. You can send an email to all the members who do obedience trials, without bothering the members who only do agility competitions. Of course, members can have multiple tags, all of which allow you to get really granular with your communications and membership management. Need to message only the owners of female Border Collies that do agility comps? No problem. 

For more information on segmenting members for better communications, check out Member Segmentation Strategy: Improve Club & Association Communications.

Group Chats For Your Dog Club

Member Jungle offers versatile group chat rooms that make it easy to have casual conversations within your club. You can set up club-wide chats for everyone, but you can also create smaller, focused groups. For example, you could have specific chats for each of your subgroups or activities, like one for members in the current obedience course and another for those competing in agility trials.

You can also create time-limited group chats specifically for upcoming events. Once a member registers for an event, they automatically receive an invite to join a chat dedicated to that activity.

All of this provides your club with another slightly less formal way to communicate with members. Crucially, it also gives members a dedicated space to talk amongst themselves, organise carpooling, and generally hype each other up for their next event.

Check out Why Your Club Should Be Using Group Chats for more info on using group chats. 

How Member Jungle Works For National Breeding Bodies

As Member Jungle is designed to work seamlessly for both clubs and associations, it also makes it an ideal solution for National Breeding Bodies. Our system allows the national body to set up and manage its state-level operations with flexibility and efficiency.

The main benefit is that you can configure Member Jungle in a way that balances oversight with state-level autonomy. Whether you choose a single, subdivided system (like a granny flat where each state has its own space within your main site) or opt for entirely individual systems (more like "houses next door" where each state has its own separate site), Member Jungle can do that.

Regardless of your chosen setup, the national body gains a top-level overview and reporting dashboard, allowing you to easily track the performance and activities of all state bodies. While each state level maintains its ability to manage its own operations, including its unique subsite, dedicated administrators, specific events, and tailored sign-up forms. All without being able to see or manage any of the other state bodies' sites. Depending on your setup, each state can even have its own mobile app and specific subscription arrangements, ensuring a perfect fit for your organisational structure.

For more information on how this works, check out How Peak & Parent Bodies Can Manage Their State or Regional Groups Better With Member Jungle. 

Running Your Dog Club’s Events With Member Jungle

We already touched on events, but let’s have a look at Member Jungle’s event system in some more detail. Member Jungle’s event management system allows you to streamline pretty much all aspects of running events for your club, from event creation through to the day of the event. You can easily promote and manage your entire event calendar directly on your club's website and through the Member Jungle app. 

Even if you use an external program like Showmanager or Easydogs for your events, Member Jungle integrates seamlessly. You can add those external events to your Member Jungle event calendar and link directly to your event on those external websites. This means you can use Member Jungle to easily and effectively promote your events, even if registrations are still handled elsewhere.

Whether you’re hosting a puppy school, sports training day, competition, or show day via the system, members can easily register and purchase tickets online, and even view who else is planning to attend. You can restrict events to specific membership levels or groups and instantly send push notifications directly to members' phones as needed. So, if rain unexpectedly cancels an outdoor agility session, you can instantly let everyone registered know. 

The event module provides great features, including:

• Online event ticket sales
• Member discounts on tickets for different membership tiers
• Recurring events for regular activities
• The ability to restrict events to members only or particular membership levels
• Options to create custom event registration forms to collect all the necessary information about both the member and their dog
• Automated event reminder emails
• Access to registration lists, both online and via the app
• Attendance tracking directly through the app for easy check-ins on event day
• And much more, all designed to make your dog club events run smoothly from start to finish.

For example, if you run recurring monthly meetings, you can simply set up your first one in the system and then configure it to recur monthly. You can then set up emails to send out invites and reminders a week before each scheduled monthly meeting. Plus, you can also have automated emails go out the day before the meeting with a final reminder and a meeting link so people can join online.

For a much deeper dive into how the event system works, have a peep at How To Run An Event With Member Jungle - A Guide. 

Finally, before I wrap up, I asked all the Member Jungle team to send me photos of their dogs, as I wanted to include a few pictures of all the Member Jungle dogs. Plus, who doesn’t love an excuse to talk about their dogs? It turns out that, as Member Jungle only has 10 full-time staff members and 11 dogs, dogs outnumber people at Member Jungle. Leading me to pitch that our new tagline should be: “Member Jungle, the company that is 52.38% dog.”

So please meet, Chopper, Regina, Lola, Willow, Hazel, Oreo, Caro, Tooshie, Tank, Teddy, and Archie. 

 

How To Find Out More About How Member Jungle Will Work For Your Dog Club

There are already over a dozen dog clubs happily using Member Jungle to run their operation smoother than ever before. To hear from one of them about their experiences, check out Agility Club of Western Australia - Customer Story.

For more information on Member Jungle and how it works have a look at How Does Member Jungle’s Membership Management System Work.