Video: The Newcastle District Hunting Club’s Experiences With Using Member Jungle

When we started the Member Jungle account with you, I think we probably had maybe 90 members in the club; now we're pushing 650 members, and you know, memberships are maybe ten a month. That's the rate we're growing at, and that's fairly consistent. And from the secretary's point of view, which I am I don't need the extra work, so the website runs everything for us. 

 

 

Newcastle District Hunting Club - Customer Story
 

First of all, we're a compliance tool for our members to hold their firearms licence. We're an approved hunting organisation for the DPI, which means people can use their club membership with us for their our licence, which is their restricted game license which gives them access to declared State Forest for hunting purposes. We're also additionally approved for target shooting for both handguns and Rifles. 

How Did You First Find Member Jungle? 

We found Member Jungle because we were looking for digital membership cards. At the time, we were getting our cards printed on hard plastic, which became very, very costly for the club, not only with getting the cards produced but also posting them out to our members. 

So, whilst we were looking for the digital membership ship cards, our Treasurer came across Member Jungle, and we had a talk with you, and the website grew from there. Yes, so we were looking for a modern, fresh, looking website and me being the Luddite that I am, I needed something that was user-friendly from my perspective; my rationale is if I can use it, then any of my members. 

How Has Member Jungle Helped You Run Your Club? 

Look, from the club's point of view, from the Secretary's point of view and from our Treasurer's point of view, we found it fantastic. It's really easy to manage, easy to change content, easy to put stuff up on the site and if anyone goes to our site, they can see there's tons of stuff on there. 

My members have found it good as well; we've made it fairly user-friendly. They've now come to terms with this is the way we do business in the 21st century, and they've just adopted it and run with it, you know. Whether they're booking an event that we've put on, or renewing their memberships. 

How Is The Automated Membership Renewal System? 

The renewal system is great. I've got it set up that, you know, 30 days out, they start getting their renewal reminders, and then I've got it staggered out. So that as we come closer to the end of the year the renewal reminders become more frequent.

It saves me a heap of time. You know I don't chase people, at 650 members in the club, I don't chase people up for membership. They either renew or they don't, but you know, by far, the majority of our members will renew on time, and that's it.

How Is Running Events Via Member Jungle?

Oh look, it's the only way to run events. We started this m back in the dark days of Covid, which seems like an eon away at the moment, but when we had to manage numbers of people in our gatherings,  I started booking people for events then in small numbers. And I found it was so easy that they not only could book, they could actually pay for the event, which meant I wasn't handling cash. And I've just implemented that as a standard practice across the club.

Now, any interactions we do with other clubs or other organisations where we're paying them to use their facilities it's now just a simple bank transfer rather than a cash transaction. 

Then the other good thing is I know beforehand how many members I've got turning up, so I don't get any surprises with, you know, a million people turning up, and then I got to try and work out who's paid and who hasn't paid etc. etc.  

How Has Member Jungle Helped With Your Compliance Reporting? 

Our attendance reporting tool that I put together was okay, but my members didn't have access to what their inputs, so when I spoke to Leigh the other day we put together an attendance app that links back to the membership database. So now a member needs to be logged on to access that function, but now they can see their own, they can see their own attendances. They don't have to ring me up and say, “How many attendances have I got?” and I’m going to say, “Oh mate, I’m not looking at that data today.” 

They can track their own inputs, but more importantly for me, at the end of the year, when I'm doing my reporting, I can just do a data dump on it and bring down the CSV fall, and I've got all that information there, and I'll just collect that data.

Have There Been Any Other Standout Features Of The Member Jungle System?

The app is fantastic, and so is the chat room function. It's actually taken a mind of its own, it's taken on a life of its own. I've let you know all I've said to our members is just to keep the content reasonable. I don't want any, you know, content that I would say is questionable there, and my members have abided by that. 

But other than that, they're interacting with each other now through that chat function. I use the blog function for selling purposes, and of course, I've got locked-off pages that only my members have got access to. 

For certain things, we found the chat room, and I implemented that probably early this year. Only because I needed a way to contact our members quickly when it came to cancelling events. Like, I’ll get something like an hours notification that an event’s cancelled because of weather, which happened to me on Saturday, actually. So, one email through the Events tab to the people that have registered, then put it up in the Chat Room so those people that haven't got their emails can look at the chat. Yeah, that's how we're communicating with people that's how we're telling them we're communicating with them at very short notice. 

What Would You Say To Someone Considering Using Member Jungle?

Look, I could only recommend it. If anybody was looking, you know to run a club or an organisation, it doesn't matter what it is; give you guys a go. I found dealing with Member Jungle was really, really easy. Any problems that I've had, I've been able to get them sorted out in a timely manner, which is important for me. 

Yeah I'm so happy with the product, and I know a lot of other people that are using the Member Jungle site are also equally as impressed.