Five Ways To Take Better Advantage of ClubRunner

Did you know that you can add up to 30 custom fields (text, date range, or even a yes/no flag) to the member profile area to track information that is specific to your club? Did you know that you can auto-assign a makeup from a members' pool of banked makeups for attendance tracking? How about the fact that you can store a list of contacts categorized by groups and labels in your very own club address book? With ClubRunner, you get access to a suite of powerful features to help manage every aspect of your club or district and there sure is a lot you can do!

We often get asked by incoming executives how they can make sure they can take better advantage of the suite of features to boost their productivity, which is when we work them to track usage patterns. In fact, these are some of our most favorite conversations! We spoke with a lot of new executives in July, which is why this month we thought why not share the top five ways to take better advantage of ClubRunner and its features.

1. Assign more than one site administrator

ClubRunner provides functionality for all members regardless of role. Did you know that there are 7 access levels to choose from to assign to your members, each giving them access to certain features, such as bulletin editor, club executive, content editor, and more? We always recommend having a minimum of 2 site administrators to manage your club from an overall perspective and a committee of members in charge of other various aspects.

In fact, you can also get more people in the club involved by giving them ownership to a site page to maintain for example. This means that even a member with an access level of 70 (Regular Member) can contribute to the club by updating the site about a recent project they undertook, without receiving access to other areas.

Take advantage of the private documents area to store members-only documents which you want them to access upon logging in. This is a great resource to add secure documents to your website which encourages members to log in regularly. Similarly, you can also change the view settings of custom pages and site pages to private which means members would need to log in to view them.    

These are just some functions that enable all members of the club to log in and stay current on club activities. Did you know that you can track who is logging in and who isn’t, by accessing the Login Activity page from the Reports link? Here, you can view a graphical representation of your member login activity and can dig deeper by month to see exactly who in your club is making use of the site on a regular basis.

2. Keep your membership data up to date

If most of your members have empty profiles, or have profiles with outdated information, it's time to have them update their profiles. There’s an easy way to encourage your members to log in and update their information and it's called the Request Member Update feature.

A great tool to help encourage your members to explore the site and keep their profiles current, use this feature to remind members to log in to update their data. In fact, you can even modify the message to encourage them to view their commitments, such as volunteer tasks, club events they've signed up for, meeting responsibilities assigned to them for the next meeting and more.


If you would prefer to target only a few members for this email or want to generate a report to look into who those specific members are that you perhaps need to speak with at the next meeting, you can use the Download Member Data function to a build a report to identify those members whose profiles are most out of date. To do so, click on the Reports tab on the Admin page and then on the Download Member Data link. Simply filter the results by the “Last Modified On” field along with the names of members and generate your report.

3. Better track attendance with ClubRunner

Attendance tracking and reporting is one of the most powerful functions of ClubRunner, and it takes a great deal of work off the hands of club secretaries and executives. Besides simple attendance tracking, ClubRunner's Attendance 3.0 allows you to bank and track make-ups and auto-assign them from the members' pool of banked makeups. Additionally, with this newer and updated module, you can track attendance for honorary members, record guests and visitors, customize attendance rules based on member type (excused vs. exempted), and even open up your own past meetings to recalculate attendance. Get started with this module and better get acquainted with its features by viewing these helpful guides available on our knowledgebase.

4. Keep your website up to date

If you neglect your website, so does everyone else. Your website is your public face and should be treated as a resource haven for both members and visitors alike. If members do not see any relevant news or updates, they likely will not visit the website again. Similarly, if visitors interested in Rotary land on your website and notice the top story on the site is about a charity BBQ that took place two summers ago, they too are not likely to visit your site again, and your chances of recruiting new members can decline significantly, as their perception about your club gets affected. Additionally, if you’re not providing fresh content on a fairly regular basis, your site will fall in search engine rankings and become harder and harder for casual visitors to find.

ClubRunner’s Website 3.0 Designer feature was designed to remain simple for basic users and more than powerful for experienced technical users. You can easily place fresh new content on your site and even reuse your articles in your bulletin. With built-in widgets, it's easy to post about club events, Rotary news, and more. Easily update the look of your website by selecting a theme and page color combination from our theme library. Prefer to upload your own design? Not a problem, we support custom CSS!

5. Gain valuable insight into your own club

Do you know how many seniors are in your club or district? Do you know how many of your members are married? How many are under the age of 30? How many have served the club for more than 20 years? How many the Rule of 85 applies for? Figuring out your member demographics is an essential step toward determining a strategy for the future growth of your club or district.

ClubRunner’s report functions make this fast and easy. You can generate reports on years of service, age and gender distribution and much more. You can even see at a glance which members of your group qualify for the Rule of 85. Don't see a report you need? You can even build your own!

The power of ClubRunner and what is available to you is extensive and we're always working to make ClubRunner more customizable for your needs.

How do I get up to speed on ClubRunner?

ClubRunner exists to empower your club and make the work of Rotarians easier and more effective. You get the most impact from ClubRunner when you understand how it works and apply that knowledge. We’re here to help you achieve that goal and have a number of resources available for you.

First, our growing knowledgebase contains hundreds of articles about both the Club and District versions of ClubRunner that are constantly updated. We also have a library of helpful video tutorials and webinars where you can learn more about commonly used functions. Check out our schedule of upcoming webinars where you can interact live with a member of our product support team to have your questions answered. Can't attend our scheduled sessions? Not a problem, they're all recorded, so you can always view them at your own time!

Tips from ClubRunner Users

We love hearing from you about how you make use of ClubRunner and how you get your members more engaged. Below are some tips shared by other users:

• We use the Enhanced Committees module to ensure our leadership remains active. We use the committee email function to communicate and have created our own repository of information using the Private Committee Documents area. The level of high activity keeps us all motivated to keep our ClubRunner account current.
• We use the new Duty Roster 3.0 to keep track of everyone's responsibilities because we love how these commitments can be tracked in each member's profile. When members are able to see everyone's assigned tasks, the level of responsibility just rises and we've found that this helps us stay current as we can always track where we let the ball drop.
• To make sure our website remains up-to-date, we update it with pictures and new stories during our weekly meetings itself.
• We hold membership drives every 3 months. So, we constantly generate the available reports in ClubRunner to view the breakdown of our club in terms of age, gender and the number of new members that joined. Then, we set new goals for our next membership drive based on this information.

Every club is different and everybody does something unique to remain active and get the most out of ClubRunner at the same time. Share your tips in the comments below!