2015 - Year in Review

2015 has been a whirlwind year for us at ClubRunner with lots of changes and growth. It is only with your support and encouragement that we are where we are today and why we were able to hit so many milestones.

Connecting with Clubs

We love when we get the chance to connect with our customers and share in their success stories. 2015 began with our first stop at the 2015 Rotary International Assembly in San Diego, where we met with our District champions and had the opportunity to meet some great new leaders and establish new relationships. We're proud to say that as of December 2015, we serve 122 Districts and more than 5,000 clubs worldwide. From mid-February until March end, we continued our journey by attending 17 President-Elect Training seminars. Seeing champions reunite at our booths and sharing best practices, we brought home some great memories. At home, we had the opportunity to welcome several visiting Rotarians to our own office for training, best practice and even focus group sessions.

 

We look forward to meeting everyone once again next year with even more features to unveil!

More Solutions, New Versions

In July, we released new levels of ClubRunner to meet the unique needs of each individual club with the release of ClubRunner Lite to clubs of all sizes and ClubRunner Admin Only in addition to the Standard Version.

 

ClubRunner Lite is a great option for clubs that need just the necessities for public relations like a website or newsletter, while the Admin Version is for clubs that still want to take advantage of all the administration and member management features but maintain their website outside of ClubRunner. 

 

Now, no matter what your needs or budget, we have a solution just for you!

Customer Wish List

Every year, we receive hundreds upon hundreds of suggestions from customers about features they would like to see in ClubRunner. Our goal is to incorporate as many suggestions as we can. This year, our development team worked very hard to meet these requests and implemented 596 new features into the ClubRunner system, both big and small. From new website and bulletin themes and color variations to page and widget customization properties; from improving the Photo Albums module to making enhancements to the Events module - we made a lot of remarkable changes to ClubRunner. View our Service Updates from this past year by clicking here.

Taking Attendance

You asked for it, and we delivered! We redesigned the Attendance module based on all the feedback we've received over the years. Giving you the ability to bank and track make-ups, record guests and visitors, open up past meetings to recalculate attendance, customize attendance rules based on member type, and more, this module caters to the unique attendance needs of each club. Learn more by clicking here.

Seeking Volunteers

This year, we re-launched the number one feature all volunteer groups need - the all-new Volunteers module! Redesigned and revamped, the Volunteers module was created to cater to virtually any scenario where you need to co-ordinate people in various commitments, organized by time, day, task or group. Great for event shifts, volunteers, committee signups or anything involving a schedule, you can now build your own signup sheets and automate the communication process behind it, so you can focus on more pressing matters. For more information on getting started with this module, click here.

Support in a Nutshell

The support team had a busy but great year answering more than 23,390 support emails alone. As part of our mission to provide you with the best support and access to support resources, we  added new on-demand videos in addition to  recorded webinars to help you familiarize yourself with the all features available to you. New guides and help articles were added throughout the year to the library so you can find answers to any questions you may have. Visit www.ClubRunnerSupport.com to view our updated knowledgebase, access new on-demand videos, help resources and more.

 

Here is to a great 2015! In the new year, we have even more resolve and commitment to continue improving ClubRunner for you.

 

THANK YOU!

Happy Holidays from the ClubRunner Team!

Happy Holidays!

...from the ClubRunner family to yours.
 

 (Click to play, make sure to have your speakers up!)

As the year comes to an end, our thoughts turn graciously to those who made our success possible this year. Thank you for all your support!

Here's to all of you and your accomplishments in 2015! May 2016 be a prosperous, joyous and service above self year for all!

Please note that our hours of operation during the holiday season are as follows:

• Thursday, December 24, 2015 - Closed
• Friday, December 25, 2015 - Closed
• Monday, December 28, 2015 - Closed
• Tuesday, December 29, 2015 - 9:00am - 5:00pm EST
• Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - 9:00am - 5:00pm EST
• Thursday, December 31, 2015 - 9:00am - 12:30om EST
• Friday, January 1, 2015 - Closed

Tip of the Week: Story formatting

Story with different fonts

Your new story is ready to go but you notice that the font and font size for the paragraphs is not the same. The look of the text you typed in directly into the editor looks different than the text you copied in. Some sentences are in a different color, and you want to change this. Short of having to rewrite your entire article, isn't there anything you can do to remove all that extra formatting?

A hidden secret, did you know that you can easily remove all formatting from your stories and widgets? Think of it like a 'restore to default' option!

When you want to remove the formatting that appears in your stories, simply highlight the text you want to edit and click on the "Remove Formatting" button. This changes the font, font size, and color to what is set as the default for the website theme you are using. 

Tip of the week!

We've featured many articles on making bulletin preparation and sending easy and the focus today is on Plain Text bulletins. What is a plain text bulletin? Simply said, it's your newsletter without the images or text styling - it's text only.

Some of your members use email clients that do not render HTML messages. When this happens, their email client automatically displays the plain text version of the newsletter, if one was made available. If there is no plain text version to go along with your newsletter, you run the risk of having readers see garbled HTML code rather than content.
  

Visually impaired members may also have trouble with a graphically intense bulletin, as it may present a challenge for the text reading software they may use to help them navigate the web.  As such, they require a plain text bulletin, one that contains no images or text formatting.

Another reason to create this alternative text version is that email filters are more likely to identify a image heavy bulletin (one with many images and links) as spam.

 

To create the plain text version of your bulletin simply click on the Text Version button at the top right of the bulletin editor. This will take you to the Bulletin Text Version editing page, from where you can copy in your text into the editor.

Suggestions to create a nice looking, readable plain text email

While you cannot add colors or change the font size of your text in the plain version, you can still modify the appearance of your text. For instances where you want to identify headlines from the main text, you can use symbols to separate the two:

Volunteers Needed  for our Annual Fundraiser

--------------------------------------------

  

You can also use these line breaks between paragraphs and articles to break your text up or use lot's of white space to break them apart, so it's easy to scan for important bits and pieces. White space is important as it breaks the plain text version of your email nicely.

If the HTML version of your bulletin contained bullet points, consider using hyphens or asterisks to list your points in the plain text email. 

* Volunteers Needed  for our Annual Fundraiser

OR 

- Volunteers Needed  for our Annual Fundraiser

If you'd bolded a few words in your HTML version, you can add an asterisk before and after the word(s) in your plain text email to place the emphasis.

 Volunteers **Needed**  for our Annual Fundraiser

For every link that is included in your bulletin, make sure you copy and paste the links to the plain text version of your bulletin as well. If the URL you want to share is really long, use URL shortening services such as bit.ly or Google's URL builder. Always make sure you label what the link is meant for, so the reader can easily identify the call to action. 

View Available Shifts [www.clubrunner.ca] 

Read More [www.clubrunner.ca]

For help resources or to view more best practices on bulletins, check out our knowledgebase.