Twyford & District Fishing Club – Admin Down 60%, Income Up £8,000
Twyford & District Fishing Club
Twyford & District Fishing Club (TDFC) was formed back in the 1930s by a group of fishing enthusiasts from Twyford village. Since its early days, TDFC has been dedicated to providing fine fishing to anglers in attractive surroundings such as Causeway Lake, St Patrick’s Stream, River Loddon, and more. The club is run by its members and has grown from around 100 to just under 700 anglers today, so it’s no surprise they had trouble staying afloat with their membership admin.
The Challenge
Previously, TDFC used a combination of paper forms and spreadsheets to manage new registrations and member information. This was a tedious and timely process for all involved from new members having to print, fill out, and return forms, to the club’s membership secretary having to manually type information into spreadsheets and update existing records. This also posed a GDPR issue if paper forms got lost or the wrong information was held on file.
When it came to payments these were paid via cash, cheques or card using a card machine on site. With these payments coming in through various different means and at different points in time, it meant a variety of problems for TDFC. This included continuous trips to the bank to deposit cash and cheques, bounced cheques, lags between cheques paid in and cleared, and consequently, an unsteady cash flow. Not to forget a stressed membership secretary who was spending 15-20 hours every few weeks on payment reconciliation and managing member information. The club was keen to reduce the time spent on admin, so they turned to LoveAdmin.
The Solution
TDFC has seen great results since using LoveAdmin’s membership management software. It’s changed how they manage their admin in several different ways. Members have access to their own LoveAdmin account so they can log in and update their details when required. This has removed the headache TDFC used to face with having to maintain records and they no longer have to worry about security or confidentiality as LoveAdmin is GDPR compliant.
LoveAdmin has also streamlined TDFC’s cash flow tremendously. Most of their members pay via PayPal which means payments come in on time and it’s easy to keep track of who’s paid and who hasn’t thanks to automatic payment reconciliation. And for those few members who are overdue with payments, the club can send out automatic payment reminders as well as renewal reminders when relevant using the built-in email feature. Other functionalities on the financial side of things that TDFC use are financial reports which allow them to see things like actual vs forecasted income and being able to change payments amounts quickly to suit different circumstances.
On the note of LoveAdmin’s email feature, this has been really helpful for getting just in time communication out to groups of members such as restricted fishing during hot weather, incidents at rivers, and more recently COVID-19 updates. It’s provided a simple way to update people on what’s urgent and important which is something TDFC didn’t have in place before.
The club has also experienced some uptake with guest ticket purchases through the events feature in LoveAdmin and they hope to promote this further later on in the year when life returns to some form of normality.
The Result
TDFC now collects payments 4 times quicker and has seen an increase of £8,000 in income. Most importantly though, LoveAdmin has successfully reduced the time they spend on admin by 60%.
Ian Hardwick, Treasurer at Twyford & District Fishing Club says, “LoveAdmin has enabled us to see all of our member information in one place, improved our cash flow, and allowed us to provide timely email communication to our members.”
