Customer Story - Lotus Club Victoria

Who Are Lotus Club Victoria? 

Lotus Club Victoria is a Victorian-based car club for owners and enthusiasts of Lotus cars. They have been around for over 25 years and regularly organise track days, car meets, cruises and a monthly digital and print magazine. They also manage vintage vehicle registrations for their members whose Lotus meet the vintage vehicle requirements in Victoria. 

Lotus Club Victoria has been using Member Jungle to help manage their membership and club activities for over a year. To learn more about why they joined Member Jungle and how things have changed since then, I sat down with their Vice President, Guy Stevens and Membership Secretary, Rodney Nash. 

What Problems Were Lotus Club Victoria Trying To Solve?

Before joining Member Jungle Lotus Club, Victoria used a piecemeal system to run and manage their club. They were using WordPress to run their website, MailChimp to send their emails, and their membership was managed through an outdated Microsoft Access Database. This meant they had three different sets of membership data across their platforms to keep organised and accurate. 

Rodney Nash has this to say about their old management system, “Trying to make any changes to add a new function was next to impossible; the version of Access that we were running was basically out of support.

“The system was set up to do a 12-month calendar year based membership, not a rolling 12 months membership. We had problems with pro rata fees as people joined over the years. So, we had a lot of issues with our membership system.” 

Running their club and membership through their old system was time-consuming and inefficient, putting added pressure on the volunteers running the system.

“The other system was fairly manual and labour intensive. We couldn't take credit cards so people were doing direct bank deposits and then you had to try and match names and member numbers up and so on. Some people were still sending us cheques that we had to go and bank in person,” Rodney Nash said. 

Why Did Lotus Club Victoria Choose Member Jungle? 

Before they chose Member Jungle, Lotus Club Victoria did a complete evaluation of three different membership management systems: Member Jungle, another Australian-based membership system and an overseas-based one. 

“We had each of them (the three membership systems) do a demonstration to the club of the capabilities of their systems and also, what would be required of the volunteer club personnel, who would be running the systems once we had implemented it. Of course, we also looked at costs and value for money,” Guy Stevens explained. 

Lotus Club Victoria was attracted to the simplicity and ease of use of the Member Jungle system, the fact that Member Jungle’s Australian based and the level of support they could get. 

“A local help desk and people you could talk to if you were having problems. Plus, the tutorials that Renee runs twice a month meant as I was learning how to use the system, I could get onto these tutorials and pick up some tips and ask questions along the way. It was the full support from Member Jungle that made the difference,” Guy Stevens said. 

“I think it became pretty obvious fairly quickly that Member Jungle would give us everything that we were looking for in the membership system. And the fact that it was local in Australia was a bonus,” Rodney Nash added. 

What Changed After Lotus Club Victoria Joined Member Jungle? 

After joining Member Jungle, Lotus Club Victoria’s membership renewal process went from a several-month process requiring Rodney to devote a lot of his time to a quick and automatic process. 

“Now it all happens automatically. They pay online and I don't need to get involved unless someone is having a bit of trouble logging in, it's fantastic,” Rodney Nash said. 

Before the switch, Lotus Club organised their monthly newsletter using three different systems, which had to be constantly updated to ensure the data was correct. Now, they use the email and the document library module of the Member Jungle system. They only have one data set to look after, and Guy saves hours and hours on every magazine.  They have found the system super easy to use and customise to suit their club. 

They have also found that the event module has been a great way to organise their events quicker and easier. Since implementing Member Jungle, they have also noticed an increase in member turnout to events. 

Guy Stevens’ elaborated on this, “When we ran events (with the old system), where people had to contribute some funds towards the cost. One of the committee members had to run around at that event, tick off names and collect cash. Now, we've set it up so that when you register that you want to attend the event, you pay upfront via the Member Jungle site. So once again, that's another administrative headache that's been removed by the site.” 

The Lotus Club Victoria has found the Member Jungle system to be a great asset in managing their club. They were able to streamline their processes, save a significant amount of time and get back to enjoying their club activities.

Final Thoughts

 

“All of the support tickets are answered within 24 hours and fixed. And so the support I get from two people, Jeff and Renee, has made all the difference. It's one of those things that I know I really do feel if they see an email from me, I know they're going to jump on straight away and fix whatever's happening; quite often, it's things that I could fix myself. But they just go in and fix it for me and it's just been fantastic,” Guy Stevens.