How Peak & Parent Bodies Can Manage Their State or Regional Groups Better With Member Jungle

Being a parent is hard. I assume I'm not a parent yet. Don't get me wrong; I'm sure one day I'll meet Mr. Right, and we'll do what countless generations before us have done: ruin our lives with kids. Seriously though, I know having kids will be amazing, and it's something I genuinely look forward to; I just remember the hell my friends and I put our parents through when we were younger.  

Being a peak body, a parent body, or an association with multiple subgroups is a lot like being a real parent. You're trying to stay organised and make sure everyone gets where they need to go and has what they need. Meanwhile, your subgroups are busy running about, having grand ideas about the world, getting moody, giving you the silent treatment and throwing ragers whenever you turn your back.

Seriously, at about 17, we threw a massive house party in a friend's parents' pristine and empty house the night before an open house. The next morning, we snuck out through the side gate with trash bags, speakers, and a fog machine as the real estate agent came through the front door. And that is barely scratching the surface of the chaos we inflicted on our poor parents. 

 

 

My point is that trying to manage a bunch of subgroups as a parent body or peak body can be a real pain, but luckily, you don’t need to go it alone. Member Jungle can do a whole lot to help automate and manage how your peak body can manage and look after its subgroups. So, without any further mucking about on my part, let’s get into it. 

What Are Your Setup Options For Managing Sub-Groups As A Peak Body?

Here is a nice, easy top level overview of the two available set up options that you can choose from for your peak body and regional groups. 

As a peak body, you can either: 

1. You can have one subdivided system. Where access is restricted to the individual sections, so subgroups/state groups can only see and access their own information.

a. You, as the peak body, can oversee it all. 

b. Different sections of the website can still have different themes and logos.

c. There is only one mobile app (the parent body's) and one website address. However, you can have different domain names linking to each sub-site. 

d. Also, all online payments go into one bank account.

e. Despite the multiple sub-clubs, you are only paying for one Member Jungle subscription, so support is provided only to the number of administrators in the package.

 

2. You and all of your subgroups have their own individual systems.

a. You, as the peak body, have a top-level reporting dashboard that allows you to view information about your subgroups. 

b. These separate systems have their own website and their own mobile app and are separately administered and operated. 

c. As a peak body, you can choose to pay for all of your subgroups, or if you wish them to pay separately, we can negotiate a discounted rate for each system. 

d. Each site has its own separate bank account.

e. Each site has its own Member Jungle subscription, and they can be chosen from any of our packages.

 

Option one will give your peak body greater access and control over your subgroups, while option two allows for more autonomy between the groups. You can also have a hybrid of both options if you have some small and some large groups or states. This would mean you  can help manage the small groups inside your main site and the larger groups can have their own system.

How Member Jungle Can Help Your Peak Body Manage Your Regional Clubs

If your association or peak body signs up with Member Jungle, you will receive a membership management system, digital membership cards, a website, a mobile app, an event management system, and many other features to help you effectively manage your association. Basically, all the normal but incredibly useful stuff, which you can read about here: Association Management Software - How Does Member Jungle Rate?

Where this really comes into its own as far as helping peak and parent bodies is how the Member Jungle System allows you to interact with your regional subgroups. This can be broken down into two categories: how it helps track your subgroup's membership data and how it helps you manage their websites. 

Manage Your Association’ Sub-groups With Member Jungle

Member Jungle allows parent bodies to sign up with their subgroups and pay for everyone together, or just the peak body to sign up and give the subgroups the option to sign up or not at any point down the line. 

As the parent body, you can also choose to pay for the Member Jungle system for your subgroups or have them pay for it themselves at a discounted rate. This just depends on how your association is set up and run and which method you prefer. It's worth noting that this doesn't have to be all at once. We have one national peak body that pays for its own site, and its regional sub-clubs get a discounted price when they join. The national body has been with us for nearly a decade, but their sub-clubs are still signing up today. Whenever those individually run clubs finally give up on using their old pen and paper systems, they know they have a discounted price and a parent body waiting for them here. 

When your subgroup signs up with Member Jungle, you can link them to your peak body website in two ways. The first is as a subsite that can be customised with its own logo, name, information, and pages and contain its own content. This allows them to piggyback on your website without getting in your way and have their own space to show off their own personality. Each individual subgroup can have its own website theme and administrator who can access its club's information and its own set of reports. This ensures that members will only receive information and reports about their own club and not that of their parent group or any of the sibling groups. It's basically the corporate version of a granny flat for teenagers to live in. 

In the examples below, I will include the website URLs for the various sites I will be showing so you can see how the different options affect the site's URLs. 

For example, the peak body, the Australian College of Perioperative Nurses (ACORN), has a Member Jungle website at https://www.acorn.org.au/. 

 

 

On their website menu, there is a link to all their associated regional subgroups. As you can see below. 

 

 

One of their subgroups, ACORN Tasmania, is set up as a subsite, as we discussed above. Their website is at https://www.acorn.org.au/acorn-tasmania.  

 

 

As you can see, their subsite is very similar to the parent site, but that is their choice; they could have a different theme if they wanted. They do have their own logo pages and content. Plus, their members can come straight to the Tasmanian site, log in, and access anything they need. This allows the regional subgroup to be basically independent from the parent body while still receiving support from it. 

The other option that we discussed is your subgroup, which has its own completely different website that is still linked to the main site. 

One of the sites listed above on the screenshot of ACORN’s subgroups was NSWOTA, which has its own Member Jungle website at https://www.ota.org.au/.  

 

 

As you can see, NSWOTA’s website and URL do not mention their parent body, ACORN, at all, despite the fact that they are still very much linked to them. This gives them a bit more independence from their parent body while still very much being a part of ACORN’s regional associations. If the other option is like a granny flat for the teenagers; this is like the adult kids living in the house next door. They are still right there, and there’s a gate in the side fence, but they are also functionally independent.

To keep on with the parent-kid theme, I had a look for some funny things that kids had drawn and couldn’t help but share this one. It is a drawing that a six-year-old did in school that resulted in the teacher calling their parents in for an emergency meeting. 

Eventually, everything cleared up when the child explained that it was just a drawing of them and their family going snorkelling together. 

 

 

Personally, I can’t blame the teacher for that one; this looks like something Ethan Hawke would have found in his attic in Sinister. 

So, that’s how your peak body can manage your subgroups, but let’s now discuss how this allows you to track data for your subgroups. 

Track Membership Data Across Your Subgroups & Clubs

The Member Jungle system allows you, as the peak body or association, to view the member information for your association and all of your sub-groups, individually and collectively. This allows you to see how your association and all of your subgroups are going.

For associations like ACORN, where all their state clubs are under one website, the state administrators will only be able to access the reporting dashboard and member information for their state body. While the overall site administrator for all of ACORN will be able to view all member data across all of the regional state clubs, like any other club or association.  

Other associations that have their state groups set up as separate entities will not have the same level of access to their sub-clubs' membership data. Instead, they will have a limited view on their dashboard. An example of this view can be seen below. 

Allowing you to see how many subgroups you have and how many current members are across all those subgroups, all at a glance. 

The easy-to-use, up-to-date display on their dashboard makes it easy for this peak body to track all their regional clubs and their members. Beyond that, they can also retrieve more detailed information from each club to understand the types of membership each regional club offers and the number of current, pending, and expired members for each club.

You can see an example of this in practice below. 

 

 

You can easily see your sub-clubs, which membership levels they offer, how many members are in each level, and a lot more from just a quick glance. This makes keeping track of how their regional clubs are going a lot easier. 

This would allow you to easily and quickly see how your regional clubs were tracking membership. If one of your regional clubs has way too many pending members, is experiencing surprisingly high member turnover, or is growing extremely quickly, you will be able to see it. Then, you’ll be able to contact them to offer them assistance or find out what they are doing that’s working so well. It’s basically your own little report card on all of your sub-groups. 

Finally, here's one more funny kid drawing. The context for this one is that their mum works in a hardware store, where they sell shovels, among other things. So, the kid drew their mother selling shovels to customers, as you can clearly see. 

 

 

Oh, the joys of parenthood. 

What Else You Need To Know About Managing Your Peak Association and Regional Subgroups

Well, that is how you can use Member Jungle to help manage both your peak body and all your sub-groups. If you still have any questions, please reach out to Ask Us. 

If you want to know what else Member Jungle can do for your association, have a look at How Member Jungle’s CPD System Works For Your Association.

To hear a first hand experience of an association that uses Member Jungle have a look at Customer Story - Australian Hand Therapist Association.