Hunter District Hunting Club - Customer Story

 

Hunter District Hunting Club - Who Are They? 

The Hunter District Hunting Club (HDH) was established in 1996 in response to the changes in gun ownership licensing requirements in Australia. In Australia, individuals must complete several steps to obtain a gun licence, including having a genuine reason for owning a gun and completing a firearm safety course. As a result, many individuals join shooting and hunting clubs as a part of their licence requirements. These clubs administer government-monitored firearm safety courses and track individuals' engagement in target shooting and hunting to ensure all steps are being met and all reasons for wanting a gun are genuine. 

The Hunter District Hunting Club is responsible for training gun owners, running safety courses, tracking members' training and range time, and complying with the NSW Firearms Registry regulations. They work closely with sports shooters, hunters, vertebrate pest animal control experts and the Department of Primary Industries to ensure all safety and monitoring requirements are met.  

 

The History Of The Hunter District Hunting Club And Member Jungle

The Hunter District Hunting Club was one of Member Jungle's first-ever customers. In fact, many of the now standard Member Jungle features were initially developed specifically for the Hunter District Hunting Club. 

To find out how the Hunter District Hunting Club first got involved with Member Jungle, how they use the system and what their experiences with it are, I headed out to the Cessnock Rifle Range to interview John Butcher, the club's President and David Avery, the club's Secretary.  
 

What Problems Were The Hunter District Hunting Club Trying To Solve?

Due to the registry and legal requirements that the Hunter District Hunting Club has to comply with to remain a licenced and official hunting club, they have a mammoth amount of paperwork and record-keeping that they need to do. This, coupled with the manual membership renewal of over 2,400 members, was an extremely expensive and time-consuming process. 

"We found ourselves sending out thousands upon thousands of letters at a time at a dollar a stamp, and then the letters had to come back and be processed. So, the amount of work involved was absolutely enormous," said David Avery. 

They were spending well over $4,000 a year on membership renewals alone. That's before you consider the cost of buying envelopes, paper and printer ink, not to mention all the hours the club's volunteers were putting in to organise those renewals manually. 

"That was the spur; if there are 50 people, it's not a big deal. You can ring them all up and remind them all; when there's 3000, you can't do that," said David. 

So, the Hunter District Hunting Club went about trying to find a digital system that could help automate the running of their club. 

Why Did The Hunter District Hunting Club Choose Member Jungle?

When the Hunter District Hunting Club started looking for a system that could help automate the running of their club, they looked around to see what systems other clubs and associations in the region were using. John Butcher, their president, found Member Jungle through one of our Telligence clients whom we had previously built a full event ticketing system for, Rover Coaches. 

"I was looking at the database Rover Coaches has for concerts. The Rolling Stones concert was the one that sold me, I'm thinking 25,000 people buying tickets for a concert, all set up on this database, that's got to work," John explained. 

So, they started talking to the Member Jungle team about how the system would work for them. Even though Member Jungle, as a brand and stand-alone product, was still in its infancy at this time, they saw that it had the potential to do what they needed it to do. So they decided to give it a try. 

David Avery explains, "In the beginning, it wasn't a perfect fit, but it did all the base things that we needed it to do. It provided an opportunity for us to take the money, to do the mailouts, and do the whole lot online. Which saved us an immense amount of work and an immense amount of money." 

When asked if the system has improved and become a better fit over the years they have used it, John responded, "Most certainly. Where to start? There's a lot more information at our fingertips; we can contact all the members or individually, it doesn't matter, notifications for events, we can sell tickets to events, and limit the number of tickets to be sold. It's terrific; it's terrific for information at our fingertips."  

What Changed After The Hunter District Hunting Club Joined Member Jungle?

The Hunter District Hunting Club has been using the Member Jungle system for over six years now, and in that time, they have continued to improve and grow their club and have seen the Member Jungle system grow and improve with them. 

The Hunter District Hunting Club has been able to streamline its operations with the help of the Member Jungle system. The system has enabled them to automate time-consuming tasks such as member communication, event planning, and membership renewals. This has enabled the club to devote more time to their essential reporting and training responsibilities, ensuring they always comply with regulations and licenses.

John and David had the following to say on how the system has been going for them and how it had saved them time and money. 

"We have 2,700 members who join automatically, renew automatically every year straight away; we don't even know it's happened," John said. 

"In a way, a dollar value is the wrong measure; the right measure is the ease of operations and how hard it is for us to do the things that we have to do. We are so far in front," added David. 

Since implementing Member Jungle, the Hunter District Hunting Club has seen its member numbers increase and has had more time to expand what their club offers to its members. They are currently working on putting together a navigation course that their members can take to help prevent them from getting lost when out in the bush. 

Final Thoughts

 

John and David had this to say when asked what they would say to another club that was thinking about using Member Jungle. 

"Why not try it? If it solves the problems, like everything else, it depends on what your problems are. If you've got a large number of members, yes, yeah, most definitely."