“I don’t know how we managed without it”: The value of Sport:80 to the Welsh Surfing Federation
Sport:80 has been support the WSA membership base for several years, providing their innovative, simple-to-use sports management system allowing NGBs and other bodies to manage multiple areas of their organisation.
One NGB to feel the benefit of the platform has been the Welsh Surfing Federation (WSF) who, as a member of the WSA, has been able to benefit through a preferential agreement.
Prior to taking advantage of Sport:80’s services, WSF managed its membership and event entries through a combination of email, postal, bank transfers, cheques… and plenty of phone calls!
“The challenge at that time,” explained Mark Vaughn, WSF Director, “was managing members and event entry details that were submitted in so many different ways and having to manually process and reconcile everything.
“At times, the process would be desperately inefficient, especially when it came to understanding our income split between events and membership, as so many people would just transfer the money as a whole sum online, leaving us having to review each person on a case-by-case basis.”
Once Sport:80 was established for WSF, however, these processes and the ability to communicate with members became far simpler.
“Be it a single club, the club’s members, or our whole database, the contact details were available through the portal within a few clicks.
“For our events, this was a game changer, as all email addresses were complete and input correctly, allowing us to instantly communicate when needed.
“In a sport like surfing,” continued Mark, “where events are often postponed due to poor surfing conditions, having the ability to instantly communicate with the event competitors was a major step forward.”
And some features of the Sport:80 platform have been particularly innovative for WSF’s operations.
“For us, the reporting tools have been fantastic. They help enormously when it comes to providing supporting documentation to aid in the submission of our end of year accounts for audit.
“The event entry system is another huge benefit, as the age limit parameters prevent entry errors and the reporting allowed us to instantly report entries.
“With the payment platform providing a seamless link, this makes the whole management process so much easier,” Mark confirmed.
In all, the onboarding of the Sport:80 platform has made a significant impact on the Welsh Surfing Federation, enabling “notable efficiency gains” to be made.
“The system self manages all that we used to do manually, and our members are doing most of the admin, so to speak!”
Now getting fully accustomed to the workings of the platform, Mark insists that his organisation is “really starting to enjoy the efficiencies of the system which also being realised by our clubs and members.”
“I don’t how we manage without it,” concluded Mark.
Get in touch to find out how your organisation can take advantage of the preferential agreements available to WSA members.
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