Uniting Skiing, Volunteering and Membership Management
Whitetail Ski Education Foundation
The Whitetail Ski Education Foundation (WTSEF) is a non-profit foundation. We run our own program, with parents at the helm, and as the hub. The kids race under the governing rules of the United States Ski and Snowboard Association which is the sanctioning body of the US Ski Team itself. Nearly all of America's Olympic athletes and US Ski Team members came up through programs just like this. Various committees, chaired by board members, are responsible for everything from gatekeeping at a ski race to fundraising off-season. The Whitetail website is coded in Drupal with CiviCRM providing the backend membership management systems. The organization has a membership of 100+ athletes and coaches. CiviCRM is used to track members, their interests, and all their attributes related to the members such as: their US Ski and Snowboard membership, age, gender, any special medical conditions, interests, family relationships (more than one child in the family participating), etc. CiviCRM's online membership database is also available for for board members, coaches and the organization's administration.
Background
CiviCRM was chosen due to its membership management features and also that it was open source and available for a non-profit organization that does not have a lot of funding to provide membership management online.
Challenges
Training new volunteers. Once trained, however, the use of CiviCRM has been great.
Solution
CiviCRM's was chosen in large part due to its ability to integrate with Drupal. Other CRMs were not evaluated.
Functionality
CiviCRM's integration with Drupal and its general membership functionality were both key to its successful implementation.
The non-profit administrator at Whitetail along with the design team and programming staff at Lattice Group constituted the project team.
