If MemberHub was a human body, then hubs would be the cells. Hubs are the building blocks organizations use to build online community, enhance communication and empower their groups to get organized. We give away free hubs for 25 members or less. We feel like that’s pretty nice. And people have certainly taken advantage of this. Of course, we’d love to see many of these people upgrade to a subscription plan where you gain access to the full-featured MemberHub.

A MemberHub organization really takes group communications to the next level. It’s a group management tool and it also can serve as an organization’s membership database too. There’s too many features to list here and this is not the point of this post. The point of this post is that we think it should be easier for organizations to check out all of MemberHub’s features. It’s obvious that many of our users are missing the big picture and don’t have the power to show the rest of their organization everything MemberHub can do. Because they’re just in a free hub.

For various reasons we’ve required a credit card up front to start a free 30 day trial which gives you access to an organization management console. Well, that’s no longer the case!

We’ve re-worked our trial process to make it much easier to do just that….trial our software. The whole kit-n-kaboodle. No strings attached and no credit card required. So if you’re a member driven organization and you have multiple ministries, committees, teams, and groups, then start your free trial now! Maybe you’re a church looking for a private online community tool or an online family directory. Maybe you’re a nonprofit looking to enhance the way your committees communicate and plan. Are you running a small sports league and need to give the parents the tools they need to get organized?

If you’re new to MemberHub, then click the Start Free Trial button. If you’re already a user in MemberHub and want to try out an Organization for your existing hubs then either click on the New Org button on Your Dashboard or visit the Hub Settings for your hub and click on the Upgrade Now>> link.

If you have any questions please visit our new and improved support forum and knowledge base!

[Image from M R Fletcher]

• Clarity 
• Color
• Cut
• Caret
• Cost

• Communication
• Collaboration
• Coordination
• Centralization

I mentioned before, that we’re adding new membership management features to MemberHub. With the latest release of MemberHub, administrators can use “tags” to categorize the people and hubs in their organization. Tags are a relatively new concept that are becoming an increasingly popular way to categorize peices of information. Flickr.com does a great job of explaining tags. Tags are like keywords or labels that you add to member records and hubs that make them easier to find later. Let’s look at an example.

Let’s say that you’re a church and you’re using MemberHub to keep track of your membership (in addition to enhancing communications among your small groups) and you want to contact all the folks that have experience working with your prison ministry. Well let’s back up, just a minute. Let’s first say that you know 15 people in your church that have this experience. As an organization administrator you would go to the People tab, select those 15 people records and select “Edit Tags” from the People Actions button. Then you’d create a new tag called “Prison Ministry” or something of the sort.

Now, fast forward and you need to only contact those 15 persons. Once people have been tagged with “Prison Ministry”, you’ll see link, in the “tag cloud” while you’re on the People tab. Now all you have to do is click on that tag (it will be a hyperlink). The people listing will be filtered to only records that have been tagged with “Prison Ministry”. Simply select all and choose “Send Message” from the People Actions button.

That tag will remain highlighted (the actual link) to indicate that the people listing has been filtered to only include those categorized with the selected tag. To bring back all people into the listing, simply click the tag again; the people listing will refill and the highlighting will be removed from the selected tag.

This is a very powerful and flexible way to keep track of custom information about your members. Anytime you learn something about your members you can simply create a tag and then easily and quickly find those people in your listing; then send them an e-mail, text message or even put them in a new or existing hub! And don’t forget that you can also tag hubs. Perhaps one of your small groups is involved in the Prison Ministry and they have their own hub. You can simply tag the hub with the information and choose to send the hub a message.

Tagging is only available in MemberHub for Organizations. Start your 30-day free trial now!

As MemberHub continues to grow and more organizations and small groups begin to see the benefits of Collaborative Membership Management (CMM), one thing is clear: member-driven organizations are using a lot of different software tools. And their members are feeling the pain.

Many organizations are trying new tools and their members are getting frustrated as they ask them to adopt a new online software solution to their ever-growing demand to use technology for various purposes. This all comes on top of the logins that members are forced to use for Facebook, LinkedIN, portal websites and the slew of other online applications that require a username and password.

Churches, schools, assoications and non-profits alike see the need to manage their membership but also create community for their members. Some tools do a great job at membership management and are packed full of features that frankly, many organizations will never use. Others are social networking applications that help the members feel connected, but they lack membership features like dues, donations and online registrations. Is there a balance? Is there a silver bullet?

We certainly believe that MemberHub and CMM will be the wave of the future for member-driven organizations. Our passion is creating usable software. And we want to bring it to the thousands of organizations across the world (we’ll start with the US ;o) that need easy-to-use, easy-to-get started and AFFORDABLE software.

We have suggestions coming in left and right. Keep them coming and grow  your organization with us!

Quick Overview: Get a 50% discount on MemberHub for Organizations through 2009 by signing up for the Free 30-day Trial and get custom software built to your organization’s needs!

MemberHub for Organizations is the membership management side of Collaborative Membership Management (CMM). It’s your organization’s membership database. It’s where you keep track of your members, manage custom information about them and eventually it’s where you’ll be able to set up dues billing, donations, registrations and even fundraising. Having access to this information from anywhere you have an internet connection and being able to create online hubs for each sub-group in your organization are compelling reasons enough to sign up for your free 30-day trial right now. But here are are few more benefits to consider:

• Manage and track membership data in a secure, online database
• Track member involvement, interests and status
• Keep members updated with automatic event reminders 
• Communicate instantly with your members using streamlined, easy-to-use email and text messaging tools
• Get your members communicating and encourage creativity
• Manage program and event registrations online in addition to collecting dues, pledges and donations (coming soon!)

MemberHub is Collaborative Membership Management or CMM. What is CMM? Well, it’s a lot of things. It’s a new space. It’s a new type of internet application. It’s related to the online membership management market and it’s similar to already crowded group communication tools market. CMM is both. More specifically it combines the best of both worlds into one solution. It’s MemberHub.com.

Collaborative Membership Management combines online membership management with group communication tools to help connect member-driven organizations AND their members. Notice that I didn’t say WITH their members. You see there are many membership database applications available to help organizations keep track of their members, but they don’t directly benefit the members. CMM and specifically MemberHub empowers member-driven organizations to manage their members but it also empowers them to connect all the sub-groups in the organization with the use of online member “hubs”.

I am starting a series of posts that will continue to define CMM and how MemberHub addresses specific needs and concerns for all types of organizations. We will be launching our promotional website very soon and it will do a much better job of explaining not only what CMM is, but also what MemberHub is, what the benefits are and how we are creating a the premier online tool for enhanced organizational communication and membership management.

With the latest release of MemberHub.com users can take advantage of membership management features and get a feel of the MemberHub to come. In the last post we introduced the concept of organizations in MemberHub and provided an explanation of how we got to where we are in the application. Now you might be wondering what is all the “organizations in MemberHub” about, what is the Early Adopters Program? and what do these new features look like? Well  here are some screen shots of what’s available in the latest release for those who are ready to get started with MemberHub for organizations.

When users create an organizations (not just a hub) in MemberHub, they open up the door to membership management. Currently, users have to sign up for the Early Adopters Program to create an organization. Let’s take a look at what you’ll see when you do create your organization.

The first noticeable difference for existing users is on their dashboard. The “Your Hubs” section on the left has been changed to read “Organizations & Hubs”. 

Organizations in MemberHub can contain as many hubs as they need. For example a religious organization can have a hub for each ministry or an association can have a hub for all the members and another for just the staff. Hubs which you are affiliated with that are owned by an organization are listed under that organization heading. Hubs that you are affiliated with that are not owned by organizations (free hubs) are underneath the “Other Hubs” heading. 

If you are the account owner or administrator for an organization in MemberHub you will see a “Manage” link beside that organization. The “Manage” link takes you into the organization view which opens up an entirely new layout.

This is where membership management functionality for the organization is exposed. Currently there are four tabs in the organization layout. A Home tab, a People tab, a Hubs tab and tab for various Settings. The Home tab serves as the organization dashboard. Ultimately this page will contain tables and charts to track membership, shortcuts to various tasks and general important information. Recent activity across all the organization’s hubs will give admins a glimpse into what’s happening in their organization.

The People tab contains a record of each and every member in every hub owned by the organization. Organizations admins can access the profile of every member and with the next release will be able to perform actions on those members. For example, you might select 10 members and then put them into an existing or new hub. 

The Hubs tab contains a records of each and every hub that is owned by the organization. You can access the hubs from the tab and create new hubs for you organization. 

The Settings tab is where administrative functions for the organizations can be performed. For example adding new organization admins, change your MemberHub subscription plan and update any general information (like mailing address) about the organization. 

Over the next few months, these and many more features will be added to MemberHub. Administrators will be able to use “tags” to associate keywords with people and hubs in their organization. The People tab will also have powerful filter and search capabilities as well as the ability to manually add new people who haven’t signed up with MemberHub.

As new features become available we will update this blog, so come back.

Up to this point, the MemberHub team has been focused on creating tools to enhance communication and collaboration among groups. Religious organizations, schools, clubs, associations, groups and organizations of all types constantly hear from their members that communication can be improved. We aimed to address this dilemma with online hubs. Hubs are flexible and powerful and offer users an elegant solution to online discussions, announcements, calendar event sharing and file sharing. Hubs offer two-way communications; connecting organizations and members. Still, from MemberHub’s conception, we’ve planned for MemberHub to be a membership management tool as well. It’s the combination of group communications with membership management that makes MemberHub not only unique, but the total solution for organizations of various size and types. 

So now that organizations can use MemberHub to connect its members we’re building membership management functionality on top of the existing platform. Member-based organizations need to track members, reflect an accurate listing of members, print reports about members, collect membership dues and much more. And they want to be able to do all these things wherever there is a connection to the internet. Organizations that need this functionality will find the new organization features in MemberHub a very welcome addition. The same elegant and straight-forward interface that you’re used to in MemberHub is being expanded to give organizations an invigorating approach to membership management. 

The next post will provide screen shots from the new features and will give you a better idea of where the team is heading. To get started with organizations you can signup to learn more about the Early Adopters Program. Participants will be contacted by a MemberHub customer care representative and give them access to the new features. Best of all, if you decide to join the program before October 31, 2008 you will receive a 50% discount off the monthly subscription price for up to 14 months.