How many small, independent groups do you have in your church or non-profit?

• How many small group Bible studies?
• How many adult ministries?
• How many children ministries?
• How many groups of leaders?
• How many groups with common interests?
• How many teams of volunteers?
• How many teams of {fill in the blank}?

Are these groups using readily available online tools to communicate, coordinate and collaborate? Are they all using something different?  Some of them likely use Yahoo! Groups or Facebook. Many just use e-mail and Microsoft Word.

Wouldn’t it be nice if each group used the same tool? Should you provide your groups with the solution so that you can connect with each of them, manage them and track them? Each of your ministries would have their own calendar with automtaic event reminders. Each of your committee’s would have a central place to communicate. Each of your small groups would get their own mailing list to create discussions, share ideas, plan and communicate.

Is it time that you connect your organization and members and begin to help your members be organized, centralized and connected…so that they can leave time for real community?

Lot’s of questions! What are you thoughts?

• Add note about Hub Overview below hub navigation
• Revamp Help Documentation
• Tweak content on you-just-created-a-hub-screen
• Allow an organization admin to remove people from the organization
• Add text message tip on announcements index
• Update invitations to include a “New to MemberHub” paragraph
• Add a helpful tip on the dashboard to encourage users to create new/free hubs
• Put the Hub Owner selection dropdown on the Create a New Hub screen
• When a user creates a post or comment on the discussion board by sending and e-mail they should receive a copy of the message
• Turn experimental features off for normal users, allow specific orgs to use them
• Allow an organization admin to add people to a hub from the people screen
• Updated copyright
• Update the Welcome to MemberHub message to include a link to the New Users Guide, and is dismissable
• Update the organization overview welcome message to be dismissable

• Hub Permissions have been added under the hub settings.
• A MemberHub Organization can now print out a formatted list of its members.
• You can now search for people by first and last name in a MemberHub Organization.
• To track activities across all hubs in your MemberHub Organizations, a recent activity feed has been added to a new Home tab in Organizations.
• Organizations can now track custom fields on their members.
• Organizations can now have multiple administrators.
• Hubs are sorted alphabetically on the Hubs tab in a MemberHub Organization.
• Member avatars are now gender specific.

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.

Below is the release notes for MemberHub’s September 24, 2008 release. There are also 2 additional posts detailing recurring events and member profiles.

• Recurring events can be created and edited (event reminders not available yet)
• Member profiles are visible to hub administrators, and optionally to hub members
• Custom data can be collected about members on a per-hub basis, and visibility is controlled by hub admins
• An email is sent to hub administrators when a member leaves a hub, including all profile data
• An email is sent to hub administrators on a daily basis indicating the names of persons who have joined a hub
• Maiden name has been added to member profiles
• Display name has been added to member profiles
• iCalendar feeds now include all events (before they would only include the ones of the month they were requested on)
• Improved handling of emails sent in reply to discussion posts/comments

The next release of MemberHub’s beta version will be packed with many new features and fixes. I will be breaking the details of the release up into multiple blog posts. Here is an idea of what to expect real soon:

• User profiles now visible from Members listing
• Many new options for Hub Administration
• Recurring events on hub calendars!

The MemberHub team continues to enhance current functionality and add new features. Perfecting the existing features and implementing new ones every couple of weeks allows us to roll out these changes often. Which in turn allows the team to listen to your feedback, suggestions, and coments about MemberHub and make them available sooner than later! So keep the feedback coming and let us know how you or your organization is using MemberHub.

Adding members from related hubs is now much more useful. We have a group of investors that is currently using MemberHub to enhance communications, share files and feel more connected. They are using sub-hubs for each investment opporutnity so that the men that are interested in one investment opportunity can connect in that hub without including the whole group. Now that the Add Members section has been redesigned the group manager can easily create hubs undeneath the root hub and quickly put members into their own unique space. Very powerful.

MemberHub.com Beta version is now available to the public.  We recieved some great feedback and suggestions from our 3 month private beta. A big thank you to the MemberHub community that has participated in the private beta.  Keep the feedback coming!

If you’re reading this and have not signed up, then what are you waiting for? Create a hub for your team, sports league, church, club, committee, camp, class, outing or event. MemberHub has many great features to enhance collaboration amongst members of an organization or group.

Up until now, our development efforts have been focused on communication tools for organizations and their members. The MemberHub team is now shifting focus to organizations and membership management tools. For example, we’re working on features to create online registrations, collect fees and place join requirements on registrations. Features like this and the ability to instantly communicate with their members via e-mail and text messaging (while also connecting the members with each other) will save organizations time and money and enrich their members experience with their organization.

New stuff to check out:

• The Bulletin Board has been enhanced and renamed to Discussions 
• Hubs now have an e-mail address. Sending an e-mail to this address creates a new Discussion (Hub Admins, see your Hub Settings)
• Replies to e-mails from Discussions creates a comment on that discussion
• Family Members section has been completely redesigned and improved
• Users can now be Family Admins and manage a complete profile for each family member
• When adding new family members the option is now there to send them an e-mail to ensure that users do not create separate families in the system
• Users can grant login privileges to other family members
• The Members listing in hubs has been redesigned and improved
• You can now send an e-mail directly to another member or a Hub Admin from the members listing page
• The Members listing now show a “proxy” icon for all children so that you know that all communications will be with a parent.  
• You can now set your time zone on the “My Profile” page.
• Other enhancements based on user feedback

Please use the links in the footer of all MemberHub.com pages after logging in to give us feedback, report bugs, or request assistance of any kind. 

Please share with us the name and contact information of organizations that you believe can benefit from using MemberHub. You can use the Feedback form in MemberHub or send an e-mail to Matt at matt.harrell@memberhub.com or Loren at loren.harrell@memberhub.com.

Thank you so much for being a part of the MemberHub Beta!