Association management software is typically focused on three areas: membership management, event registration, and billing. Most AMS systems see these three areas as the core operational issues for 80% of all organizations that manage some form of membership. For the other 20% however, there are other specific application needs, including professional training. Lawyers, teachers, nurses, and accountants are required in many states to take training during the year to maintain their status to practice in the state.
As an association manager, this requirement translates into a need for on-line class registration that can assign credit hours to classes and keeps a profile of each registrants attended classes and credit totals. Additionally, unique state reporting requirements and publishing member’s program progress complicates the process. Often the entire set of certification data is kept offline, limiting access to members until it reaches the state and is updated there.
The intersection of activities between event registration and CLE or PLU tracking for certification credits is a critical need in the associations that offer the tracking for certification for their members as a benefit of membership. State Bar associations, State District attorney Associations, State Regional Education Service Areas (RESA) and State Associations for Accountancy are some examples of organizations that offer this benefit. Many of them handle these tasks separately, using online registration to get the attendees to sign up for classes and a separate system to monitor CLE’s or PLU’s. The process can be cumbersome as data needs to be moved between systems. There is often no facility to offer online access to members to see where they are, or for internal purposes to be able to report from the membership who has the proper course credits and who does not because the AMS software does not reach the CLE reporting system.
Capitol Impact provides an integrated environment that provides online registration, setting up classes and recording class registrants and attendance. In this manner, clients can use the Capitol Impact online meeting registration software, and add the option to link it to a class. The entire set of data is then linked into the membership management database. In one location, your organization has the membership data and contact information, the classes that an individual registered for and the classes that the individual completed. There are tools within the system to update a person from registered to completed for a class. Each person in the membership database has a unique id that can be exported for use in creating badges with bar codes for scanning someone’s attendance as they enter the class. The scanner file can then be uploaded to indicate the people who attended the class.
Capitol Impact currently provides this integrated environment to associations for lawyer association, and teacher association in various states. If you would like to learn more please join our upcoming webinar.