StarChapter

Kommentare: Moving to StarChapter has benefited us in many ways. Our association member management was based on spreadsheets so this is so much better. Our prior website was significantly outdated, so again, moving to StarChapter was a great improvement. We did lose functionality in that our prior financial system was Method (had limited member management) and did interface to Quickbooks. However, StarChapter's ability for on-line dues management resulted in a significant dollar collection in our first couple months of being live which was a very pleasant result. We are very glad to have made the transition to StarChapter.

Vorteile: Software has a great website component - catalog of website pages format and views, flexible build, sleek modern look and great background site security. The website provides a "wow" factor.
The Association management portion of the software has many tools for membership management, event management, dues management and email communications functions. All are very helpful.
There are a number of on-line resources serving as a knowledge base and their support is wonderful. Most questions are answered within 24 hours.
Members also really like the ability to pay dues or make donations or purchases on-line.

Nachteile: As a heritage culture society we had a few membership/group use case issues that the software couldn't really address and there wasn't much guidance on possible workarounds. We needed a few more project hours on our implementation phase (we were turned over to support before we went live). There needs to be a user manual document to further define screen fields as there is great flexibility in the system. While the videos are helpful, they don't provide enough detail for taking the system to beyond a basic level. The other key limitation is the lack of interfacing to financial systems like QuickBooks. While we really like the ability for members to pay dues or buy from store via credit-card, there is double entry for bookkeeping due to lack of interface.

Kommentare: Before StarChapter, we had a website that we built and maintained ourselves. It was outdated and hard to administer. We used an email campaign software, an invoicing software, paid hosting fees, used a security software, and tracked attendees at our events in a spreadsheet — it was a bulky way of operating. Our organization looks so professional now! We were able to consolidate all our other systems into one which is such a time saver! I'm not sure we're saving any money, but the time, ease of use and professional image is worth it. I highly recommend that anyone in an association consider StarChapter. I couldn't be happier with a management software.

Vorteile: StarChapter has streamlined our volunteer organization's processes and saved each of us time — which is important as volunteers! It's eliminated the use of an email campaign system and invoicing system. It has streamlined our communication with the newsletter feature, and contacting members and non-members with the email templates makes our roles simpler. I love that each of our board members are learning how to maintain their own pages through StarChapter's Knowledgebase. Everything you need to know is in there and it's presented in a style that's easy to read, follow and understand. I've had to request support for a couple items that were more complex than what I could handle, and their support team has responded within a day or two to resolve the challenge.

Nachteile: I've been using the software for about eight months. I think I still have so much to learn — it's a very robust software — yet they do make it easy to use. I just wish I could dedicate more time to really diving in to understand the connections between the modules and how to maximize the software.

Kommentare: The ACFE has 188 chapters world wide. I'm the Vice President of the San Diego Chapter and a member of our National Leadership Council of 12. I'm asked routinely throughout the US about StarChapter and sing your praises for the outstanding job you do. In hindsight, I'm hoping StarChapter does get the opportunity to begin showing signs of growth and maturity in their website platform and processes. I'm saying this from a truly humble place myself as I've just taken our own local chapter from 26 members (7 of which were board members) to now over 100 by biting the bullet and making the changes necessary to move us forward.

Vorteile: Although there's much room for improvement in certain functionalities, StarChapter provides an outstanding product & service and their tech support staff has always been extremely professional and well versed in all things website maintenance.

Nachteile: 1) Somehow your organization needs to find the budget for true novice to intermediate tech support to handle incoming calls, assisting with the rudimentary or emergency items. Currently, Customer Service Agents solely manning the phones to either set up Tech Support Tickets or redirect customers to go online followed by a 24 – 48 hour wait time for an initial response. By the time the client receives their email answer or online chat meeting, it could be 3-6 business days later in total. Remember, your client’s bottom line is priority #1. If there’s a problem with either of the following (to name a few), you’ve just caused your client unnecessary setback and frustration:
• A problem with their payment gateway connection.
• A problem with their membership or event registration processing correctly
• A problem with email blasts going out correctly 2) Update your website portal to include proper “how to” instructions. I'm sure you feel you’ve already done so but 80-90% of the time, this is not the case for those clients that are self-doers. 3) For 3 years I’ve been working with StarChapter and must have suggested at least a dozen good suggestions for your website engineers to create/fix and still have not seen the changes produced. I’ve even offered to pay out of pocket for these changes and yet still no further action is available.

Kommentare: StarChapter is fantastic for the price. Previously, we did not have the ability to provide our members with a secure space on our website for accessing members only information nor registering for our events. We're now able to do that and so much more which really added to the membership benefits we are able to provide to our members. The simple, straightforward design to our website allows our members and non-members to easily access information and register for our events at a fantastic price for a non-profit organization.

Vorteile: The ease of use that allows us to have a members only section on our website; the quick and straightforward set up and designs for each page on our site; the ability to adapt pages to include accessibility options for folks using screen readers or are hearing impaired.

Nachteile: The communication tool - we've been using Constant Contact for several years and we've found the flexibility both in e-list management and design that CC provides will keep us using that service over StarChapters.

Kommentare: It’s 100 times better than the Wordpress platform we used previously, especially with regard to the membership piece. The four pieces of advice I would give are that:

1) it will make your life a lot easier if you have a central person who will be mostly responsible for knowing how to use the platform and doing most of the work on it.
2) If you are switching from an existing membership platform to StarChapter, anticipate that there will be bumps. Not horrible, but it will take a decent amount of time once it launches to get your membership acclimated to the new system and make sure the information is correct. Not everything will transfer over exactly the way you thought it would. Emails will need to be verified before anyone will be able to receive what you are sending. There is some hand holding of the membership during this stage.
3) Take time to get your members and non-members verified so that people are actually receiving your emails.
4) If you can, have a payment portal as part of your StarChapter system.

Vorteile: There is a learning curve to get familiar with the program, but once you do, it is pretty straightforward and relatively user friendly. It is nice to be able to use one platform for the website, events, and email communications.

Nachteile: Creating the events and communications can be frustrating from a formatting perspective if you aren’t used to it – but that is the same in most platforms. And also like most platforms, there are some quirks that you end up just working around to get it to do what you want.

It’s hard to keep the bookkeeping 100% accurate, so I wouldn’t utilize StarChapter’s reporting as your only source of financials.