Case Study : Colorado Mountain Club

Client
Established in 1912, the Colorado Mountain Club (CMC) is non-profit organization devoted to connecting those who love the Colorado Rockies or who study and/or seek recreation in them. With over 8,000 members, the primary purposes of the club are to gather and disseminate information regarding the Colorado Mountains in the areas of art, science, literature and recreation; to furnish facilities for the enjoyment and study of the mountains by the Club members and the public; and to advocate for the preservation of the alpine regions. The organization is run by 18 staff members and over 500 volunteer trip leaders/instructors, who lead over 2,000 trips annually that represent over 17,000 total participants for Club day trips and almost 500 participants for Club multi-day trips.

Challenge
The CMC approached XploreNet with the following issues relative to their website:

1. Existing website
   Their existing website was 5-6 years old, had been developed by and was developed/managed by over a dozens of different volunteers. These volunteers did not collaborate or work together and thus, there were no standard protocols. As a result over the course of several years the website had quickly gotten out of management's control. Several different conflicting technologies were being used and there was no consistency with respect to the navigation or the overall look & feel of the website.
2. Database management
   The main database that they were using to manage the entire organization was an 8-year old Access database. It was being used to manage everything from their members, subscriptions, the CMC store, CMC trips, CMC classes and many accounting functions to name just a few. The primary issue with this outdated database was the lack of integration with their website and poor multi-user support. Any time a member wanted to do anything from renewing a subscription to signing up for a Club trip or class it had to be done manually via the phone or U.S. mail.
3. Manual program management
   Many of their programs, such as the 2,000+ Club trips and hundreds of classes that are scheduled and conducted each year had been organized, communicated and managed on a manual basis.

   For instance, all of the Club trips are led by one of over 500 qualified volunteers (trip leaders/instructors) and are scheduled by approximately 50 schedulers who are responsible for coordinating the semi-annual schedule with each trip leader. Twice a year the once the schedule was finalized, it was communicated to the membership via U.S. mail. This left no real ability to make scheduling changes at a later date and if changes were made, it was very difficult and/or expensive to communicate the changes in a timely manner to all members. Since the Club trips are one of the main features of the CMC this inefficient process affected almost all members so it was critical to develop a better solution as it related to planning, scheduling, communicating, registering, managing and reporting Club trips. Thus, their program management process was naturally a very complex and inflexible process, with many moving parts and was susceptible to many errors.

These issues were the basis of the goal of the project: Design a new web site that could not only help the CMC run their operation more efficiently, but that would literally allow them to run the organization from the website while at the same time, improve the member experience.

Solution
Following a Discovery process where XploreNet quickly became versed in CMC's business model and its operations, we sat down with CMC to discuss the project scope. Due to the large scale of this project and the multiple issues and challenges, XploreNet and the CMC agreed to tackle the project via a phased-approach. This approach enabled us to get the most important issues corrected as quickly as possible while also allowing the CMC staff a more gradual transition since some of the changes had such significant impacts on the organization's operations.

The first phase entailed a website redesign and architecture, the initial installation of a custom content management system, as well as initial membership management functionality. The second phase primarily entailed enhancements to many of the features and functionality that were implemented in phase 1, while the third addressed improving the intensive, manual process for planning, scheduling and coordinating Club trips and therefore included the development of online scheduling and trip/class registration functionality.

Phase 1

• Design & Architecture
  XploreNet developed a new and updated look & feel for the CMC, which included new architecture that resulted in a website that was easier to navigate and one that could easily accommodate future expansion and additional functionality/features without looking like they were after-thoughts. In other words, based on the multi-phased approach and plan, we knew what would be coming later and planned for it accordingly.
  
• Content Management
  In order to streamline operational efficiencies, staff and volunteers (trip leaders/instructors/schedulers) needed some level of access to the website in order to maintain content respective to their area(s). However, the CMC didn't want to just give full-access to everyone-or they would quickly be in a worse predicament than when they started the project. They needed to make sure that both the organization of the site and control could be maintained by CMC Management.
  To accomplish this XploreNet created a back-office administrative area of the website that had the ability to give individuals different permission, or access levels. This allowed the CMC staff to give specific access to a staff member or volunteer allowing them to only update areas of the website that were pertinent to them. When the volunteer updates the website, the updates are done so through a non-technical, easy-to-use interface that does not allow them to alter any of the webpage formatting or design integrity of the website. Now changes can be made to the website by any permitted staff members or volunteers and when they are made, they are updated and posted to the website immediately (real-time).
  
• Membership Management
  Since the website was most visible to the members and since members were the CMC's primary customer, improving membership management and simplifying processes for members that were formerly very manual was a component that was definitely tackled in the first phase. This included implementing the following functionality:
  • Ability for current members to renew their annual membership online.
  • Ability for new members to join online.
  • Ability for members to purchase items through an online CMC store.

The ultimate goal of the CMC staff was for members to have the ability to register for Club trips and classes online through the website. Subsequently, that very functionality would be a luxury for the volunteer trip leaders too as inherently, the same tool would enable them to post their Club trips and classes to the schedule and make real-time scheduling changes. Given the complexity of this functional element, it was prioritized to Phase 3.

Phase 2
Phase II included enhancements or expansions to many of the features that were implemented in Phase 1, such as the following:

• Membership management - Subscription management
• Content management - More extensive content management, advanced features and more specific permission levels for volunteers and management.
• Extensive accounting integration and reporting capabilities - including integration with their fundraising software, Blackbaud® Raiser's Edge.

Phase 3
Online Scheduler and Club Trip/Class Registration
Building this functionality could be most simply described as an enhancement to the Content Management System and the Membership Management tools. However, behind the scenes, from a programming and coding standpoint, it was very complex given all of the processes and databases that needed to be integrated. Through an extensive series of meetings, XploreNet met with all of those involved-volunteer trip leaders/instructors/schedulers, members, staff-in order to get a solid understanding of how the existing manual process worked. We analyzed the process in detail and worked with the CMC in determining what items were and were not needed as well as suggested many ways for possible improvements. Once a final process was agreed upon, it was automated into the website.

CMC staff and volunteers can now schedule all Club trips and classes, as well as make any real-time scheduling changes-e.g. if a trip gets canceled due to lack of registered attendees, or something of that nature. In turn, the members can now register for Club trips online and mange their upcoming trips as well as viewing their complete history.

Significance
Almost immediately after the new website was launched the CMC saw an increase in new member (online) registrations. In fact, in the first month that the website went live CMC saw a 100% increase in new memberships from the same period the previous year. The feedback from members has been very positive and many are using it as designed-to do everything from membership renewals to registering for Club trips and classes. This has all resulted in the saving of time and money for the CMC, as well as an increase in member satisfaction.

Additionally, with the online scheduling and Club trip/class registration capabilities, required time and effort for both the staff and volunteers has been dramatically reduced. The membership no longer has to rely on printed catalogs every 6 months which were not always accurate. Now if there is any change to a trip, it is made online and the new information is immediately available to all members. Again, this has resulted in happier members and a savings to the club in printing costs as many members no longer need to even receive a printed schedule/catalog.

We are currently in the third year of the project and due to the success of the portal XploreNet continues to work with the CMC and move forward with the implementation of new features and upgrades.