Case study: ANZASW | Membes

Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Social Workers (ANZASW) decided to switch to Membes in June 2021 and were completed by 31 August 2021. The team uses a number of the Membes AMS features to support the association including membership management, events, finance, website, CPD tracking and more.

What were the original reasons you were looking for an Association Management System (AMS)?

ANZASW was using old technology to manage its database which was holding them back from growing the organisation. Stepping from a physical server to the cloud was a huge transition for the organisation, one that required a great deal of care to ensure it was as smooth as possible.

Some of the reasons for considering a quality AMS included:

• Automation of daily tasks such as renewals
• Increase efficiency by reducing administration workload and freeing up staff to provide greater value to members
• A system that was easy to use
• Enabling members to engage with them at a higher level
• Integrated system with other software
• Ease of tracking key things such as CPD

How did you transition to the new Membes system?

It was a significant change for the organisation and team, but the current technology was unreliable with the server crashing regularly – it was something that just needed to be done.

The Membes system includes multiple-elements and features compared to the individual software pieces previously used by ANZASW, so it was important to complete the training and review the processes to align with the system. The team made good use of the ample resources provided by Membes, which includes training videos that provide a good overview of different tasks and demonstrations.

Overall, the system is easy to use and the staff have adapted well. It is now so quick to find out a full picture of each member and other information when it is needed.

When training new staff, ANZASW run a training session and show them the library of videos they can access and they do tend to pick it up pretty quickly for simple things. 

During the onboarding process the Membes team were very helpful providing great tips and answering questions. 

What are some of the change, growth or operational objectives that Membes has now helped you achieve?

One of the biggest changes is the significant advances in our efficiency as we can now service our members faster with increased automation. The increased automation has allowed us to shuffle the roles of our staff and massively increase our productivity and reduce administration time.

With increased time to focus on members we are able to deliver more value by connecting with them to learn exactly what they need from us. We have been hosting more webinars to help our members reach their required CPD due to the automating of events management and tracking.

We are also able to better track our member’s CPD by logging when they attend webinars and events so this makes it easier for them to report to the regulator.

The refresh of our website and design was a huge undertaking for us, but using the Membes system has given us an easy-to-use content management system and a visual display for our members that we can be proud of.

It has been a highly positive experience with Membes to ensure the system is able to meet our needs.

“We’ve found Membes to be fantastic and so easy to use. It’s been quickly adopted by our team and has saved us approximately 1.5-2 FTE staff through automation. It’s a great system.”

Braden Clark, Kaiwhakahaere Chief Executive, ANZASW

Membes features utilised by ANZASW:

• Membership Management
• Event Management
• Communications
• Integrated CMS (website)
• Finance
• Reporting
• CPD Tracking & Auditing