Software providers love to talk about the bells and whistles. As important as the features are – technology has to meet your functional needs – there are other crucial factors to take into account when selecting a software provider. If you are considering recreation software, be sure to ask providers about these eight factors: Continue reading
Parks and recreation professionals often have to wear many hats (sorry, but sometimes there’s no way around a cliche). Depending on the size of your agency, you could be the director, marketing pro, accountant, and front-desk fill-in. And when it comes to marketing, you need a way to pull together nice graphics for your recreation guides, emails, social media channels, mass mailings, and more.
Here are five free online tools that will help you, the multiple-hat-wearing P&R pro, step up your graphic design game: Continue reading
Most recreation professionals work with some sort of software. And if they don’t, they could be looking for a software provider or working with an IT team on some solutions. But with words like the cloud, SaaS, and hybrid, software talk can turn into a different language. To be prepared for your next software talk, here are ten important terms to know:
1. Hosted, on-demand, cloud computing, software as a service (SaaS): These all mean the same thing. Organizations host their software and data externally with a provider and can access it over the internet from anywhere at any time. The software provider is responsible for new releases, security, maintenance and up time. Continue reading
Building a healthier community is the ultimate goal for a parks and recreation agency. But in the past few years, budget and staff cuts have made it harder to focus on that goal given the time spent on day-to-day rec management. However, technology can help parks and recreation agencies manage processes better, faster, and easier: Continue reading
The National Intramural Recreational Sports Association (NIRSA) is hosting it’s annual conference in Tampa, Florida from March 27 – 30, 2012. For our campus rec people out there: will we be seeing you there? More than 2,000 campus recreation professionals and students will gather to discuss new innovations and more at the conference titled, “From Ideas to Innovation: Navigating the Future of Collegiate Recreation.”
Photo by Eric Gillespie; ucsc.edu.
Campus recreation departments strive to make the campus community healthier by opening great facilities and offering active programs, classes, and events. But sometimes, the day-to-day management takes time away from focusing on that mission. Here are four examples of how campus recreation software has helped management, staff, and students spend more time on health and less on paperwork: Continue reading
Prior to 2010, the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) offered its 16,000 students access to more than 200 physical activities, recreations, and sports with a pen, piece of paper, a small system for registrations, and some Excel sheets.
Challenge: Time-consuming, inefficient, spread-out systems Continue reading
In many discussions with recreation agencies over the last couple of years, one of the hottest topics is the trend towards going paperless. With tightened budgets, it seems logical that this topic would come up more often, as organizations search for new ways to reduce expenditures. The obvious benefits are reduced printing and mailing costs, and a lower environmental impact. However, many people have questions about the impact on registration numbers and wonder if it will work in their community. There’s one simple answer to these questions – it depends.
Success among communities that have made the leap has been mixed. Don’t jump the gun in a saving frenzy and cut all your paper-based marketing without asking yourself these questions: Continue reading
Do you know what your members really think about your programs? While spending so much time with day-to-day program operation, many recreation-minded organizations don’t stop to think about developing a sound process for continuous program improvement. With a growing online population, it’s now easier than ever to integrate tools such as polls and surveys directly into your website. The key is to make use of all your communication channels, both online and offline, to encourage two-way communication wherever possible.
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