Crystal Palace Angling Association

Established in 1924 we are a small club of only 300 members. And up until now all 300 religiously paid in each year manually, members had to come to our clubhouse and pay their membership fees, which involved me (Hugh Boyle) carrying significant amounts of cash in public places, which I was never comfortable with and very high risk.

The recording of payments whether it be cash or cheques all had to be recorded manually, member renewals involved stamping each members membership book and each member had to sometimes queue for up to an hour in the rain in order to complete the renewal process.

In addition to the security concern, the system we used was basically an excel spreadsheet and wholly reliant on myself to record and keep safe all records of personal data, payments received etc. A very time consuming and laborious task.

Recruitment of new members was also a task which cost me a lot of time and would take weeks to complete. The biggest risk we faced was if anything happened to me, the club would have no access to membership data or banking.

I decided things had to change and our club needed to move into the 21^st Century. I made an announcement that the method of payment would have to change, we needed to go online and move to a simpler process.

To be honest members were constantly asking me when this would happen, complaining our system was antiquated, I had to agree.

I made the call and arranged a demo with Owen Chapman (Clubmate Founder) who kindly came to my home to show me what the database could do, I was very impressed.

The only thing now was to get my committee approval to give me the go ahead!

To support me, I arranged a special meeting. And Owen kindly came and showed the other committee members what Clubmate could do for us, I needn’t have worried they were all as impressed as I was.

Owen and his team very quickly got to work configuring the system for our club. They are a highly professional team who know and understand our clubs needs and had the solutions.

So, if you’re considering changing the way you do things give Clubmate a call, arrange a demonstration, you will not regret it, and if you are the sole administrator, it will lessen your workload immensely, and maybe you too could sleep at night and go fishing!

Hugh Boyle, Crystal Palace Angling Association

If you’d like to learn more about Clubmate and how it could benefit your fishing club, please get in touch (we don’t bite!):

hello@clubmate.co.uk

0333 987 4677