The Wandle Piscators

Customer Story

KEY BENEFITS

Streamlined the joining process, able to track online and offline payments from one place, modernised the club, made member communications more efficient.

The Wandle Piscators - Our Story

The Wandle Piscators are committed to helping the historic River Wandle come back to life after centuries of pollution and abuse. Membership to fish on our waters is open to anyone with an interest in fishing and restoring the River Wandle to full health and biodiversity.

Members benefit from opportunities to meet and fish with lots of other like-minded anglers, both in South London and further afield, along with members-only fishing trips, fly-tying classes, river walks and so much more.

We needed to modernise the club.

Running the club before Clubmate was a bit of a nightmare. We’d given the club a reboot and we needed to modernise the management side of things so that we could grow the club. We started off using an Excel spreadsheet for membership records, but we had to create membership cards Blue-Peter style: by hand. Communication was an issue too, as we had no way of staying in touch with our members. If we needed to share details for an event or club updates, we pretty much relied on word of mouth to get the message around.

We needed an automated system to manage memberships and issue cards to members, communication tools and online payments; but we still wanted to have the option of using cash or cheques because not everyone is used to the internet. Being inclusive is very important to us.

Why we chose Clubmate.

To be honest, we didn’t look at any other solutions because Clubmate has the backing of the Angling Trust which was good enough for us. We also really liked the fact that their software is designed specifically for angling clubs and is run by fellow anglers, so we were confident Clubmate would know what we needed. 

The only thing that I was slightly worried about was our lack of computer skills, but if we wanted to modernise the club, it’s a learning curve we’d need to embark on.

Clubmate has been tremendously useful.

Being able to email members and groups of members has been tremendously useful. We run coaching sessions every Saturday for our youth group, so it’s helpful to send them tailored communications without sending them to our entire membership base.

We’re able to track all payment methods in the system, which was a big must-have for us. Every time someone joins, Clubmate deals with the ID card printing and processing and even ships the cards directly to the member’s door. Letting them handle that responsibility has made such a difference for us.

The app is useful to everyone; anglers can use it to join and buy memberships, bailiffs can use it to verify memberships on the bank and the committee have the option to view the admin side and process memberships. The fact that anglers can update their personal information in-app without having to contact us has saved us so much time.

Clubmate provide good customer service too. Onboarding was straightforward and there’s a bank of how-to videos in their knowledge base, as well as a help chat where we can get advice straight from their team.

Would we recommend Clubmate?

I’d recommend Clubmate purely because it makes membership management and member communication so easy. If you’re thinking about signing up, go for it. You won’t be sorry!

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

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CLUB NAME

The Wandle Piscators

CLUB WATERS

River Wandle, plus access to waters in Morden Hall Park and Rother Fishery Association.

CONTACT

info@wandlepiscators.net

FACEBOOK

Click Here

KEY CHALLENGES

Needed to modernise the club

Used a spreadsheet to store member records

Made ID cards by hand

Struggled to communicate effectively with members

Interested in becoming a member of The Wandle Piscators?

Join today!