Branch membership secretaries and some chairmen came to Dartmouth House on Friday 6 May to hear the membership administration team update them on how the new database project will affect membership administration.

After a period of difficulties with the old system, the new provider, Decisions Ltd and its product, Contact Manager (CM), are now ready to go live with a fully re-configured membership database. This process has involved several months of consultation, resulting in the clean-up of the data, consolidation of requirements of all departments of the ESU and the branches, and future-proofing the system.

Following the surveys sent to members and alumni in the September and December issues of dialogue, Jo’s team has ironed out issues, including duplications, erroneous addresses or names, and memberships that have ceased for whatever reason.

If you have any query that you feel we have not yet resolved, please contact the team. With your continued help, we can maintain an up to date set of data. Decisions Ltd is sure that the state of the data transferred onto the CM system is now reasonable.

On 4 May, CM was launched for membership administration followed by the addition of alumni, schools and businesses. This means that the internal administration of membership, alumni and corporate and partner membership is now running through the new system. Operational departments of the ESU will spend the next few months designing and implementing the use of the system for all charitable activities, including the schools and universities competitions and education scholarships. By the end of the summer, members and branch administrators will be able to access their records through the ESU website. Prospective scholars will be able to apply for ESU programmes online, individuals and organisations will be able to apply online for membership, update their membership records, make donations, book and pay for events.

Narissa explained how each branch will be able to access its membership lists as well as the processes of membership administration. Regional Officers and branch post-holders will also be able to see information for their region, and update news and events, keeping the ESU at Dartmouth House in the loop about their work and making sure communication is seamless and automatic.

Jo explained that all membership administration queries including membership benefit enquiries should, in the first instance, be made to Kate Bond. In the event that Kate is not available, members should contact Jo.

Narissa’s knowledge is technical, and her expertise is invaluable, especially in these first few months of integration. Any technical queries should be made to Narissa. Meriel Talbot is the contact for all other branch matters.

The day was considered by all to be an outstanding success and being able to have lunch in a sunny courtyard was indeed a bonus.