Touchdown Tales

With 20,000 kids in the greater Raleigh-Durham area playing Pop Warner, few regions in the United States are as serious about football as Central North Carolina. For the last 30 years, the North Raleigh Bulldogs have been a shining example of success both on and off the field. The Bulldogs claimed championships in 2010 and they also revolutionized the way they ran their league. As one of the largest organizations in the Mid-South region, the North Raleigh Bulldogs have become trailblazers when it comes to transitioning from a traditional registration process to a dynamic, point and click online solution.

In the huddle with DeAnna Sohn, Vice President – North Raleigh Bulldogs

Before North Raleigh began using Active’s online system, how were you registering players each year?

DS: Before we started using LeagueOne online registration, we were using pen and paper registrations. We collected most of our data and contact info in spreadsheets. We did everything the hard way. We looked at three different providers for online registration and chose Active because of the integration with LeagueOne roster management software.

North Raleigh was able to get over 85% of registrations online in the first year. How did you get your parents and players to adopt online registration so successfully?

DS: We advertised the transition on our website a lot. We found that emailing our parents was quite effective. The response has been fantastic.

Was tech support adequate as you moved from paper based registration to Active’s online registration? How about continued support?

DS: It was very smooth. My Active customer support person was always immediately responsive. It really couldn’t have been better. The continued support has been great - I’d rate Active’s support a 10 out of 10.

How much time did you save by not having to hand-process checks?

DS: Since 70% of our players paid online by credit card and not with checks, we saved 3-4 minutes of processing on each check, so that adds up to 10 to 11 hours right there.

How many volunteer hours are you saving each year by using online registration?

DS: We’ve cut our time in half. I also had over 100 new volunteers last year because we asked for volunteers during online registration. That is the coolest thing ever. We’d had trouble getting volunteers in the past and having this volunteer sign-up option available during registration really made a difference. We set it up to ask once and if you said no, it would ask one more time. I got an excellent volunteer database out of that. We decreased our volunteer hours during registration by half. That’s one of the best things about LeagueOne online registration.

How has Active helped with fundraising?

DS: We included an option to give a donation during online registration and we raised $1,000 in contributions. It was all from individual $20 donations. It was really cool.

How much overall time savings have you had with Active’s online registration?

DS: From April to August, we worked 30 hours a week and that got cut by 50%. It saved our president 40 hours in rosterplanning time. It’s been a huge help.

Active Network is the official technology partner of Pop Warner Little Scholars

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