The newest update of the Pool Dues app now allows for tennis reservations directly in the app. Members can reserve a court directly from their phone, making it even easier to get court time for your club’s tennis players. Let’s look at the new functionality.

Directly from the home screen of the Pool Dues app, members can toggle on for “Reserve a Court“.

The app takes you directly to the reservation grid.

You can use the scroll wheel to choose your day. Then click on the court you’d like to reserve and scroll down for the specific time slot you want.

Once you’ve selected your date, your court, and your time slot, you will be prompted to choose your reservation type.

Various reservation types are already included in the backend of your Pool Dues site, but your Tennis Director can add any reservation types appropriate for your club. Common types include K-Swiss, T2, USTA, coaching, team practice, and general play (i.e., non-league play). If your area has an area-only league (like ALTA in Atlanta), your Tennis Director can add that type of reservation on the Director Dashboard.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once you’ve chosen your date, court, time slot, and type of reservation, you’ll be prompted to choose the length of time for your reservation.

Standard lengths of 30, 60, 90, and 120 minutes are included in the backend of your Pool Dues reservation grid. Like everything else on a Pool Dues site, court reservation time is fully customizable. Your Tennis Director can set any length of time they want.

After you’ve made all your selections, the app will ask you to confirm your choices and then bring you back to the reservation grid.

In our example here,  the Tennis Director has added a note giving the gate access code. This note only appears for members who have reserved a court, so the information stays privileged for members only.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s that easy! So get a Pool Dues website and get your members using the tennis reservation grid now that the weather is warmer.

If you haven’t read our blog about privacy issues and the Member Directory, head over to this blog article to check it out. It’s important that your members are aware of the privacy issues related to having their information in an online member directory, whether it’s a neighborhood pool or any other organization.

With that said, you do want your members to add their info to the Pool Due Member Directory. It’s a great way to build community. It lets members find other people who share their interests or people who can provide services like babysitting or pet sitting. So how do you actually get people to join the Member Directory?

• Make sure people know how much the Member Directory can do for them! They can find a babysitter, a pet sitter, someone to play poker with, someone to play volleyball with, fellow members who are interested in action movies and video games, fellow members in the Women’s Club or Men’s Club, and even members who lost a pet that you just found. The Member Directory is searchable by dozens of categories, so the more people who realize how great it is, the more people you’ll have sign up.
• Send out an email blast at the beginning of the season (your Treasurer and Membership Director have everyone’s email addresses on their password-protected Admin Dashboard) asking people to join the Member Directory.
• Remind people at your social events (like your 4^th of July party, your BBQ party, your Tween Night party) that they can connect with their fellow members in the Directory.

The Logistics

On the main menu, click on Member Directory under Social.

 

Click on the link to enter your info.

 

Enter as much or as little info as you want. The more info you enter, the more connections you can make with your neighbors!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With a Pool Dues website, you get a user-friendly built-in Member Directory. We’ve made it super easy for your members to look up other members by lots of different categories like babysitters, pet sitters, women’s interests, men’s interests, sports, and a whole host of other filters. Want to find a local teen to help you move furniture? Use the Pool Dues Member Directory to filter by members who have indicated their willingness to move furniture!

We think this is a great way for your members to connect with one another, but we also acknowledge the privacy issues related to an online member directory. Because the directory is searchable by children that can babysit, pet sit, tutor, do yard work, and do odd jobs, many members will opt to include their children’s information in the directory. And while it’s a great way to build community, it also puts our personal data out there.

Imagine getting an email that was sent to 300 people listing your name, email address, phone number, street address, and the names and ages of your children. I know I’d be in a bit of a panic seeing that information sent to so many people! But that’s basically what we’re doing when we include our information in a public-space directory. Which is exactly why a Pool Dues Member Directory is not a public-space directory. We understand parents’ concern about their children’s online privacy, which is why our Member Directory is strictly consent-based.

It’s important for both your board members and your general members to understand that their information is not automatically added to the Member Directory. Yes, people have to provide information to join the club, but this information is not automatically put in the Member Directory. There is an important difference between the MEMBER DIRECTORY and the MEMBER DATABASE. The Member Directory is where people can look each other up and search for someone who might want to play basketball with them. The Member Database is where board members like the Treasurer and the Membership Director have access to all member information like addresses and emails. Signing up for membership online puts your information in the Member Database, not the Member Directory.

Members must create their own Directory Profile in order to be included in the Member Directory. Just because your club is comprised of neighbors doesn’t mean it has the right to publish private member information. Does your local Starbucks list the email address of every coffee buyer?

In fact, new EU privacy laws are making their way to the US. The EU’s new privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), requires companies to seek permission to collect and use personal data. They have to explicitly ask for your permission to collect your personal data including what you post on social media, your address, your email address, and your GPS location among other things.  US firms are already required to comply with the GDPR for their European markets, which means that US companies are naturally going to start complying with the regulations across the board.

With that in mind, your swim and tennis club should act like it’s an international company that is required to follow GDPR. In fact, your club is a business, even if it’s a non-profit business. You should comply with privacy regulations regardless of your non-profit status. What this means is that you are not allowed to simply import member data into a shareable directory. Members need to give their permission to have their data included in your directory – the most efficient way to do this is to have members create their own profile.

This summer, keep the bees away from your pool and keep everyone happy!

It seems like as the pool season goes on, the bee problem gets worse and worse. Maybe it’s the weather. Maybe it’s the increasingly overflowing trash cans. Maybe it’s the increase in food brought to the pool. Actually, the bee problem is worse at the end of the pool season!

Here are some facts about bees that you may or may not find interesting:

• They hibernate in the winter
• They’re most active between August and October (hence the reason it feels like there are more bees at the end of the pool season)
• They become more aggressive as the season goes on because they’re protecting the hive and preparing the queen for winter
• They’re very active around garbage cans and food
• They are inactive at night
• Peak activity time is the afternoon

What can you do to keep these guys away from your pool? Try the following suggestions:

• Put screens on areas where bees may congregate like holes in the wall, holes in wooden fences or signs, and rain spouts.
• Remove the entire beehive. (Becuase bees are so critical to our environment, it’s a good idea to relocate a hive rather than destroy it. Just relocate it sufficiently far enough away from the pool. It’s best to hire a professional beekeeper who can safely remove and relocate the nest.)
• Clean out your garbage cans daily – don’t let the trash pile up!
• Don’t let sweet sticky beverages sit out too long. Promptly clean any spills of sweet beverages.
• Think about setting up a bee waterer away from the pool that will attract the bees away from the pool. You could also plant bee-friendly and brightly colored plants far away from the pool to attract them away from the pool.
• Try putting dryer sheets strategically around the pool (put them in a basket or some other decorative cup).
• Try mixing peppermint oil and water (1 pint of water to 30 drops of oil) and spray it around the pool deck.
• Try placing planters of lemongrass, citronella, spearmint, and mint around the pool, especially near the garbage cans.

 

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First impressions are everything to prospective members!

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We beat that drum a lot here, but it’s true. If your website looks old, the assumption is that the club is run by old people. That could scare off young families. At the very least, it might make them consider joining a nearby club that appears hipper and younger.

One of the things we’ll do during the initial setup of your club is review your current online media presence. We’ll scour not only your own site but also Facebook groups, Instagram tagged photos, Yelp reviews, and Google Maps. We’ll look everywhere for actual photos of your club that are worth using. You’d be surprised what’s out there. A parent from a competing swim team who is also a hobbyist photographer might have snapped some great pics at a meet.

Our in-house designers are especially good at retouching photos of your club. Take a look at these examples…

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Quite an improvement, right? As the saying goes, “fake it until you make it”. Even if your club doesn’t actually look this good in real life, it can.  String lights can always be bought. Courts can always be pressure washed. But that, of course, takes revenue. So work toward getting new members in the door, and then you can make those improvements.

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Do you still have some piece of paper from 15 years ago hanging on your cork board with the names and phone numbers of your neighbors? I know I do. Literally, I have a piece of paper hanging in my laundry room with the names, addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses of everyone living on my street 15 years ago. Half of these people don’t live here anymore. The other half have new family members and different email addresses. But no one has updated this list in the past 15 years.

With a Pool Dues website, you can move your pool into the 21st century. Of course, you can search the database by member name, but our Member Directory can do so much more than that! In fact, our Member Directory is searchable by a ton of different dimensions.

• Last name
• First name
• Children of club members that…
  • Babysit
  • Babysit and drive themselves
  • Do Mother’s Helper (babysitting with mom nearby)
• Children of club members that…
  • Do yard work
  • Do odd jobs (move furniture, paint, etc.)
• Member children who can…
  • Tutor
  • Pet sit
  • Lifeguard
• Men’s interests
  • Men’s club
  • Poker night
  • Happy hour
  • Watching football
  • Action movies
• Women’s interests
  • Women’s club
  • Wine night
  • Progressive parties
  • Mommy and Me
  • Ladies movie night
• Sports/Activities interests
  • Lap swim
  • Golf
  • Tennis
  • Volleyball
  • Game night
  • Jogging
  • Fishing
  • Spring or fall clubhouse or lawn events
• Teen activities
  • Volleyball
  • Tennis
  • Video games
  • Movies
  • Teen nights at the pool
  • Tabletop games
  • Disc golf
• Found pet
  • Cat
  • Dog
  • Bunny
  • Bird

Build community spirit among your members. People who want to get together for a volleyball game now have a way to search all members who want to play volleyball. Someone who needs a Mommy’s Helper now has an easy way to find one in the neighborhood. Need a pet sitter? Just search the Pool Dues Member Directory for neighbors who are willing to pet sit.

 

Redesign and Update Your Club’s Website for the New Year

In the span of just two short weeks, your old and outdated club website could be completely remade for 2019! Seriously, imagine going from this:

to this:

 

When you come onboard with Pool Dues, the typical time frame from staging your club’s website to going live is two weeks. Some great things this particular club did with their new website:

• highlighted their new waterslides on the landing page
• spotlighted their 4th of July fireworks display
• alerted members to the club’s poolside wifi
• notified members about the upcoming iPad check-in kiosk
• highlighted their own members having a fantastic time at the pool!

It’s time to ditch your tired old pool website. Especially if you need a dedicated webmaster to figure out how to make changes! Maintaining an exciting website for your club should be easy – anyone with the ability to drag and drop, click a mouse, and type on a keyboard can maintain a website with Pool Dues. Seriously. It’s that easy.