Fwd: [membership] RE: Access to membership database

Forwarded conversation
Subject: [membership] Access to membership database
------------------------

From: Darryl Walter <DWalter@wildlife.org>
Date: Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 10:48 AM
To: Membership Section <membership@lists.asaenet.org>


Our Council wants complete online access to our membership database,
there are some that are also requesting complete online access for
members as well.  Currently, our Council members and chapters/sections
e-mail or call for these requests and they receive the list they want
within 24 hours.  Our members have access to our online member directory
and can get as many as 100 records per query.

Staff, of course, has big reservations about granting this type of
access to the database because of security and privacy concerns.

We are meeting tomorrow to discuss this internally, and would appreciate
feedback on how other associations deal with this mater.

Thanks,
Darryl


Darryl Walter
Director of Membership Marketing and Conferences
The Wildlife Society
5410 Grosvenor Lane
Bethesda, MD 20814-2144
Phone: (301) 897-9770 ext 314
Fax: (301) 530-2471
E-mail: dwalter@wildlife.org
www.wildlife.org



-----
List rules and list instructions are available at http://www.asaecenter.org/listservers.  You can also unsubscribe, update your email address, change your settings, or search the Archives, by choosing "Go to Listservers" and entering the appropriate list.

You are currently subscribed to membership as: dddea@fusionproductions.com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-membership-7678337X@lists.asaenet.org

----------
From: Chris Stelzig <chris@zignatures.com>
Date: Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 10:54 AM
To: Membership Section <membership@lists.asaenet.org>


I would run screaming from that idea. Protecting member privacy is
sacrosanct. I would hope that your council is staffed with upright,
reliable, and trustworthy folks, but you just cannot release the full
contents of your database that way. I would further advise that even in
instances where you do give lists to trusted members (Branch presidents,
etc), that you never include ID numbers, Usernames, passwords, and other
sensitive data that would be readily available if they accessed the full
database.

cjs


Chris Stelzig
President
Zignatures, Inc.
chris@zignatures.com

Zignatures excels at providing data and business solutions for small to
mid-size businesses and membership associations.

You are currently subscribed to membership as: chris@zignatures.com

----------
From: Stan Barrett <SBarrett@ifdaonline.org>
Date: Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 11:00 AM
To: Membership Section <membership@lists.asaenet.org>


I guess the main question is why?  What do they hope to gain that they
aren't currently getting from your 24 hour turn-around time?  Is there
some other material/information (meeting attendance, home address, etc.)
that they want to track or learn about?

I also think at first look that it is not a good idea since once they
have access you don't really know what is going to be done with the
material.  There are also privacy issues to address as well.



Stanton J. Barrett
Director, Membership
IFDA
1410 Spring Hill Road, Suite 210
McLean, VA  22102
703-532-9400 (phone)
703-538-4673 (fax)
sbarrett@ifdaonline.org

You are currently subscribed to membership as: sbarrett@ifdaonline.org

----------
From: Jill K. Taxter <jill@privatedutyhomecare.org>
Date: Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 11:03 AM
To: Membership Section <membership@lists.asaenet.org>


I agree with Chris and would also add that you also need to consider
"why" is it that they want or feel they need to have this access????
And do they also want the ability to make change to the database.

We allow our members, Board and Committee members to have a downloaded
copy of our database records at any time, but only staff have access to
the database

Best of luck, and I would be interested in hearing your outcome.

Jill K. Taxter
Membership Services Manager
National Private Duty Association
941 East 86th Street, Suite 270
Indianapolis, IN  46240
phone: 317-663-3637
fax: 317-663-3640

You are currently subscribed to membership as: chris@zignatures.com
jill@privatedutyhomecare.org

----------
From: Darryl Walter <DWalter@wildlife.org>
Date: Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 11:16 AM
To: Membership Section <membership@lists.asaenet.org>


They will not have access to make changes to the database (at least they
are not asking for that yet).

Can your Board and Committee members access the database directly or is
the data pulled from your office?

Thanks,
Darryl

You are currently subscribed to membership as: dwalter@wildlife.org

----------
From: Jill K. Taxter <jill@privatedutyhomecare.org>
Date: Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 11:20 AM
To: Membership Section <membership@lists.asaenet.org>


Darryl,

It has to be provided to them from our office.

There is just SO much information in our database that our Board and
Committee members would not be familiar with, staff notes, start dates,
end dates etc that it would create so much confusion and open a can of
worms so large I dare not think about it.

----------
From: Sharon Ruckdeschel <sruckdeschel@childlife.org>
Date: Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 11:39 AM
To: Membership Section <membership@lists.asaenet.org>


We allow members to have online access to their individual record.  They may
view their membership and certification information, as well as, make
changes to the contact information.  (Of course there is a whole host of
info they do not have access to.)

They can (and do) pay their membership dues, certification fees, and
purchase books online as well.

We also have an online member directory where active members may search for
other active members.  A member may search by last name, city, or state, and
soon by company name too.  The results returned are member's name and WORK
info only - work name, title, address, phone, and email.

Members may choose to opt-out of being included in the online member
directory.

We rent out our member mailing list, but not emails.  Members may choose to
opt-out of being included in these "outside" mailings.

Sharon


*******************************
Sharon L. Ruckdeschel
Membership Database & Web Site
Child Life Council
11820 Parklawn Drive, #240
Rockville, MD 20852

(301) 881-7090, x11 phone
(301) 881-7092  fax

Visit us at www.childlife.org!

You are currently subscribed to membership as: sruckdeschel@childlife.org

----------
From: Suzan Yungner <Suzan.Yungner@uli.org>
Date: Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 11:47 AM
To: Membership Section <membership@lists.asaenet.org>


I have read all the replies so far. We used to supply upon request, but we found that was not always the best option for us. We have allowed our District Council leadership and/or staff/contractors to access online reports that link directly to our database for several years. Our District Councils are like chapters in many ways. We have both membership and meeting reports available to them, so they can pull info when they need it - late at night, on a weekend, at a local event, etc. We add new reports as necessary. To access the reports, the member or staff/contractor logs into a secure area of our website. Whenever a list is pulled the person must first click on the ULI privacy/list usage policy. We look into any member complaint who believes a list has been misused.

We are about to change membership databases and in the new one the District Council staff and/or contractors will all have direct access to our database to make address changes and to register people (with no money attached) to their local events only. The local staff/contractors will also maintain all their local committee lists. By making these changes, we will save ULI several thousand dollars every month. We will have to of course spend more time in training people and running different data check reports, but feel it will be well worth the efforts.

Current members can access their own information online. We actually encourage them to go online and update their information. We have a secure area for them the login to called myuli. There they can change their contact information, renew their membership, update their bio, upload information about projects they are working on, update their demographic info, etc. They can view other members info in the online directory, but cannot download the information.


Suzan Yungner
VP, District Councils
ULI-the Urban Land Institute
Washington, DC

You are currently subscribed to membership as: syungner@uli.org
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-membership-11232428L@lists.asaenet.org

----------
From: Steggles, Andy <asteggles@rims.org>
Date: Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 8:03 AM
To: Membership Section <membership@lists.asaenet.org>


Darryl,

We had a similar situation at RIMS where chapter officers wanted access to the database.  The system we ended up integrating allows each officer to manage their own contacts so they can send blast emails, download mailing lists etc. of only those people affiliated with their component.

I'm not sure what constitutes a "council" in your instance? Is a council based on interest, industry or geographical location or is it simply one council for the entire org? If a council is responsible for a group, perhaps have them designate a "secretary" who has permission to download only the people associated with that council/group?

I can tell you that since we integrated our chapter databases, we've managed to get many more prospects and ultimately more members as a result of chapters adding their prospects into our central repository.  Our member and non-member records are also more efficiently maintained (with field-level tracking and roll-back capability) since our chapters actually know the people whose info has changed and they can then apply the update.  We're in the process of building them some email bounce reports so when they send blast emails they can help us clean up the bounces (we're using a product called boogie tools for this).

Obviously giving all members access to download the entire DB is not a good idea.  Perhaps you can compromise by suggesting an upgraded member directory with better search criteria (many orgs are moving to a kind of private social network which allows much more effective networking).

Feel free to email me directly if you'd like to take a look at how our system works.

Cheers,

Andy

_____________________________________________
Andy Steggles
Chief Information Officer
Risk and Insurance Management Society, Inc. (RIMS)
Tel: 212.655.6007
E-mail: asteggles@rims.org


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Access to membership database
From: "Darryl Walter" <DWalter@wildlife.org>
Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2009 10:48:22 -0400
X-Message-Number: 1
access to the database because of security and privacy concerns. =20
Bethesda, MD 20814-2144=20