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"EditMe has become a cost effective and indispensable tool for our organization. Support response has always been prompt and the customization services have been nothing less than stellar." |
With Headquarters in Springfield, NJ, the U.S. Soo Bahk Do Moo Duk Kwan Federation® is a national not-for profit organization serving 7,000 members nationwide and international affiliates in 23 countries. The organization pursues the improvement of human relations worldwide by increasing the public awareness of the proprietary Soo Bahk Do® Moo Duk Kwan® martial art system.
Driven by more than 50 volunteers and 150 independently owned and operated member training studios, the Federation needed to improve communication among the various committees and studio owners, and to provide timely, cost-effective delivery of information to officials and members. "We needed a communication and collaboration tool that could present public information, provide member-only access to information and provide restricted access to pages in use by the Board and various committees," explains Executive Administrator Phil Duncan.
Usability was also a key factor: The organization members represent a broad range of technical skills, and differing computer and Internet access levels. "We needed a versatile, simple and easy to use solution that all could enjoy interacting with and participating in," says Duncan.
Significant Cost Savings
EditMe proved a significant value compared with competitors' per-user pricing models. "We had used several web based intranet products before EditMe, including HotOffice.com, Intranets.com and Webex, but their per user pricing model limited our ability to deploy the solution beyond organizational officials - we still could not actively involve all members in the collaborative communication opportunites that these solutions offered. EditMe's unlimited users per single low-priced monthly subscription meant our non-profit could finally afford to grant access to all of our 7,000 members."
By providing the whole membership community with online information access, the Federation was able to save thousands in postal costs, as well. "In the first year of use, EditMe enabled us to almost completely abandon postal delivery of documents to organization officials by replacing paper documents with EditMe pages. EditMe reduced postage and supplies for organizational officials in the first year of implementation by about $5,000," explains Duncan.
Communication Problems Solved
The Federation's wiki started as an intranet for volunteers and an online repository for the many committees formed among them. As confidence in EditMe's flexible security features grew, the wiki was opened up to all members of the Federation. "As pertinent information that needed to be shared among our organization's governing entities was posted on secure EditMe pages," explains Duncan, "it eliminated virtually all historical failures to communicate."
The Federation's National Convention had previously proved a complex communication problem, as it involved the rapid formation of many volunteer committees made up of the 700-1200 members, parents and guests attending. "This event is produced and run by volunteers spread all over the country who need to actively communicate and collaborate with each other to coordinate event activities. Member participation and excitement about the new communication and collaboration opportunities that EditMe provided was exceptional. In fact, after learning how easy it was to use, several Regions and individual studios activated their own EditMe sites. EditMe solved a number of long standing challenges with publishing timely information about a dynamic and constantly changing event to all members, and it solved many volunteer coordination and event production issues because it connected all involved parties for collaboration."
With the ability to open up wiki access to the entire Federation membership, non-adminsitrative members were finally given a voice among the many volunteers and officials. "Members no longer have to concern themselves with finding the right place or person in the organization to submit their issue to. They just post it on any page of the wiki. Their voice will be heard and the appropriate official will respond to them. EditMe has made it possible for every member's voice to be heard within our organization," explains Duncan.
User Profile and Registration Customizations
As the wiki is intended for and limited to Federation members, the problem of moderating and verifying new registratrants to the site involved a time-consuming email exchange. The Federation called upon EditMe's Custom Development Services to solve this problem by customizing the registration process and user management tools. "EditMe's cutomization services allowed us to create a customized user registration form to gather enough information from new users during registration so that we can now confirm that they are members of our organization when moderating registration requests. With these new features, we anticipate increasing user participation to 50% this year alone." EditMe also added custom user tracking to help identify the most and least active members of the wiki, such that the most active users can be quickly selected and emailed, thanking them for their participation and asking them for their ongoing suggestions to improve the site and/or organization. The less active users can also be quickly selected and emailed to encourage more participation from them.
As of this writing, the Soo Bahk Do Federation Wiki holds the record for the greatest number of pages on an individual EditMe site... over 3,800.
