Polaris does not dictate how clubs use it. It offers numerous possibilities for organizing the club's work.
The most important thing is to define in writing how the club uses or wishes to use Polaris. This way, everyone knows what they have to do and how, and it makes the annual handover of functions to a successor much easier. The CICO is best placed to draw up such a concept of use and have it validated by the Board. If necessary, the DICO will assist in this task.
The usage concept must take into account the configuration of your club. Clubs with 20 to 30 members are organized differently from clubs with more than 80 members. The age distribution of members and the club's specific traditions also play an important role.
Here are just a few of the ways in which Polaris can be used to maximum effect.
Basic prerequisites
The most important prerequisite is the willingness to collaborate digitally. If the club intends to manage work with scattered tools such as email, Excel, Word, PDF and WhatsApp, it doesn't need Polaris.
The second essential condition is that the majority of members have activated their login. Most of the information cannot be made public, for data protection reasons, as it contains personal information. Access is therefore only possible with a login. Polaris can only be used effectively if more than 95% of members have an email address and use it.
Polaris should be implemented in stages. The club itself decides on the extent of these steps and the speed of their introduction. Using all Polaris features at once is too much of a burden for every club and every user.
It must be clear at club level who is providing support and who is the next instance. Help must be provided internally and quickly in the first instance. An upset user can't help himself, he needs support. See Polaris Support.
Calendar
The first and most important step towards better communication within the club is the use of the calendar for all club events.
The program manager enters all events in the calendar. The essentials on the life cycle of an event are explained here.
Pay attention to visibility and respect the publication rules.
Be sure to differentiate between statutory and other events (otherwise, the calculation of the presence will not work properly).
E-mail invitations are only used for the most important club events.
It is recommended to systematically activate registration to facilitate the task of the organizers (availability, restaurant, tickets, etc.).
If documents are required for the event (agenda, minutes, supplementary information, etc.), they can either be added directly to the event or an entire folder of documents can be included.
Capturing attendance and presence pertains to the specific event selected and operates solely if it is registered in Polaris.
Other Calendar-related features
Use supplementary questions to gather information during the registration process.
Integrate restaurant (optional).
Capture attendance by scanning QR code.
Activate the financial module to automatically debit the individual financial accounts of the members in attendance with the price of the meal when the event closes.
Weekly report, bulletin, minutes
Creating, distributing and filing weekly reports (bulletins) is a tradition in most clubs. A weekly report provides information on the club's events over the past week and is therefore an important part of active club communication (also for members who could not attend the event).
NOTE
The continuous preservation of event reports over many years is crucial for clubs. It allows them to record their history.
For more reporting details see the life cycle of an event.