Cheers to  Central Carolina Skating Club

Tell us about your organization:

The Central Carolina Skating Club (CCSC) is a US Figure Skating association centered in Hillsborough, NC. We provide programs that encourage participation and achievement in the sport of figure skating. We welcome all levels of skaters, from Learn to Skate through Senior test. CCSC invites skaters of all ages to become part of our Club's activities - we have a variety of membership options and host many social activities.

How do you use SignUp.com to coordinate your activities?

Our Club uses SignUp.com in several ways:

Hospitality/Potluck - providing food and drinks to officials and coaches who spend hours at the rink during the events. Hot soup and drinks are mandatory at every event. Everyone needs to warm up after a few hours of watching skating, rink-side.

Social Events - we organize an annual group outing to see a professional skating show together. SignUp.com lets families order tickets in advance so that we can sit together at the arena.

Exhibition Registration - we offer members-only exhibitions each season, at no charge to the skaters. However, the Club has to pay to rent the ice, provide refreshments and create programs. Volunteers manage the signups, create/distribute programs, queue the skaters and play the music. Skaters sign up to skate by level, which lets us estimate the amount of ice time required with a great deal of accuracy, thereby helping conserve financial resources.

Competitions - our Carolina Skating Classic competition requires over 700 volunteer hours, the Fall Synchro Classic competition over 400, including the up-front preparation work. Competitions are tricky because they really are three different signups in one: one for hospitality (food) contributions, one for on-ice volunteers (runners, ice and music monitors) and a third schedule for everyone else (registration, check-in, awards, setup, take down, etc.) The latter includes constructing a temporary reviewing stand over the hockey boxes to provide technical specialists and judges with an unobstructed view of the performance and removing it after the event is over. We used to have three different volunteer lists, but using one (albeit, complex) signup allows people to contribute what/when they can without creating scheduling conflicts.

Test Sessions - we recently had over 50 skating tests conducted in a single morning. Because of the tight time frame, we used SignUp.com to organize Hospitality food contributions, ice monitors and runners. The session completed on-time with very happy judges and very little leftover food.

Skating Seminars - we've invited US Olympic Silver Medalist Paul Wylie for a weekend seminar for Adults and younger figure skaters in February 2017. We've started setting up our volunteer signup to coordinate the event, involving multiple groups of skaters through off- and on-ice sessions with Paul and other professionals. We're very excited about this opportunity, especially since it's one of the few Adult figure skating seminars during the time leading up to US Adult Nationals.

Why did you decide to use SignUp.com?

We evaluated several different sites and decided that SignUp.com provided the ability to manage complex signups, such as our tri-fold competitions as well as simple signups, such as exhibitions and test sessions. Having the ability to "lock" a day as a coordinator lets us close out a signup when we need to make changes or limit an event. Other signup sites required us to lock each event in a day, which was time-consuming. Invitation sites are fine for figuring out how many people will be attending an event, but it doesn't let us collect information such as the member's name or t-shirt size, which we need to track.

What is one piece of advice you have for parent volunteers out there?

If you want to provide information to your volunteers, you can create a task and assign a dummy volunteer such as "N/A" so that those signing up can see the information. In our case, we've use this to show when the ice is being resurfaced, so that volunteers know why there's a break in the schedule for certain tasks, such as Music or Ice Monitoring. By the same token, when there's a need for a meeting, rehearsal or training session related to an event, you can create it as a task and assign all the volunteers who are required to participate. This allows them to receive a reminder email so they don't forget.

We salute the Central Carolina Skating Cub  and all the other volunteers making a difference in their communities. Check out how SignUp.com's online coordination solutions and volunteer calendars can keep all your volunteers organized!