Read to learn how the Nordic Society Oikos achieves cross-over engagement by uniting five Nordic societies with Glue Up.
The Nordic Society Oikos (NSO) is an umbrella organization of five national Nordic societies whose primary function is to publish scientific journals on ecology. ‘Oikos’ which means ecology, alludes to the society’s main function and is considered a home for Nordic ecologists. With the help of the organization’s website and Glue Up, the NSO plays a vital role in keeping close contact between the five national Nordic societies through organizing meetings and workshops.
Micheal Tobler, the Society Coordinator, and Abby Mcbride, the organization’s Communicator share how the Nordic Society Oikos united five Nordic societies and optimized their membership management with Glue Up.
Restructuring the Nordic Society Oikos
The majority of the societies used Excel sheets to manage member data and Mailchimp to reach out to members, while the rest had a basic CRM. At the time, we were in the process of restructuring the society into an umbrella organization for the five Nordic societies. This was motivated by the need for a more comprehensive member database and an effective way to manage our memberships. We also wanted to bring the five societies together to improve the transparency between the societies instead of them operating independently of each other.
We were looking for a tool that would help us manage memberships and outreach during the restructuring process. We conducted a simple web search and found Glue Up, known as Eventbank at the time, in addition to other alternatives that came up. After internal deliberations and several meetings with different providers, we finally settled on Glue Up. As a result, we are now effectively managing all the societies on the platform.
A New Found Flexibility with Glue Up
We chose Glue Up because it allowed each society to maintain its autonomy on the same platform. This was made possible by the ability to assign administrative roles to different personnel within the five societies. This made us more flexible while maintaining each society’s structure and that of the NSO.
Glue Up’s website solution was one of the key things we needed to integrate with our membership management system. Additionally, we managed different administrative roles within the platform. For example, there are people organizing conferences while others administrate memberships. We can control people’s individual access and permissions; hence, only certain staff members have access to different parts of the platform.
Bringing Five Nordic Societies Under One Roof
Our greatest achievement is that we brought the five independent Nordic societies closer together under one roof. Using Glue Up’s website solution, we now have an up-to-date website that integrates with our membership management system. Initially, each society was managed individually at the national level. Thanks to Glue Up, we can now easily manage all societies on the platform.
We can easily reach all members while managing each society separately. We can also create subsets of memberships which allows us to work with different membership types. Using the Glue Up platform and website solution, we have become more global. It has opened us up to allow more members to join the society from any part of the world. As a result, we have also become more visible.
We have each of the societies’ administrators on the Glue Up platform, which helps us stay in close contact with each other. In addition, through the website, we can incorporate all societies, and newsletters that go out to all members make the crossing over to all societies quite easy.
Glue Up helped us moved everything online during the pandemic. It helped us cross over social boundaries and have seen more engagement between members of the different societies.
An Ecosystem of Interconnected Modules
“Our favorite features are the tools we use every day. The membership management module, events module, and email campaigns module have been beneficial to us. Initially, we have not had a system where all these are interconnected. I cannot say I like any in particular, just that they are all integrated, and working together as one unit is the best feature of Glue Up.”
-Abby Mcbride, Society Communicator at the Nordic Society Oikos
A Membership Management Software that Puts Organization’s Needs First
The great thing about Glue Up is that it has been flexible. It has accommodated our rather complicated structure, and the website solution has adapted to our needs. The customer service and response to questions have been really good overall. There's been great communication between society and Glue Up.
Concerns About the Platform’s Adaptability
We were concerned about fitting our structure into the CRM platform. We were afraid it would not accommodate the different societies and allow them to work independently while maintaining the level of transparency we were looking to achieve. However, thanks to the platform’s security, we can have different administrators with various roles and permissions. This helps us manage all the societies under one roof while each society maintains its autonomy.
The Nordic Society Oikos Embraces Glue Up’s Event Management Software
When it comes to events, every society is embracing the platform at different paces. For example, some societies are only using Glue Up to create a website for different meetings but then manage everything from check-in to the actual meeting externally. Overall, the trend is Glue Up’s events module is increasingly used and embraced by the societies.
With Glue Up, we have developed our capacity to build and strengthen the community of Nordic ecologists. We are still working to streamline our membership management processes. As we wait to see how things work out post-COVID-19, we are excited to try Glue Up’s Webinar Management Software to run our virtual conferences. At the moment, each of the societies meets individually. Thanks to Glue Up, we’d like to try having one recap meeting of the five individual society meetings, which was not possible back when we had physical meetings.
“Glue Up was part of renewing our organization as a society to make it more visible and accessible to members. We were looking for new ways to modernize membership management.”
Michael Tobbler, Society Coordinator of the Nordic Society Oikos
An Adaptive Platform for Umbrella Organizations
Glue Up’s Membership Management Software is an adaptive, interactive ecosystem of interconnected modules designed to accommodate different member-based organization structures. With Glue Up, the Nordic Society Oikos successfully manages five Nordic societies and enables cross-over engagement by effectively managing member data, streamlining administrative processes, and hosting virtual conferences and meetings.
Get a demo of this state-of-the-art solution that puts your organization’s needs first and start strengthening your professional communities with Glue Up.
