Custom membership website and portal for Cumbria Family History Society. A classic Sandlebridge case study example that highlights the process and challenges of taking a business that relies heavily on offline processes, fully online.
A challenging and rewarding project bringing together 13 separate databases and moving a predominantly offline set of processes, online.
Sandlebridge received a call from the Chair of Cumbria Family History Society in spring 2023, they'd heard about our ground-breaking work with Manchester Ancestors and wondered if we'd be interested in working on a proposal for their own website redesign and build. Sandlebridge is already ready to rise to a challenge and after a period of discovery and consultation we pressed ahaead with our work in the summer of that year. This was a substantial project with a launch date set for December 31st.
The existing site had been developed over many years on a voluntary basis by one its members and had been built as a custom PHP application. This meant, that although it was functionally complete, it was difficult to update and maintain by non-technical members of the Society Council. The site also lacked the capability to manage members entirely online and relied instead on obsolete technical approaches and offline databases. The aim was to centralise member management by moving all records and administration into a centralised online system.
We provided the client with the option of either a fully bespoke solution or to use our Memba CRM membership management software. The decision was taken to go fully bespoke and we then built out an entire custom database for member and genealogy records. The Cumbria Family History Society website brought together nine proprietary genealogy databases with over 370,000 records and well over a thousand member records.
The site provides a wide range of features for members and administrators. Members can join online, manage their account and subscription and use all the tools that are at their disposal. Members have access to all their subscription and Gift Aid records, along with communication from the Society. They can also read member-only notices and other gated content. Members can also book for events and use the full suite of genealogy search tools.
Key features include: online payment of subscriptions, a search of historical records, such as census data, births, marriages and burial records, parish records and solicitor documents. Using a powerful custom search engine, members can filter results by name, record type and year. Members also receive notifications and invites for events and newly published blog articles.
Administrators can manage all aspects of membership, including updating member records, sending notifications, updating search data and creating and promoting events. Our solution also provides for admin export of data and dynamic charts and reporting.
In all, the project took six months to complete, from initial briefing through to launch and was delivered on time and on budget. Working closely with the Council members, we held regular fortnightly meetings to update on progress and demonstrate new features as they were rolled out into the development. In all we provided a full range of services including consultancy, website and database design, build, third party integrations, project management, hosting and ongoing support and maintenance.
Do you have a project similar to Cumbria Family History Society? If you'd like an informal, and no-obligation chat please contact Phil Holt. We love to solve problems by bringing innovative ideas and thinking to the table.
