Background

Wingspan Arts is an arts education non-profit that serves over 3000 students in the New York City metro area. Its mission is to “connect the arts to life” and expose diverse groups, especially young audiences, to all forms of the performing, visual, media and literary arts. One of its biggest programs is the Club Wingspan afterschool program. Club Wingspan currently operates onsite at eight schools, offering enrollment to families for a number of arts and other enrichment activities. Wingspan Arts began using the school management software from Active Network in 2008.

Keys to success from Paul Ashley, Wingspan Arts Education Director

What challenges led you to consider adopting web-based school management software?
As we grew in size and started to manage more school sites, we realized that we needed a better option for registration. We used a computer database to enroll students, but it was a desktop application requiring us to be onsite at each school to register students. This took a lot of time and resources. The web-based option was perfect for us. We still keep a strong relationship with all of our families, but most people don’t need to wait in line to register for a class. Now they take care of that at home. Best yet, the web-based registration integrates with our internal database so we can manage our students in the same way that we have for years.

Why did you select the software from Active Network?
We were looking for something specific that could integrate into our database. Active provides exports and reports that fit our needs really well. We also were concerned about cost and the support after implementation. Both of these were provided when we signed up with Active.

How does your school promote and encourage registration in your programs?
Our main promotion tools are the classes themselves. Our wide variety of arts and other programming give parents and students a number of options when choosing an afterschool program. Online registration makes the process that much easier for them.

What are the biggest benefits you’ve noticed since implementing Active Network’s school registration software?
The biggest benefit is definitely our time. Rather than spending hours onsite getting people enrolled and then processing the payments back at the office, we can now leave the registration open longer and have people sign up online at their convenience. Registration and payment information is processed automatically. We were fortunate to have a pretty smooth transition and now 95% of our enrollment is handled online.

What advice or wisdom would you offer to other schools/programs who are considering implementing web-based school egistration software?
Find the right fit for your organization. Active had a number of elements that made it right for us. I also haven’t even used all of the tools that I know are available and we still have been able to manage many more enrollments than before.