Greetings from Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle. I am curious how other museum organizations are collecting constituent information for membership households when selling a membership at the front counter? Here at MoPOP, we have on site purchasing members fill out the required constituent information on a paper form (hand written, of course). At the time of sale, the ticketing representative enters (at the bare minimum) a first and last name, and a an email address. When possible at the end of a ticketing representative shift, they will enter the remaining required constituent info to the best of their ability in tessitura. A few drawbacks to this:
- people's handwriting has gotten worse over the past few years...- currently our ticketing team is not fully versed on data entry at the level that you all know we want. I would like to imagine that our museum will have an organizational data entry standard soon, but until then… - as a nonprofit we of course try to keep staffing at the minimum and that includes box office. Prior to March 2020, data entry duties for the most part fell on our box office representatives when they were not busy (we have 2 box office reps; one rep five days a week and the other, two days)...
If you use any creative or innovative method of collecting constituent information at the front counter at the time of membership sale/contribution, besides a paper form or an army of Tessitura data entry operators, please let me know.
Thanks a lot!
Bradford Talley
Bradford Talley Membership Manager MUSEUM OF POP CULTURE D: 206-262-3395 120 6th Avenue N, Seattle, WA 98109 MoPOP.org MISSION STATEMENT The Museum of Pop Culture’s mission is to make creative expression a life-changing force by offering experiences that inspire and connect our communities.
We are still old school, we have the constituents write down their information on a little sheet. But we have also trained our staff to input the information into the computer immediately and then turn the computer and have the visitor check. Our lead Sales Agent will also contact the member after the fact if needed by phone or by email to ensure it is correct. The biggest hurdle we have is the Postal Codes, they are not always great at ensuring that they are always using the same format so it can cause issues for pulling records (example; a1a 1a1 vs A1A 1A1)
We do the same. Our VS staff is trained in input ALL member information that is on the written membership form before selling the membership. Yes its more tedious and time consuming that way, but it guarantees accuracy because the new member is standing right in front of them still to correct any mistakes.