Event management is complicated, and even the smallest of 5K’s requires a team of people to handle the pre-race logistics, marketing, and race day operations. The requirement for teamwork was a significant motivation for our process as we built out features on the RunSignup Dashboard, and our goal is to make it easy for you to collaborate. We first introduced individualized access sharing in 2014, providing events with specialized control over their staff, volunteer, and partner access settings.
The True Value of a Single Platform
Any race timer will tell you that maintaining clean data is the key to a successful event. RunSignup helps you maintain your data by eliminating the need to continuously export spreadsheets and make updates in external platforms. Additionally, it allows you to:
- Understand your supporters by tracking them through various roles with your race, including as participants, as volunteers, as donors, and as fundraisers. This helps you evaluate the true value of a supporter to your organization, and allows you to better target your marketing and communications.
- Build efficiency by allowing the best person to manage each component of the race. For example, your volunteer manager can email volunteers, your race director can update the website, and your timer can pull an up-to-the-minute list of participants – all without needing a middle-man to operate the technology.
- Protect sensitive data by providing limited access to people who have very specialized roles with the organization, such as a photographer who only needs access to upload photos.
Collaborate via Shared Access/Info Sharing
This is the original, and most flexible way to share access to your platform. From your Dashboard, just navigate to Race >> Secure Access/Info Sharing. The access options on this page allow you to either
1. Add an additional race director (or several race directors)) who need full access to the race. The only thing this does not provide access to is the payment account, since payment accounts are sometimes tied to outside organizations (like a charity partner).
2. Add Access to a Section of the Dashboard. If you click on the green “Add Access” button instead of adding a new Race Director, your first options are to add access based on an entire category on the race dashboard. This is a common option for volunteers or employees with limited roles – for example:
- Your Volunteer Manager may only need access to “Volunteers”
- Your Marketing Manager needs access to Email Marketing, Promotion, and CRM
- Your Development Manager wants to view Donations, Fundraising, and Sponsors.
3. Limit Access More Precisely. If you click on that “Advanced” tab on the pop-up above, you’ll see a more granular version of page access, allowing you to identify the exact menu items you want to allow (or disallow). For example, you may have a Digital Marketing intern working with you, and you want to allow them access to Social Sharing settings, the Facebook Pixel, and Google Analytics, but you don’t want them to touch your Referral Rewards Program. You do that from the Advanced Page Access:
Collaborate Via Role-Based Access
There are a few other ways that you can use RunSignup technology to make collaboration easy for your event. Several roles have built-in access options that you’ll find as you setup your race.
1. Timer Access. You can grant your timer access in the first step of the wizard (or from your dashboard by going back to Race >> Race Wizard). This automatically gives them access to participant and results, as well as key features in the RaceDay Suite like CheckIn App Setup.
2. Charity Partners. If you’re working with one or more nonprofits for donation and/or fundraising, you can give them control over their branding by adding them as a Charity Partner (Donations >> Charity Partners). This allows them to add their own logo and messaging and gives them access to view and thank their donors. Additionally, your can invite them to setup their own payment account so all donations can be paid directly to the charity.
3. Payment Accounts. As noted above, the one area that an added full race director cannot access is the payment account. This is because many organizations either want another partner to be paid, or want someone in their finance department to complete the financial information. On Step 6 of the Race Wizard, you can give the payment access to the correct person by sending them an email with the instructions to setup the account:
