During unexpected circumstances, the top priority of a sports league is to look out for the health and safety of their members. Sports Connect is here to support you and has many tools to enable you to communicate and take action during such situations.
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Outlined below are a few of the top features that sports leagues should be aware of and use during situations that call for urgent communication, postponements, or issuing discounts or refunds.
Resources for Delayed or Cancelled Seasons
Clear, Direct Communication
Communication is crucial in extreme circumstances. Don’t waste valuable time plugging in to third party tools. Sports Connect offers reliable, easy messaging tools that are integrated directly with your member contact lists, allowing you to send important alerts when your members need them.
Group Your Audience: Quickly communicate to anyone who is impacted at your league. Add all contacts or specific ages, teams, sports, or even custom contact lists who are being affected. Don’t let list management delay an important message!
Send an Email or Text: Once your groups are added, quickly put a message together and send out a message or schedule it to send. If you have time to focus on aesthetics, using an email template can provide branding and structure to an email that could be the difference between a simple open and a thorough read.
Team Pages: Coaches and Team Personnel can use Team Pages to email important updates to their members. Important news articles posted to your Homepage can also be pushed down to Team Pages for added visibility.
Using Your Website as a Resource
Manage Refunds and Orders
An emergency situation will likely lead some to request to cancel their registration, although effective communication and delaying events rather than cancelling can limit these types of reactive actions. If you are faced with cancelled orders, proper tracking and order management is important.
Cancel an Order: Easily cancel a registration, clearly manage any pending payments, and manage refunds online.
Managing Payment Plans: You can be flexible with payment plan orders to adjust to a changing season. Edit or delay due dates to reflect the postponed season or offer discounts to account for lost playing time.
Return to Play Resources
Opening Registration
As many leagues return to play, online registration may look different than in past seasons. Be sure to get set up quickly, include any new waivers or policy changes, and offer contactless options for easy signup.
Copy & Clone Seasons: Roll over previous seasons to maintain questions, volunteer roles, and age divisions to save time.
Mobile-First Registration: Keep registration contactless while making it as convenient and accessible as possible. Your members are on the go, meet them where they are with the only Mobile-First experience on the market.
COVID Waivers: Include social distancing policies, facility waivers, and any other new guidelines into registration with custom Waiver questions or other forms of custom questions.
Safely Returning to Play
Many leagues will be returning to play with new safety guidelines, social distancing practices, and strict policies on how to keep members safe. Take extra precaution to communicate these new guidelines so that your members are fully aware of how to return to play.
Email Attachments: Bulk emails can include attachments or link to documents hosted on your Sports Connect website. Take advantage of these capabilities to clearly communicate these critical updates for your upcoming season.
Website Announcements: Use this banner announcement tool to clearly post social distancing guidelines ahead of games or practices. All website visitors will see these announcements and can click through to policies to learn more.
Field Status Pages: Use our Field Status Page Template to alert members of facility details, availability, and specific policies by location.
Ways to Keep Fundraising
Fundraising is more important than ever if your league is still required to pay equipment costs, facility rental fees, or other bills during this period of postponements. Here are a few ways your organization can seek financial assistance and continue to raise funds.
CARES Act: Learn how your sports league can seek financial assistance through the CARES Act, a stimulus package passed by the U.S. Government designed to help businesses navigate the impacts of COVID-19.
StackRaise: Create and manage your own fundraising campaigns with StackRaise, an easy, online solution for teams, schools, and leagues to increase donations.
PushSave: Modernize your league’s approach to fundraising with PushSave, a platform offering completely customizable, mobile coupon books.
