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May 1 2012

5 Ways to Customize your Privacy Settings

Best Practices

Like most software platforms, LeagueApps takes privacy very seriously. We strive to accomodate our league partners’ privacy needs and want to make sure their members feel comfortable and secure on LeagueApps. Below are a few key measures you can take to keep things in the “clubhouse” and ensure your privacy settings are configured exactly how you want.

 

1) Change Member Profile Fields Settings

LeagueApps allows you to easily customize the membership form your members fill out when they create an account on your site. We shared some ideas on how you can use form fields to collect key information from your players.  As admin, you can change the privacy setting of each member field you add to your membership form.

Simply go to your Member Profile Fields in your LeagueApps admin console (“Settings > Member Profile Fields”). Here you have the option to change any field from ‘public’, to ‘protected’ or ‘private’.  Here’s a breakdown of what each of these settings mean:

  1. Public – Field information is viewable on their account profile
  2. Protected – Field information is only viewable to other logged in members
  3. Private – Field information is only viewable to the league admin

 

This flexibility allows you to tweak each form field on a case-by-case basis. For instance, you may want to keep certain information you collect public, such as Hobbies, or Favorite Sport. On the other hand, certain fields like Address or Income Level might be best kept private. Some of our league partners that push the social element in their leagues like to keep their players’ contact information protected (e.g. Phone Number), encouraging fellow club members to connect off the playing field.

 

 

2) Turn “Show Attendee List” OFF

You have the ability to hide the list of players that register for a program, A.K.A. the “Attendee List”. The attendee list is visible for each program by default. Keeping this setting ON does has its upside – your captains can browse the free agent pool and invite players to their teams with one quick glance. Read about the benefits of Member Matching here.

Some of our league partners prefer not to disclose their attendee list for various reasons. If you prefer to hide your list, you can do so by following these easy steps:

  1. Click on a program in the “Manage” tab, then go to “Settings > Preferences”.
  2. Un-check the box that says ‘Show Attendee List’.
  3. Click ‘Save Preferences’.
  4. Be sure to update this setting for each of your programs

3) Create ‘Private’ Programs

LeagueApps lets you designate any program as a private program, making it completely hidden from the public. This can be useful if you are planning to hold a small event intended for invited members only. For example, you can use our Events functionality to sell ticket packages for local sporting events. Or you can setup a league, tournament, or camp exclusively for certain players (e.g. hold your very own 3-point shootout).

In any case, setting a private program ensures that only the players of your choosing sign up, saving you the hassle of having to implement a screening process. Plus, it helps you to avoid the sticky situation of turning players away who aren’t on your ‘guest list’.

Here’s how you can create a private program:

  1. Click on a program, then select the “Details” tab.
  2. Change the Visibility field setting from ‘public’ to ‘private’. Optionally, you can change the Program State to ‘Unpublished’.
  3. Select the “Home” tab and copy the program URL (this is found under ‘Main Details’ on the right side of the page).
  4. Send the program link to any player you wish.

4) Assign Admin Users

As the main admin of your site, you can grant console access to multiple admin users.  This comes handy if you have partners or employees that help manage day-to-day operations. You can assign a specific role to each admin based on their actual role in your organization. This flexibility is key for privacy – you want to make sure your admins have the appropriate levels of access. For example, you probably won’t want a part-time employee who reports game scores to be able to edit your homepage design. On the other hand, you do want your managing partner to have access to all your financial information. Learn how to manage admin users here.

 

5) Disable Site

You have the option to disable your LeagueApps site at any point in time. Disabling your site will hide your homepage and any other content pages you have. This might be applicable if you are implementing a new design that isn’t quite ready for the public. Or you may be transitioning your content from an external site into the LeagueApps CMS.

You can disable your site with the click of a button. Just find the ‘disable’ option on the top right of your site dashboard page.

We hope you use these tips to set privacy settings that best fit your organization. Drop us a line if you have any questions or want to share feedback about privacy on LeagueApps.

Apr 18 2012

Insurance For Sports Leagues and Organizations

Best Practices

An aspect of local sports that the LeagueApps team is learning more about is the insurance needs for sports leagues and organizations. We often receive inquiries about insurance issues or needs. We also are asked about the LeagueApps online waiver form feature. This feature allows leagues to create custom content for waiver forms within the program registration flow and then track completed waiver forms from within the admin console.

Most businesses and organizations have insurance needs but it’s especially crucial for sports organizations. Sports naturally have a fair share of injuries and accidents and there are certainly inherent risks and liabilities. A single mishap can devastate a sports organization if it does not properly protect itself and its participants. In addition, many sports organizations must provide proof of insurance to receive permits for playing fields, gyms or event spaces.

General Liability

The most basic type of insurance is General Liability. This protects against risks including bodily injury or property damage caused by direct or indirect actions of the insured. Most General Liability policies cover the risk of being sued for negligence or strict liability torts. Although the rules do vary by state, General Liability is usually required.

Unfortunately, many General Liability policies for sports organizations include an athletic participant exclusion. This means the policy does not apply to bodily injury to people participating in actual sports activities. In effect, this type of policy covers nothing more than lawsuits arising out of spectator injuries!

Participant Legal Liability

Insurance carriers that specialize in General Liability for sports organizations sometimes provide an affirmative coverage grant called Participant Legal Liability that ensures coverage for all participants. This blog post better explains how this works in more detail.

Accidental Medical

Finally, sports organizations may also consider accidental medical expense coverage. This covers participant’s medical expenses that can arise from a sports accident or injury including slips, falls and broken bones. Accidental medical is often obtained to help enhance General Liability coverage and help deter liability claims since the risk of lawsuits is less likely when medical expenses are covered.

Policy Costs and Pricing

Insurance policies prices are based on the number of unique annual participants within an organization. Prices per player vary based on the sport, location and other variables. General Liability often range between $1 – $5 per player and accidental medical can be an additional $1 – $1.50 per player. Policy premiums and limits also range with a standard policy having up to $1-$3MM coverage for general liability and a $1000 premium and a $25,000 coverage limit for accidental.

Waiver/Release Forms

Waiver forms that are signed or agreed upon by your participants may help protect against lawsuits. Well written forms that avoid common pitfalls can help reduce the ultimate settlement especially if the claim is more accidental and not caused by negligence. Waiver forms rarely bind the participant and more often are used to trigger the assumption of risk defense which may result in a significant reduction in damages owed. A waiver or release form will never take the place of the proper insurance coverage.

 

Here are a few tips to consider in evaluating insurance policies.

  • Understand the overall insurance requirements in your state
  • Understand the insurance requirements to receive field or gym permits in your community
  • Accurately determine the number of annual participants in your organization
  • Determine if the General Liability policy has an athletic participant exclusion clause, is “silent” or explicitly states Participant Legal Liability.
  • Get quotes from multiple brokers and read the fine print!
  • Find brokerages that have special programs setup for local sports organizations. Bell Anderson is one insurance company that does this and they were the main sponsor at the SSIA conference. Track down Jason Webb at jasonw@bell-anderson.com and he’ll be happy to help out your organization.
  • The need and use of waiver forms vary by policy. Ask your insurance provide what type of online waiver form and waiver messaging is required or preferred
Dec 25 2011

Twitter For Your Sports Organization

Best Practices

An important theme for LeagueApps in 2012 is helping sports organizations leverage social media. LeagueApps has recently launched some Facebook integration features. We also love to use Twitter and built our first twitter feature within LeagueApps during our Sportsvite team hackathon in NYC last week.

Much like Facebook, Twitter is a popular digital platform that can be effectively leveraged by local sports organizations. With over 100 Million active users, sports organizations are bound to find new and perspective league members through twitter. Twitter is a natural way to make announcements and have conversations with your members as well as attract new players. Twitter is also free to use and easy to setup and manage.

Here are some best practices and tips on how to use twitter for your sports organization. We recommend using a twitter client like Tweetdeck to manage and organize twitter accounts, conversations and searches. Be sure to also download a twitter app for your mobile device.

Tweet!

The most important and effective step is to tweet regularly. This signals that your organization is active and friendly on twitter and helps attract others to follow, read and interact with your tweets. Many sports organizations use twitter to quickly share information or tweet announcements about registration periods, weather conditions or league information. We also encourage leagues to share league highlights and tweet about specific teams, games or players. Peer recognition can be a powerful tool in rec sports. Tweet photos, blog posts or create quick informal polls/questions to your members.

Tip: Be sure to include links in your tweets so readers can easily get more information. Use bit.ly or another link shortener to track clicks.

Follow Your Members

Twitter provides a great opportunity to learn more about your members AND develop direct communications with them. Email address book contacts can be imported into Twitter through their import tool. Once you are following your members, you can monitor their tweets and tweet back or retweet anything that relates to your league. An added bonus of following your members is that they will often follow you back as well.

In fact, your organization should be following anyone that can affect your business including local media, competitors, vendors, employees and trade associations or local government.

Attract More Followers

Most popular twitter accounts grow organically. Regularly publishing interesting and entertaining tweets is the best way to grow. Following your members also leads to getting followed back. Be sure to promote your twitter account on your website (use twitter widgets), facebook page and at all league activities and events. Try rewarding players that follow you by welcoming or re-tweeing them directly. Give them props for sending “in-game” tweets (If and when appropriate). @ messages are a good way to reply since they are public and enable others to see you engaging with your members.

Use Twitter Search

Create and save Twitter searches for conversations or mentions that include your organizations name, brand, or other keyword terms. Follow or engage these people so that they are talking to you instead of about you. Enter the conversation in an appropriate manner (No spam!) by sharing instant coupons or specific individual responses.

Create A League Hashtag

Once you master the twitter basics and are engaging with your league members it’s time to create a league hashtag. Whenever your members tweet about your league they can include the specific hashtag. This allows your online community to all follow the same hashtag and promotes conversation between members in the league.

Additional Twitter Benefits

Twitter can also be a great tool for better customer service, attract and activate sponsorships or partnerships and generate press or media attention.

Shout out to some of our league partners that are already doing a great job with Twitter including @Kickball365, @gameonphilly, @socialboston, @portsports, @TheBigDsports. We’d like to hear how your organization uses Twitter. Please share what has worked effectively. We plan to do more in the future to integrate Twitter into the LeagueApps platform.