In March, we gave four brand new iPads away to four lucky winners. As the winners, each association agreed to be featured on the blog and check in with us every so often to let us and our readers know how they’re using the iPad in their operations.

Unfortunately, it took a little while for the Association of Test Publishers to get its iPad up and running. After a bit of a delivery mix-up — “not unusual for our association,” which has a few different mailing addresses — staffer Lauren had to update her Tiger operating system. As she put it, “I conferred with our technology department … which would be me … who conferred with our purchasing department … which would be me … and took steps to upgrade my Mac operating system from Tiger to Leopard.” Just another day in the life of a small-staff association!

“Since ‘free’ is the kind of price tag we rarely pass up here in the nonprofit environment,” Lauren took advantage of the 60-day free trial of MobileMe, which allows her to sync her home Mac with the iPad, and enables her to share large files. As a small-staff organization, ATP outsources most of its services — Lauren described a recent snafu when trying to send a large file of photos to ATP’s meeting planners in Baltimore. She ultimately had to burn the photos onto a CD and snail mail the file, losing days on the project. MobileMe will allow ATP to upload future files and share them instantly (even password protecting them if they want to!).

Additionally, Lauren soon will be traveling from Pennsylvania to Arizona for a conference planning meeting, and she said she’s looking forward to working seamlessly with the iPad in another location.

“We’ll keep you posted as we continue weeding our way through the technology jungle with our iPad!”

We’re excited that, despite getting a bit of a later start than our other winning organizations, ATP is getting the hang of the iPad and exploring all of the amazing syncing features it offers.

Stay tuned!

Last month, we gave four brand new iPads away to four lucky winners. As the winners, each association agreed to be featured on the blog and check in with us every so often to let us and our readers know how they’re using the iPad in their operations.

The Pennsylvania Chiefs of Police Association is looking forward to its conference in July. Ashley Crist of PCPA says they’ve downloaded a few applications, such as MyCongress, so they can receive updates and contact congressmen if necessary. Additionally, the organization is hoping to get in touch with someone at the Department of Justices’ Amber Alert program to begin the process of developing an application that will allow them to receive Amber Alerts on the iPad.

PCPA posted a video on its Facebook page to show members how to log into the MemberClicks solution using the iPad. View it here. Very cool!

Additionally, Ashley told me they’re looking to buy the iWork application so they can more easily share presentations and documents at their July conference. They’re also planning on using it as a sound system, so an iPod will be one less device to carry around and keep track of! “Everything will be in one central location,” Ashley said.

Barton, the president of the National Urban League Young Professionals told me he’s added some shortcuts to the home screen (one to their MemberClicks website!), as well as shortcuts to news, travel and their social media outposts. They’re all grouped so they’re easy to find and accessible.

“So far, so good,” Barton told me. “It’s pretty cool – we’re able to access a lot of things with it.” They have also loaded performance management modules so they could see from a mobile standpoint where they are with their performing metrics.

Additionally, NULYP has a board of trustees meeting coming up, so Barton said he’s planning on taking the iPad to show it off and demonstrate how they want to use it with their MemberClicks solution.

These organizations are just getting started with Apple’s tablet, so we’re excited to see where the journey takes them. We’re thrilled to learn that they’re taking the time to experiment and get the hang of using it, and happy they’re sharing the experience with all of us!

Next week, we’ll check in with the other two winning organizations!

Hi, everyone! Just wanted to give one more quick reminder about our lunch event at Johnny’s Half Shell in Washington, D.C. tomorrow, April 21 at noon! We’re really excited to meet with everyone and share a little bit about how technology can benefit associations.

Not only is it free, all attendees will be entered into a raffle to win an Apple iPad! This is a great opportunity to network with professionals in the area, enjoy a free meal and learn about how MemberClicks can help associations get the most from their Web presences.

Johnny’s Half Shell is located on North Capitol Street, just a few blocks north of the Capitol Building.

Click here to register. It should be lots of fun! We hope you’ll join us!

Free food? Networking with other association professionals? A conversation about association technology basics, followed by a short MemberClicks demo? A chance to win an awesome, exciting prize?

Although I’ve written about this a bit, I wanted to remind all association professionals in Washington, D.C. about the new Lunch with MemberClicks program. We’ll be there on Wednesday, April 21 at Johnny’s Half Shell to give a short presentation about how technology can benefit associations.

We’re really excited to meet with association professionals (especially those of you at small-staffs!) in the D.C. area.

Everyone who comes will receive a complimentary lunch and have the opportunity to meet with other association professionals in the area. Plus, every attendee will be entered in a raffle to win an awesome prize. (Here’s a hint: it rhymes with iGlad.)

So, if a free lunch, networking, some tech talk and a chance to win the latest and greatest device from Apple sounds like fun, we hope you’ll join us!

Click here to register. See you in a few weeks!

Today is the day! We’re so excited to announce the winners of our Great Small-Staff iPad Giveaway.

Each entry was extremely thoughtful, and we really believe these four will provide excellent case studies on the potential impact of the iPad in the small-staff association community.

The winners represent a variety of organization sizes, both in membership and staff.

The National Urban League Young Professionals is a volunteer auxiliary of the National Urban League with 7,000 members. President Barton J. Taylor wrote in great detail that the iPad will help “track meeting attendance, volunteer hours and fundraising amounts in real time and correct record errors,” as well as “manage member benefits and potentially acquire new benefits by demonstrating to potential vendors how we interface with our members through MemberClicks.”

Women Entrepreneurs in Science and Technology is a nonprofit organization with more than 500 members. “We have no full-time employees, and only two of us who are part-time consultants for the organization,” President Gwen Acton wrote.  Her entry explained how the iPad would “save time and change our registration process at our monthly events,” and “could also be a powerful recruiting tool.”

The Association of Test Publishers is a member-run trade association that represents more than 125 providers of tests and assessment tools and is run on a staff of two. Lauren Scheib’s entry included how the organization is “looking forward to continuing to streamline our member communications, our conference planning, our public relations efforts, our board communications — all through the use of enhanced technology.”

The Pennsylvania Chiefs of Police Association is a small-staff professional organization with more than 1,200 members.  Ashley Crist’s entry included, “we’d like to be able to conduct a MemberClicks training session during which an iPad would be passed among the attendees.” Additionally, “shifting from paper to electronic registration check-in (at our annual conference) would be less confusing and time-consuming.”

This is just the beginning, though. The winners will be regularly featured on the Splash blog. Groups all over the world will be able to learn about the winners’ ongoing iPad experiences and how they can implement the device into their own operations.

All runners-up in MemberClicks’ Great Small-Staff iPad Giveaway will receive an Amazon gift card.

Congratulations to all the winners, and thank you to everyone who entered.