BigTent Welcome Groups from Meetup

We’re always eager to share our features and functionality with new groups. If you’re just learning about BigTent, and looking at us as an alternative to Meetup, a special welcome to you!

A quick about us:

We’re the free online home for trusted groups. We work with 20,000+ communities across the United States and are a one-stop shop for communicating, connecting and organizing.  Our features are designed to keep things easy for organizers, while giving members a great user experience.  We support communities that range in size from 10 people to hundreds of thousands of members.

We offer several features that you may be comfortable with, if you’re accustomed to using Meetup:

• Calendaring
• Photo sharing
• File sharing
• Forums (accessible online and via email)
• Event RSVP and payment
• Member renewals and registration
• Public web pages and website integration with widgets
• Online payments processing

Some additional features unique to BigTent that help our groups’ thrive include:

• Sub-groups
• Ability to manage multiple groups in one integrated view
• Easy to delegate roles and permissions
• Sub-group management
• SSL encryption of member information
• Unlimited free file storage
• Group news/blog
• Classifieds
• Product and service reviews

Here’s a quick tour of the feature you’ll find in BigTent:

It’s easy to get started, just visit our sign-up page: www.bigtent.com/signup.  Our community support is unmatched, from our current group leaders, to our community support team, we’re here to make sure your group is engaged and growing as part of BigTent!

All the best,

Laney Whitcanack
BigTent Co-Founder

BigTent Updates: Group payment reminder, new ad location & member tip

Group payment reminder – Jan. 31 deadline

If you process payments through BigTent please remember to add your group’s bank info on the manage > manage accounting > settings page so we can direct deposit your funds come February.

You must enter your bank info by Jan. 31, otherwise we can’t wire your payments until you submit that info, and even then we can’t send it until the next disbursement, which is March.

So long story short, don’t slack on this! Enter your bank info today!

Learn more about why we switched to direct deposit here.

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New advertisement location

As you’ve probably noticed, we moved the banner ad that was sometimes placed under your group, to the very top of BigTent pages.

We made this move so there is a clear delineation between your group content and the advertisements on our site. We hope this change helps your members concentrate on your important group content. Thank you to everyone who submitted feedback about this!

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Member tip: How to change your email settings

Watch this quick video to learn how to change your BigTent email options in a few simple steps:

We love to hear from you so please let us know if you have any questions or feedback by leaving us a comment!

Cheers,
The BigTent Team

BigTent Group Leader Tip & Big Congrats to Tri-City MoM

Admin Tip: How to list your group in the BigTent Directory

Help potential members find your group through the BigTent Group Directory!

Listing your group in the directory is easy as 1, 2, 3! See below for the quick steps:

1. Go to manage > group dashboard > group information > catagory > and select two categories for your group.
2. Go to the “group directory” section, check the BigTent group directory box and complete the remaining fields

3. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click save.

That’s it! Now potential members can locate and join your group through the BigTent Group Directory. You can easily find the directory by going to www.bigtent.com and clicking on “Find Groups.”

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Congrats to Tri-City Mothers of Multiples

BigTent is happy to announce that the winning group of the Godiva Perfect Indulgence Challenge is…drum roll please…

Tri-City Mothers of Multiples

Congratulations, Tri-CityMoMs! It was a very close race to the finish, and we thank all the groups who participated in this fun contest.

Tri-City will be receiving a year’s worth of Godiva Coffee sponsored parties, as well as $1,000 toward their group. Stay tuned for more awesome opportunities to win cool stuff for your group from BigTent!

Please let us know if you have any questions by leaving us a comment. We would love to hear from you!

Best,

The BigTent Team

 

Bigtent releases Required Sharing feature

We are thrilled to announce that we’ve created a way for group leaders to require members to share certain information about themselves – such as first name or phone number – with their BigTent groups.

Admins have always had the ability to require members to share information with group leaders but have not been able to require members to share information with the entire group on the member list and profile page.

Now admins can ensure a more personalized community with just a few clicks. Just follow these steps to enable this helpful feature:

1. Go to manage > invite members > member types & forms.
2. Click the “edit” link next to the membership type & form you want to change.
3. Click the “edit” link next to a question for which you want to enable the required sharing feature.
4. Select “All members (member required to share with group)” and click save. Repeat this step with any question for which you want to enable the required sharing feature.
5. Save the form.

That was easy! But now you may be wondering how the required sharing will affect your members. Please read our FAQs, which answers questions that admins may have about this new feature:

Q: What happens with my new & renewing members once I require certain questions to be shared with my group?

A: Any new or renewing members who complete your membership form will be required to share the fields you’ve specified with the entire group and won’t be able to “unshare” the information later.

Q: What happens with my existing members who are not currently sharing this information once I require it?

A: Members who either haven’t completed this info, or declined to share it with the group previously, must to go to my bigtent > settings > profile privacy and agree to share this information. To save the settings on their profile privacy page, members must agree to your new sharing.

Q: What if a current member never completes the information that is now required to be shared or never agrees to share it?

A: You can wait until the member renews (she won’t be able to submit the membership form unless she agrees to share the fields you’ve specified), you can manually change the member’s renewal date to force her to renew sooner or you can remove her from your group and invite her to join again.

Special thank you to Roxanne, one of our super star group admins, who consulted us on this feature.

Please let us know if you have any questions by leaving us a comment. We would love to hear from you!

Best,

The BigTent Team