New Technology Capabilities for Member Clubs
Orienteering USA is pleased to announce new technology capabilities available for its member clubs. Due to licensing stipulations, these capabilities are only available for certified nonprofit (501(c)3) clubs. All of these capabilities are provided for free. Orienteering USA will assist with setup of the capability.
Capabilities
Subdomain of orienteeringusa.org
Your club can have the option to use their own unique clubacronym.orienteeringusa.org subdomain and point it to their website. (A subdomain is the portion prior to the ‘.orienteeringusa.org’ portion of the URL.) This option can save you from purchasing your own domain or having to pay to add a second address to your existing domain. Some clubs currently use the ‘.us.orienteering.org’ URL for this same. Shifting to .orienteeringusa.org would keep a better continuity of websites. (e.g. eventreg.orienteeringusa.org, but ‘eventreg’ would be your club’s acronym)
Google team drive for document storage
A Google team drive is a shared space that allows teams (organizations) to store documents and easily search for them. It also allows all members to access the drive. This drive belongs to the entire team instead of an individual as in the personal drive.
Benefits
- 500GB data storage
- Club’s self management of access
- OrienteeringUSA support upon lockout/loss of access
- Anyone can access any document with appropriate permissions
- Individual files sharable with anyone
- File version control is integrated
Limits
- Only individuals with a google account can modify documents
Google group for group mailing list management (e.g. contact list / group inbox)
A Google group is a group of email addresses that can be used for a specific purpose. A google group can be configured to act as a group inbox (e.g. where a question is sent to an email address and is then distributed to multiple people instead of one) or as a contact list (e.g. an announcement is sent by a club representative to all those in the club wishing to receive those announcements.
Benefits
- Club’s self-management of access
- @orienteeringusa.org group address (not @googlegroups.com)
- Restrict email addresses that can send out/receive to the contact list
- OrienteeringUSA support upon lockout/loss of access
- Individual subscribe/unsubscribe available
Limits
- Only individuals with a google account can modify the entire distribution list
Google Calendar
Clubs can also manage their own Google Calendars. Share event, meeting and training schedules or whatever is most useful for the club.
Benefits
- Club’s self management of access
- Allow anyone to view calendars as desired
Procedure for requesting support
Send an email to tech-committee@nullorienteeringusa.org containing:
- Subject: Google Workspace for our club
- contact information of the person or people in the club who will receive admin accounts in the secondary domain.
- First name, last name, OUSA member email (to receive invitation)
For a subdomain:
- IP Address of the server, if redirecting to your existing site
- Or let us know if you’d like to use Google Sites
For Google Groups:
- Refer to the user documentation for managing groups