Chris Johnson, the president and CEO at the Ralph J. Stolle Countryside YMCA, shares how a new partnership with Daxko will help his Y increase member communication and more.
The Ralph J. Stolle Countryside YMCA is one of the latest facilities to choose Daxko as their software management partner. After entering into agreement in June 2020, the Y plans to be completed with all phases by May 2021.
“We were blessed to be in a position where we could continue to invest in our future and our member experience, even during the uncertainty of the pandemic,” said Chris Johnson, the president and CEO at the Ralph J. Stolle Countryside Y. “Daxko worked with us to adapt the process to fit what our board and leaders needed to reach that point.”
Below, Johnson shares more about why his YMCA chose Daxko and what he’s most excited about with this new partnership:
How were you introduced to Daxko, and why did you decide to partner with them?
I was familiar with Daxko from various conference and shows. A number of our fellow YMCAs are also partners. It was important to us to partner with an industry leader as we believe it will be even more important to work well with various technologies and other YMCAs. We believe the installed base of other Ys provides accountability for future iterations of software and offerings.
What are the benefits to your Y as a result of this partnership?
We are excited about the access to information we believe will improve. We have seen during the COVID-19 pandemic how important it is to make decisions very quickly and often felt we were making those decisions lacking important data. We know this pandemic forced all of us to react with a new speed and lack of information, but we felt we were even more challenged by our current systems.
What are the benefits to your members as a result of this partnership?
We are hopeful this will allow for more communication between members and our Y. It has been difficult to generate productive back and forth. Through an improved app and with improved member usage information, we believe we will better offer our members information that is pertinent to their interest. We also believe we will be able to respond to our member requests and needs better.
Have you been pleasantly surprised by working with Daxko in any way?
I was hopeful at the time of initiating our agreement that Daxko would continue their investment in their portfolio and would make those investments available to us. I am pleased that I have seen that so far as we have had a number of conversations in the implementation planning stage around things that are new since we evaluated the product last spring. I am hopeful that will continue in some form post-implementation as well.
