At the Memphis Zoo they never used the Raiser's Edge membership scanning module because it won't give them the level of detail that they needed. They want to be able to capture the number of adults AND children and the scanning module will only capture a single "action." The membership scanning module also requires a special RE generated 15-digit number be printed on the membership cards, but they used an old dot-matrix printer that can only print about 7 digits of a barocode on the limited "real estate" of their membership cards, so they use the Constituent ID in the barcode.

I wrote a simple Microsoft Access database that takes the Constituent ID number (either scanned or manually entered) plus the number of adults and children. The data is saved in that independent Access database. I also designed a system merges that data together with RE data when they print membership renewals, so the renewal says something like, "Over the past year you have visited 15 times with 8 adult and 12 child admissions. You would have spent $142 on those admissions. Your $59 membership is a bargain."

They wouldn't be able to do that with the limited data collected by the Raiser's Edge scanning module.

Some questions that have been asked about the scanning system:

1) Was it easy to implement or were you struggling with new equipment and new procedures for a while?

It went pretty smoothly. The Zoo started printing cards with barcodes for several months before they began scanning.

2) Do they have the guests scan their cards themselves or do zoo employees do the scanning?

Employees do the scanning, check for a photo ID, and enter the number of adults & children attending.

3) Does scanning cause back-ups in the admissions area?

It does create a small delay, but the scanning is only a small fraction of the time used. The biggest delay at the gate is waiting for the guest to produce a photo ID.

4) Do the Zoo scan for general admission or just for special events?

Both.

5) Does the info go directly into Raiser's Edge?

No. None of the data goes into RE. It is all housed in a separate Microsoft Access database. RE can't (easily) hold data for adult versus child attendance, so we just store the data outside RE and use Access to combine the data when needed.

6) Has there been any noticeable impact on the RE database?

Because the data doesn't go into the RE database there is no impact on RE.

7) Do the Zoo store the scans as actions or some other way?

The "Membership Scanning" module in RE collects the data as an "Action." But the Zoo doesn't use it that way.

8) How valuable has the information been for visitor analysis?

PRICELESS!! The Zoo can now easily analyze attendance trends, which levels of membership contribute most to attendance, etc. They can also send out a renewal notice that says something like "This year you had 10 adult and 22 child admissions using your membership. This would have cost $216 dollars at regular admission prices. Isn't your membership a bargain?!"

9) Do the Zoo use barcodes for renewals and direct mail campaigns or just on membership cards? Any other uses for barcodes?

Yes, the Zoo barcodes their membership renewal notices. While it doesn't necessarily speed up data entry it does virtually eliminate data entry errors. They don't do much direct mail marketing.

10)Iis the scanning process reasonably trouble-free or is there a lot of down time because of equipment/software problems?

Totally trouble-free.