In 2019, San Diego County Gun Owners (SDCGO) was growing by leaps and bounds, but had hit a limiting factor for their growth. Like many growing membership-based organizations, the information systems used to manage members and donations was no longer sufficient. Membership numbers had grown where keeping track of everything was occupying the bulk of the staff’s time and resources.

San Diego County Gun Owners is an advocacy organization focused on organizing the firearms industry and protecting the citizens’ Second Amendment right to self defense. The organization was getting a lot of visibility and attracting new people that supported their mission. Instead of focusing on valuable activities like outreach, event planning, and community organizing, the team was mired in tracking donations, compliance reports, and following up with existing members for renewals.

It was frustrating. The staff did not enjoy having to grind through the tedious, manual tasks, and leadership was concerned that they would not reach their growth goals if they could not be responsive.

SDCGO knew that they had to upgrade their technology to handle membership and communications.

The Sagetree team was selected to help solve this problem that was critical to the organization’s development. With a strong background and history in software development and integrations, Sagetree knew they had to connect SDCGO’s donor system to a more robust member management solution. Because outreach and communications is a key component of SDCGO’s activities, HubSpot was selected as the membership tracking system as well as their marketing system. Sagetree integrated these two systems so that membership and subscription data was synchronized between the two platforms.

With HubSpot, not only did the organization now have a robust CRM to track members, they also enjoyed an industry-leading marketing platform to help them deliver the right message, to the right people, at the right time.

As a result, SDCGO was able to much more efficiently manage memberships focus on more activities driving growth. Since 2019, membership has grown from 1200 members to over 3500 in 2023. The HubSpot Marketing Hub not only helps with email marketing, but it has also been a key tool in fundraising. The system provided by Sagetree was also duplicated to help SDCGO’s sister organizations, Orange County Gun Owners and Inland Empire Gun Owners.

San Diego County Gun Owners didn’t just become more efficient in managing memberships, but they have improved their organization’s marketing capabilities.  This means they are better able to educate and engage members and scale their organization for continued growth.

How would you like to double your membership? Contact Sagetree today to see how we can help you scale up!