Thank you for considering donating to LSYC for a new Website. The LSYC board feels the website is our digital face to the club and this new digital platform will not only provide easy access to event schedules, race results, and club news but will also serve as a central hub for our communication efforts. Your generous contributions will help us improve our facilities, organize more events, and support our community projects.
When Barry Nelson built the current WordPress site that we have, back in 2016 with his web expert and friend Melissa Weinbrenner of Weinbrenner Designs, we built the site with the most up to date platform there was.
In 2025, it is time to upgrade our platform. I propose that I partner again with Melissa because she is awesome, and because she already knows us and what we want. It will take less billable hours to upgrade. She sails with us. Melissa is a Certified Wix engineer, and can upgrade us to the current state of the art platform, Wix. The cost will be +/- $5500.
What do we get?
Communication:
- All communication can run through our one Wix website. This drives traffic and “hits” which will come up later. The people in charge of communications, including a day of race time change, can easily type one message in their phone and it will automatically distribute the message via SMS text, Instagram, Facebook, email and the site.
Sign ups and payments:
- Our payment system now is out of date. We have not had any problems yet, but WordPress is not supporting payment security like Wix does. I’d like to stay ahead of that. One hack could do real damage to the club and its members.
- Membership sign up, Gov Cup sign up, registrations, etc.- easier to do online and easier to manage for us. Imagine knowing exactly how many t-shirts to order and what size, eliminating waste.
- We could also sell swag, etc
Marketing:
- When you are checking out a club to join, where do you look first? Online? A good site builds legitimacy and trust.
- No one wants to be part of a s#it show.
- Other clubs/ fleets/ media / influencers around the country would like to link with us and we want to link with them. This drives traffic to the site and traffic is measured for marketing revenue.
- It will be much easier to encourage folks from other lakes to come and race/ hang with us because we will be more credible and our communication will be cleaner..
Sales:
- We can get sponsorship for the Gov Cup, and annually, with a good site. Imagine this hypothetical conversation with North Sails :” Our club members bought 10 sails in winter of 24-25 spending approx. $30,000. They all called different lofts. We have 60 members and you can check us out on our professional website. We hold these events, and our website traffic generates “X=decent amount of” hits. Give us $1000 and swag for the racers and you will be in front of them.Your ad will be featured on our professional website.” That is cheap. And repeatable for other products.
- Our group, our marinas, our lake and our boats are arguably the highest functioning club in a 500 mile radius. Top 5 minimum! Stay with inland lakes and that goes farther. People should know that. A small amount of content, on a solid platform that links well with others, can be a conduit to bring in more members, more visitors, and the sponsors that follow.
Most important:
- Our club is run by volunteers. It is much easier to get people to volunteer when there is a solid system in place. Using the technology that a Wix website brings lets us leverage technology for the back office stuff and let the volunteers do more of the fun stuff, vs. always training new people to run outdated and separate systems.
Thank you for considering to donate to the new Website, we are offering 3 options below to donate.