MemberClicks today announced that Founder and President/CEO Thomas Howard will be stepping aside from his position at the end of the month, and that Vice President of Business Development Mark Sedgley will assume the role.

After the transition, Howard plans to remain active on a part-time basis with the business, focusing on its strategic direction as well as special marketing projects.

Howard founded the company in 1998 to help small-staffed membership organizations leverage the web for membership management and community-building. With nearly 1,400 customers throughout North America, Australia and the U.K., MemberClicks has grown to be the leading provider of web-based membership software for organizations with 10 or fewer staff members.

After successfully leading sales teams at Cardinal Health for three years, Sedgley joined MemberClicks in 2004 as Director of Sales. In 2008, he was promoted to Vice President of Business Development. “Over the years, Mark has become a vibrant part of the association marketplace,” Howard said. “He’s passionate about educating small-staff associations and truly understands that it takes a unique approach to serve them,” he added. Sedgley currently serves on ASAE’s Small Staff Committee and is actively involved on their innovation taskforce.

“I am both humbled and excited by the opportunity in front of MemberClicks. Under Thomas’ leadership, all of us at MemberClicks have benefited greatly. At the same time, he has deepened not only our understanding of the association space but more importantly how to serve it in a refreshing and simple way. I look forward to working with each of our team members in continuing that tradition and pushing it even further.”

“I couldn’t be more excited about the future of MemberClicks and the opportunities we have in front of us,” Howard said. “After 13 years, it’s time to pass the baton and leverage a new skill set. There’s no doubt that Mark is a natural born leader and will help the company reach its ultimate potential. I can’t wait to watch and be a part of it.”

Well, The MemberClicks Ultimate Small Staff Spa Day Giveaway has come to an end and we have a winner!

Drumroll, please…

A big congratulations to the National Turkey Federation!

They posted this picture on our Facebook wall along with this caption:

Turkey for me and turkey for you.
Working for the turkey industry is what we do.
A gobble gobble here and a gobble gobble there.
Some days we’d like to run to a lair.
A day of pampering would be so great.
Just like a day with turkey on a plate.

The entire staff will receive a spa day worth $3,000 to de-stress and get pampered! Congratulations!

Thanks to all the small staff associations who entered our Spa Day Giveaway! Truthfully, everyone deserves a day of rest and relaxation.

And you may be wondering who the 10 runners-up are! The following 10 associations will receive Serenity Gift Packages designed to refresh their staffs:

- ABC

- ANIA-CARING

- Associated General Contractors of Greater Florida, Inc.

- FPIN

- Georgia Hospice and Palliative Care Organization

- Keep Norfolk Beautiful

- KSHA

- PNACAC

- VACE

- Women’s Business Enterprise Council South

Congratulations to everyone!

In case it wasn’t apparent, at MemberClicks, we’re all about using technology to simplify busy lives and schedules. Of course, we realize that small staff association professionals are often more overwhelmed than your typical association professional. It’s tough managing an entire organization with just four (or three, or two, or one) staff!

Therefore … I love highlighting awesome applications and sites that help save me time. Today, I’ve got three: Remember the Milk, Evernote and Dropbox.

Right off the bat, I love Remember the Milk — I can sign in with my Google account and sync my Google Cal, Tasks and Gmail. (As a self-proclaimed Google addict, I adore this.) Basically, RTM is fantastic for the list-lover in you. You can make any kind of list you want; set reminders to notify you however you’d like; easily manage your tasks; plot your to-dos on a map; collaborate with coworkers, friends and family; sync your lists with your mobile phone; easily search your tasks and schedule your time however you’d like.

Phew! What a list! For association execs managing multiple departments, members and their own busy lives, I’d definitely recommend checking this one out.

Evernote is similar in that it wants to help you “remember everything.” Online bookmarking tool, file collaboration tool and easily accessible on-the-go, Evernote would be great for small staff professionals to share files, save ideas and inspiration and organize their files. Your account is easily searchable and can sync to your work and home computers and mobile phones — and your account is also available in the cloud, from any computer with an Internet connection.

Evernote suggests several ways for users to use the service:

Now, Dropbox … Dropbox is the savior of my work/personal life balance. Similar to many other people, I have two computers – a work laptop and a personal laptop. However, I often need work files when I’m at home in the evenings on on weekends, and it’s not practical to put these files on a bulky external hard drive.

Enter Dropbox. Simply create a free account and Dropbox will host all of your specified files in the cloud so you can access them from multiple computers (and phones!). You can pay a small monthly fee if you need more space, but I’ve been using the free version for almost a year and upgrading hasn’t been necessary.

Do you use any of these tools? What other tools do you use to stay productive and efficient?

P.S. Don’t forget to enter the MemberClicks Ultimate Small Staff Spa Day Giveaway! The contest ends this week!

Have you always wanted awesome custom Facebook tabs for your association’s Facebook presence? They can be a huge pain to program, especially with Facebook’s ever-changing policies. However, I’ve got two great apps to share with our readers today that can help make Facebook pages more visually appealing.

Wildfire: Extremely affordable, Wildfire provides custom tabs for sweepstakes, contest promotions, coupons, group deals, favorite picks, trivia and quizzes. You can make your Facebook page more interactive and visual with Wildfire. It also provides data and analytics so you’ll have the back-end information about any campaigns you run.

ShortStack: (Thanks to Elizabeth Engel for the info!) ShortStack lets you design contests, promotions sweepstakes and more – and it’s all completely customizable thanks to HTML and CSS. You can embed YouTube videos and playlists, display feeds from Twitter and Flickr and more! This app is extremely affordable, which we’re sure will appeal to small staff associations.

Definitely check out these two apps if you’re in need of pretty (and functional) Facebook pages!

P.S. Don’t forget to enter the MemberClicks Ultimate Small Staff Spa Day Giveaway! The contest ends this week!

Good morning and happy Monday! I hope everyone had an exciting/wonderful/relaxing/low-key/insert-adjective-here weekend! Let’s kick off the week with a few slideshows, shall we?

(Keep scrolling past the photos of baseball players and there’s lots of good info here.)