TidyHQ Heroes: Australian Textile Arts and Surface Design Association Inc.
ATASDA — Australian Textile Arts and Surface Design Association Inc. are are a national textile art group comprising of a diverse range of textile artists including felters, embroiderers, dyers, free motion embroiderers and jewellers.
We have asked ATASDA a few questions about their group and how they discovered TidyHQ.
Where are you located?
We are a national association so we have members all over Australia.
What is your local community like?
ATASDA is a national body so our communities vary around the country. We host exhibitions in areas with the highest amount of members (predominantly New South Wales), we also exhibit at different craft shows and some members have had their own exhibitions.
What brought you to TidyHQ and how have you found it?
We had 4 or 5 separate websites that all did different things and were started by different people over the years. Our important documents were physically lost in committee members houses. ATASDA finances were also on private computers which was a pain!
We had a meeting minutes ‘book’ into which all meeting minutes were printed, glued into and signed by members. As ATASDA grew, this book travelled from metropolitan to rural areas and even state to state (think Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants)!
The realisation was made that all of our documentation for ATASDA administration had to be in one place. We needed to make things easier. We looked at TidyHQ for a few months before we decided to make the plunge and overcome the fear of change.
We now use TidyHQ nationally at ATASDA on a daily basis. Our meeting agendas are compiled before hand, an invite is sent out the attendees who can then read the agenda and any attachments prior to the meeting, saving everybody’s time. We hold meetings across the nation on Skype and create minutes as the meeting progresses.
All of our finances are managed through TidyHQ and live in the cloud so information can be accessed by those who have permissions wherever they are!
Do you have any words of wisdom for other groups?
We got a little too excited when we discovered how many functions of TidyHQ could make our lives a breeze! We went in and started doing everything at once before we really understood how the platform worked as a whole. We recommend to check out the TidyHQ knowledge base and work step by step!
Pro tip: whoever decides to move the group to TidyHQ — get your whole committee on board by encouraging them to use the platform! The Secretary should try using Schedule and most importantly Meetings. The Treasurer should import Finances and the President can see it all come together!
