ACEware Software
Student Manager and ACEweb
Programs
Training and technical assistance to city, county and state employees as well as non-profit organizations.
Database
Main Line School Night has a database of roughly 30,000 names. Approximately 12,000 registrations are recorded annually.
Unique Programs
Frontiers in Gene Therapy: Cures for Blindness will be hosted by Jean Bennett, MD, PhD at Univ. of PA. The lecture will present her groundbreaking research that may one day offer a cure for macular degeneration.
The Main Line is a collection of communities in the western suburbs of Philadelphia. The location derives its name from the fact that it is served by the Main line of the Pennsylvania Railroad, along which early nineteenth century Philadelphia elite built their “country homes”.
Celebrating its 70th year in 2008, the Main Line School Night was organized by Main Line neighbors who wished to provide academic and personal enrichment to local citizens. In the 1938 opening term, eleven courses were offered and the resulting 300 registrations were sorted and organized in shoeboxes.
“We’ve come a long way from the shoeboxes,” says Executive Director Bonnie McDairmant. “We’re proud to say that we are the gold standard in our area for adult personal enrichment programs.”
It’s not bragging. There are statistics to support the claim. Main Line School Night now offers over 1,000 classes a year with 12,000 registrations recorded annually. Courses are held in three local high schools and over 50 offsite venues. One of the oldest not-for-profit, non-credit organizations in the country is going strong. And, with minimal staff (four full-time and several part-timers who help with registration) Main Line School Night considers Student Manager the root of its daily operations.
“Obviously we record all our registrations in Student Manager. But we also use it for marketing and reporting purposes. A full third of our courses are new classes every semester. We need to know what works and what doesn’t work. Student Manager helps us identify our best selling course areas.”
“We used to be the only game in town. Now we are seeing increased competition from a variety of sources and need to identify and capitalize on our strengths. Some of our stronger programs have registrants that have enrolled in the same courses for ten years or more. This term, the Bryn Mawr Lecture Series features six lectures on the Middle East presented by faculty of the Bryn Mawr College. This program has sold out its 80 seats, so we know that’s a strong program. But Student Manager is also helping us find those quiet, consistent courses with healthy enrollment.”
A crisis this term threatened to derail Main Line School Night’s program. “The US Postal Service failed to deliver our catalogs in a timely fashion,” Bonnie reports. “Quickly Student Manager helped us generate emails for past participants in our some major areas (dance, cooking and language). We also used this data to create a web blast to offer students a discount if they signed up for courses that had already started. This offer quickly generated almost 90 enrollments with over $6,000 in revenue and really helped us keep our registrations rolling in.”
