Running your marching band on GroupSpot is a sure-fire way to keep everyone informed and build a tight-knit community of people within your program. GroupSpot has created a personalized experience through custom features and attributes that makes any marching band feel right at home. Venture beyond the basics of email newsletters, program websites, and one-size fits all communications by taking advantage of GroupSpot’s full feature set to help bring your new digital community to life.
#1 GroupSpot has Custom Features & Attributes for Marching Bands
Unlike other apps with one-size-fits-all solutions, GroupSpot makes your marching band feel right at home with custom features and attributes. We run the gamut with features like Competition scoreboards and Roster to attributes like icons and naming conventions, GroupSpot understands not all groups are the same.
#2 Add Team Colors to Liven Up Scoreboards, Shared Calendar, and Roster
We know marching bands have a lot of pride in their school colors. So GroupSpot was designed to include your team colors on your competition scoreboards, shared calendar and roster card. Open your Group Settings, find Appearance, and add your official color. Here, you can also add or edit your group header image and avatar.
#3 Communications Tailored to Your Needs
Tailoring your communications to your needs is one of the biggest benefits of a mobile-first platform. Choose from a menu that includes push notifications, in-app alerts, email, and chat. When there's a thunderstorm and practice is suddenly canceled, send a push notification. When you want to remind your team the merchandise store is closing, use a soft reminder like an in-app alert. You can even schedule your communications to be released at a later time! For lighter stuff, like questions for the group, group chat is also effective and fun.
#4 Create SignUps Right on GroupSpot
Volunteer signups are an important responsibility of any marching band program. Trying to get volunteers over email or group text is messy, and using separate 3rd party solutions like SignupGenius is needlessly cumbersome. Signups on GroupSpot are simple and effective to use. From food signups, to prop building, to chaperoning, signups are especially helpful on competition day.
#5 Subgroups to fit all of your Communication Needs
GroupSpot lets you segment the full group into subgroups. This is especially useful when you have students, parents, and even alumni all in the same group. You can also create posts or send mass communications that target a particular subgroup. Subgroups can be designated as team (Woodwinds, Brass, Percussion, Color Guard, etc.) or non-team subgroups (parents, boosters, alumni, etc.). Locate Organization in your Group Settings and select Subgroups to get started. And if a player or parent needs to get reassigned to a different subgroup, choose Assign Subgroups, also located in Organization.
#6 Engage Your Community with Shared Photo Albums
At a performance and want to collect photos from your parents in the stands? Do you have a dedicated group photographer? Shared Photo Albums are the best kept secret on GroupSpot. Different from a traditional photo album that’s put together by an individual, a shared photo album is one where all members of the group can easily add their photos. When multiple people share their photos, it’s really fun to go into the album and see all the different photo publishers with a simple swipe of the finger. These shared albums are especially powerful around big events or other shared experiences.
#7 Repository for Your Competitions
Every group needs a home for its schedule, both upcoming competitions and past results. There’s both a place for your Performance Time before the competition begins and a place for your score and place for after the competition is over. You can even designate whether the competition is a local, state, regional or national competition, for your program to stay informed. You can also view a full overview of your competition season by selecting the competition results view.
#8 Easily Keep Track of Attendance
Taking attendance is an important activity for marching bands. Administrators are able to track member participation across important events with the Attendance feature. GroupSpot ensures accurate and detailed results by assigning a check-in status (present, excused, late, absent) and an optional check-out status (left, left early, stayed late). You can also self check-in as well as assign a non-group admin to take attendance (drum majors or leadership team). Attendance is then summarized and easily exported by date range, holding members accountable while keeping administrators organized.
#9 Traveling to Performances Has Never Been Easier
Traveling with a marching band is no small task. But since GroupSpot is an all-in-one solution, everything you need is right there, whenever you need it. From emergency contacts on each student’s roster card, attaching bus lists to a post, taking attendance to make sure you have everyone, to sending a notification to ONLY the parents who have signed up to chaperone. All of the admin tools are there to ensure you can focus on making the best music with your group.
#10 Elevate your Group Chat Game with Chat Groups
Using group chat is a great way to engage your marching band community and keep everyone informed. Chat Groups allows you to break your group into smaller group chats (think subgroup chat) to enable you as an admin to quickly chat with specific groups of people. Need to have a chat thread with your leadership team? Maybe you need to communicate with your drumline more frequently in a chat-like setting, separate from a regular post within a group. Chat Groups allow you to break up your community into smaller, more manageable, and more meaningful groups, all while not having to exchange phone numbers or download a separate app.
