May 2019 - Parks & Recreation - 76

N R PA U P DAT E

Why Recreation
Organizations Use ePACT
Hot Topics
opics

NRPA Connect is the only online professional networking
platform for park and recreation professionals. With more
than 62,000 members in Connect, you will be up on some
of the latest trending topics in the field. Check out what is
being discussed this month:
Class Guide Creation Process - If your agency offers a
large number of classes, especially during the busy summer
camp season, how do you manage that creative process that
can involve input from many different staff members and become unorganized as changes are made?
Several NRPA members offered the following suggestions:
We use a Google word document. It autosaves and multiple
users can be on it at the same time making changes/adjustments.
We had the same issues with errors going to the company, so we
scrapped the company and now do it in-house.

This year, we started to do the layout and design in-house
and downsized our brochure significantly. All our details are not
online in our registration system; staff have to update the registration system and also the information for the hard copy.

We do our entire guide in-house. The recreation coordinators and
supervisors turn in one info sheet for each program, and I use that
information to build the guide in InDesign.

or decades, recreation organizations across North
America have collected and
managed participants' medical
and emergency information
on paper forms. However, with
growing privacy and security
concerns, hundreds of recreation departments, YMCAs and
camps have turned to ePACT
for the following reasons:

Reduce the Need
for Paper
ePACT's cloud-based system allows recreation agencies to collect critical data from the families they serve through a single
record in minutes. ePACT electronically stores and automatically archives the records within
the agencies' database, helping
them meet long-term retention
and licensing requirements and
making it easy for staff to find
records quickly and easily -
perfect for audit requests or incident reporting/inquiries.

Better Access to
Information
I just upgraded computers, so I went from CS3 (very old version of InDesign) to Creative Cloud (newest version) of Adobe products. Big learning curve! But, the process was the same. My staff
each has a Word file where they list each of their programs.

Log in to NRPA Connect, www.nrpaconnect.org, today to
see resources mentioned in the discussion, which include
examples of the guides.

Parks & Recreation

| M AY 2 0 1 9 | W W W. PA R K S A N D R E C R E AT I O N . O R G

Authorized staff can use
ePACT's Mobile App to securely access records on their
mobile devices, even if they
don't have a cellular or internet connection. Staff can sync
records for up-to-date access
in offline mode, view critical
information, like emergency
contacts and flagged conditions, and send general or
emergency messages to families and emergency contacts.

Greater Privacy
& Security
Collecting sensitive, personal
data on paper poses significant
risks to organizations and the
families they serve. ePACT
meets the same privacy and security criteria as online banks
and is HIPAA-compliant to
help recreation agencies protect participants' information
from unauthorized access.

Improved Family Process
ePACT saves families time
too! They can use their single
ePACT account to share all
their required data with multiple organizations each year.
With ePACT, changes to the
account happen in real time,
and organizations receive a
notification when something,
like a new cellphone or added
medication, has been updated.
To learn how your recreation organization can benefit
from replacing paper forms,
improving participant safety
and ensuring happier members, visit www.epactnetwork.
com or call 855.773.7228, ext.
3, and be sure to use the code,
NRPAePACT, for 15 percent
off your setup fee.

May 2019 - Parks & Recreation

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of May 2019 - Parks & Recreation