SharePoint for Members gives you the ability to create online communities for the various groups within your association (like chapters, committees and rosters) where community members can find resources, participate in discussions, and collaborate on projects.  These online communities can include document libraries that make it easy to share files like documents or presentations; lists for announcements, calendars, links or surveys; discussion boards; and subsidiary sites for project collaboration.

provide easy access to relevant information.
Users can take advantage of SharePoint for Members' single sign-on capabilities, allowing them to log-in only once to gain access to all relevant sites and subsidiary sites.  Security parameters and access rights are controlled by the user's roles and preferences set up in the CRM for Members database, so access to subsites (like specific chapters or committees) is granted based on members' authentication.  On-Demand Synchronization Service (ODSS) ensures that any user information stored in SharePoint for Members is in synch with the members' records in CRM for Members. 

Connect people with information and expertise.
Enhance the value of your memberships by empowering like-minded members and groups to come together to collaborate, share documents, communicate and learn from one another.  By creating communities for chapters, rosters, committees, or special interest groups, constituents can easily locate the information and resources that are most relevant to them. 

You can also create sites for informal groups within your association, such as communites formed around political issues, professions, or any common interests.  Any member who has access to the site can choose to join these communities, allowing you to create groups in an ad-hoc, informal manner and enabling members to choose whether or not they want to join. 

KEEP MEMBERS ACTIVELY INVOVLED.
members can keep track of changes or updates to discussion boards, document libraries and lists by taking advantage of alerts or RSS feeds.  For example, if a member sets up an alert on one of the group discussion boards, they will be notified whenever someone adds a new topic or replies to a topic thread.  By subscribing to RSS feeds, members will be kept up to date on the topics and issues that are most important to them without even having to visit the site to view new content.

UNDERSTAND AND ACT ON TRENDS USING ACTIVITY TRACKING.
The SharePoint Administration Dashboard allows you to view a snapshot of information about your constituents' activity on your SharePoint for Members website.  The Dashboard uses several web parts to display a wealth of information about the recent activity on your site, including successful and unsuccessful On-Demand Synchronization Service operations, new user sign-ins, and recent site users.