Families were paying with cash or check & 75% of payments were delinquent

The Boys & Girls Club of the Mountain Empire (BGCME) program is built around fostering a sense of belonging, competence, usefulness, and influence. They operate four sites, split evenly between Tennessee and Virginia where private pay families were given the option to pay with cash or check.

Kaitlynn Snider, Director of Operations, says, “Across the entire organization, 75% of payments were delinquent. Often times we’d never see those payments.”

With the risk of continuing to lose revenue, BGCME knew it was time to find a better solution and turned to Playground.

Finding a solution that met all their needs

BGCME completed demos with Procare, Brightwheel, and HiMama, but were unable to find one app that offered them customized reporting, seamless enrollment, and simple communication in addition to digital family billing. Playground was able to provide more than 70 required reports in addition to the operational features the BGCME team was looking for.

To start, BGCME tested Playground in one of its four locations. The organization was quickly impressed with Playground’s ease of use, functionality, and support. As a result, the organization decided 3 months later to adopt Playground across all four sites.

Immediate lift in family engagement & running reports

“Autopay is one of the best features,” Kaitlynn says. “As soon as Playground was implemented, families turned on autopay and started paying on time. Our Playground bank account felt the positive impact from Playground instantly.”

Playground fully replaced BGCME’s paper attendance process, saving each class one hour every day. Staff no longer had to record attendance on paper and manually input the data into a separate digital system.

Playground’s enterprise reporting allows Kaitlynn’s team to run more than 70 reports across all 4 sites at once for any date range. These reports were custom built to help her comply with grant program and state-level requirements.

Kaitlynn was also able to consolidate the functionality of Facebook into Playground, where photos, videos, and important updates are shared with families. “My parents love seeing what their kid is doing throughout the day and message the staff”

Results: Decreased delinquent payments 93%, saved 1 hour per class every day on attendance, & saved 3 hours each week on payroll

“Playground’s service and software is amazing! Whenever I’ve brought a need or fix to their attention, they’ve either figured out how to fix it right then or give me a specific date it would be ready,” said Kaitlynn. “The response time on live chat is amazing and parents always tell me how pleasantly surprised they are by the help they get.”

As Playground helps Boys & Girls Club of the Mountain Empire collect more revenue, streamline their attendance and paperwork, they’ve emerged as a leading childcare organization in the nation.