CorpsData CorpsData

Frequently Asked Questions (F.A.Q.)

What is CorpsData?

It's a state-of-the-art business application with which you can run all aspects of your Corps operation.

Working with corps both large and small in the design and creation of CorpsData has helped us produce an application that will allow you to run your Corps more efficiently, more effectively and less expensively. With CorpsData you can e-mail parts out to sections, track who has turned in forms, give members an on-line, real-time accounting of their financial obligations, send mass e-mails out to alumni and boosters and much, much more.

Running your Corps with CorpsData

Right now you probably have a database or spreadsheet for membership, a mass e-mail product to send out messages, a fund raising product for donations, an accounting package to track financial obligations of members and a few other programs for other activities. That's a whole lot of data to keep in sync and a lot of data entry to do. Our idea was to create one application that would do all of these things, would run off of a central database and be designed from the ground up for Drum and Bugle Corps. No databases to keep in sync, no multiple entries, no more software packages to learn.

CorpsData is built around one central database. This database not only contains all the information about your members that you need, it's also where you store information about staff, alumni, employees, board members, committee members, volunteers, boosters, donors, media contacts, parents and anyone else you want to put in there. And because all of these people can log into CorpsData (if you let them) they can maintain their own information. Our subscribing Corps send out broadcast e-mails (through CorpsData) to current members and alumni and asked them to fill-in and update their contact information and (for alumni) their Corps history. Think of that - no more data entry!

Communications

With CorpsData, you can mass e-mail anyone in your database with just a couple of mouse clicks. Yes, there are other applications out there that can do this. But do they allow your brass staff to e-mail a new part to the mellophone section? Can they let you push out a camp update on a Thursday afternoon to all current members and staff? Do they let you send out press releases to your media contacts? Can you communicate with your alumni to let them know the latest information on this year's show or a uniform re-design? CorpsData does all this and more. And you can compose these messages in our WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) HTML editor so you can include images and links.

The Library

Wouldn't it be great if your members, staff and alumni had one place on the web to go to where they could access and download music charts, forms, newsletters, audio files, video and anything else you make available to them? With CorpsData's Library module, you can store what ever you want - on-line and securely - and give your users self-service access to it. What's more - you can set permissions on each item in the library, so only this year's baritone players can view and download the baritone charts for the opener and only people who have donated over $500 can watch the latest video from camp.

Financial Obligations

How do you collect dues, camp fees, audition fees and fundraising obligations from your members now? Can your members log on to a website and see up-to-the-minute information about what they've paid and what they owe? Can they make credit card payments on-line with real-time credit card processing and have those funds go directly into your Corps bank account?

CorpsData can do that. And you can configure it so that it automatically sends out invoice e-mails when you create a financial obligation and reminder e-mails whenever the obligation hasn't been met on-time. You can get real-time reports to show you who has paid, who hasn't, what you have collected in any time period and you can import all of this financial information into your accounting software in no time at all.

Required Forms

All Corps have a laundry list of forms that members have to complete. Birth certificates need to be turned in, insurance cards need to be filed, medical forms completed, physicals taken. Do you know who has turned in what and what still needs to be filed? Do your members know what they still have to give to you? With CorpsData you can define required forms, decide who needs to turn in those forms, check off when they have been returned and let the members see what you have received and what you haven't. And, like the Financial Obligation module, you can have the system automatically send out reminder e-mails to members when forms haven't been received.

Volunteers

Drum and Bugle Corps run on volunteers. Wouldn't it be nice if you had a record of everyone who has ever volunteered for anything, what they did and how many times they have volunteered? It would make finding a bus driver or a food prep person or a souvie stand salesperson pretty easy, wouldn't it? In CorpsData you track volunteer's activities. Then use some of our many reports to see who your top volunteers are, what they can do and how you can reach them. You can even send a broadcast e-mail to all of your volunteers right from CorpsData. Tell them what you need and when you need it. No phone calls, no mailings and no cost.

We've also added a section where alumni, parents and boosters can self-identify skills they have that may be useful to the Corps. One of our subscribers needed some graphics done for a new press kit. Rather than hire someone, they ran a Skills report in CorpsData and found that they had six alumni with 50 miles of their city who had graphic arts skills and would be willing to donate their time. Another Corps found some alumni with carpentry skills when they were building a new storage area in their office.

Donors

How long would it take you to print a list of the top 25 donors to the Corps? If you are doing a fund-raising drive do you know everyone who has ever given money to the Corps and can you send them a solicitation e-mail with a single mouse click? Do you know where all your donors live so that you can set up a thank you reception in different cities while on tour? CorpsData lets you track all donations to the Corps and then view your donor list by number of donations, cumulative amount of donations, city and state. And when a donor calls the office you can quickly view their donation history and know the people who you should be extra nice to when they call!

Resources

CorpsData allows you to manage your inventory - horns, drums, vehicles, uniforms, hats, etc. and to designate to whom each item has been assigned. Now you can know exactly what you own and where everything is at anytime.

Events

You can create a Corps calendar that contains a list of events - rehearsals, shows, fundraisers, sectionals, etc. that you define and that you can mass e-mail notices of and require current members to RSVP to. Do you have a Camp scheduled for this weekend? Did the times or location change? You can make the change in CorpsData and then tell CorpsData to e-mail all members and staff of the change. Set up your entire yearly schedule in CorpsData and make it accessible to your members, parents, staff, boosters and media contacts.

Reports

CorpsData comes with a full range of reports to help you run your Corps. Member rosters, financial reports, who is delinquent on forms, donor lists, volunteers, alumni skills, who is logging into CorpsData and much, much more. Need a report that we haven't thought of? We will create new reports at no charge (provided that it is a report that other users of CorpsData could use). And all of our reports come in three formats - web page, print version and extract (that you can import into your own spreadsheet or database program). Want to print some mailing labels? Do an extract of the roster and then do a mail merge in Microsoft Word. Our context sensitive help files walk you through all the steps to create your labels.

Architecture

CorpsData is a web-based, hosted application. You don't need to install anything. You don't need to buy a new computer. You don't need to worry about backups. All you need is a computer with a web browser and you can use CorpsData. And what's more - you can access CorpsData from the Corps office, from home, from your work, from a hotel, from anywhere you can find a computer with an internet connection. And so can your members and staff and parents and anyone else you give access to. Trigon Road has been in the business of creating secure web-based applications since 2003 and CorpsData is built on that experience and industry standards and best practices.

Security

We take great care to design and maintain security procedures that protect your information on-line and off-line. We encrypt information that you send us and protect it with 128-bit Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology. We use firewalls and intrusion-detection devices to prevent unauthorized electronic access to the servers where your information is stored, and we isolate those servers in cages to prevent unauthorized physical access. Our employees may access your information only to help us provide you with our services. And we tell all of our employees how important it is to assure that our customers' information is kept confidential and secure.

When you get started with CorpsData, you select a Password to access our web site. You can help protect your information by keeping your Password secret and by changing your Password from time to time.

Getting your Corps' data into CorpsData

If you are worried about the amount if time it will take you to data enter your Corps information into CorpsData, don't be! We will import whatever information you can give us in electronic format. Spreadsheet, database, text file, whatever you have. We will do the import for you - FREE!

So - what are you waiting for? Start putting CorpsData to work for your Corps today. For more information or to get started, contact us at info@trigonroad.com.

It's an on-line drum corps community where anyone who has been associated with a corps can meet to share pictures, experiences, bios and more.

We designed CorpsData to be a place for drum corps people to reconnect, share experiences and make new friends. Get your information in the system. Encourage the people you marched with to do the same. It doesn't matter if your Corps subscribes to our business application. You can still be part of the community. And it's FREE.

When you register on CorpsData, you tell us what Corps you have been affiliated with. Then, when you access the application, you can see who else from your Corps has registered. Do searches by year, by section, by position. Find your friends and see what they are up to now, what they look like and what they thought of their Corps years. Leave a comment on their guest book.

Your profile

You manage your own profile. Add information like name, nickname, home address, phone numbers, e-mail, and instant messaging addresses. Write some information in your Corps biography. Tell people what you remember about your years with the Corps and what you are doing now.

Corps history

You get to enter your own Corps history. What years did you march? With what Corps? What section - where you in the horn line, drum line, guard? What position? As you build your Corps history you enable other users from those Corps you marched in to find you when they search by year, section or position.

Pictures

Each CorpsData user can enter up to five pictures in their profile. Put some pictures from your Corps days in. Add some recent pictures. Get ready for comments from old friends about how terribly you've aged! Have fun with it.

Managing passwords

You control your own account. You can change your password as often or as seldom as you like. The system uses a combination of e-mail address and password to control log-ins. And because you enter that information yourself, you manage the security of your account.

Skills

Because Drum and Bugle Corps are non-profit entities, they rely heavily on volunteers to run. In the skills section, you can help your Corps by identifying skills you possess that they may find useful. If your Corps is one of our subscribers, they can run a skills report to see who has indicated they have a needed skill - like bus drivers or marketing people or graphic artists. Other users of CorpsData can't see this information. Only administrators of subscribing Corps can.

Security

You can rest easy knowing that any information you enter in CorpsData is secure. We use the same encryption techniques as banks and credit card companies to ensure that the data you put into our application stays in our application. We use firewalls and intrusion-detection devices to prevent unauthorized electronic access to the servers where your information is stored.

Privacy

You decide what information you want other users to see. By using the privacy settings, you can decide who gets to see your e-mail, phone number, address, and IM information.

CorpsData is building a on-line drum corps community. And with 179,044 users and growing by the day, it's a very fun place to be.

There's no time like the present to register and reconnect with your Corps.

Click on the "register" link above to get started!

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User data as of
March 28, 2024
  • 179,044 user profiles
  • 781 corps
  • 50 U.S. States
  • 93 countries