TurningPoint Case Study

United States Bowling Congress

BACKGROUND

The United States Bowling Congress is the official governing body for the sport. As a combination of the Women's International Bowling Congress, the American Bowling Congress, and the Young American Bowling Association, the organization serves over two million amateur, adult and youth bowlers in the country and is recognized by the United States Olympic Committee. The Congress manages and protects the sport by determining rules, regulations and other valuable pieces of legislature to ensure its future place in athletics.

Jim Oberholtzer is the Vice President of Technology at the USBC. Oberholtzer oversees technical architecture, applications development, business analysis and the customer call center for the organization, located at the International Bowling Campus in Arlington, Texas. With his 25 years of experience in the IT field, he ensures that all technical aspects of the USBC are running smoothly.

THE CHALLENGE

The USBC holds annual meetings in which legislature, bylaws and board of director positions are voted on. Approximately 2,000-3,000 members attend these meetings and each are called upon to vote on issues and new board members. Bylaws were determined by voice votes without much issue, even though the voting took longer than was desired. If there was a particularly contentious issue, paper ballots were brought out. Voting on board member positions, however, monopolized most of the meeting time by solely using paper ballots to tally results.

When the organization first started holding annual meetings, it began by using pre-printed ballots that were created in-house. In order to cut back on the time it took to calculate votes, Scantron® sheets were implemented, but still did not increase efficiency as the USBC had hoped. According to the organization's bylaws, each member of the board of directors not only have to be the top voted, but also have to receive more than 50% of the vote. USBC members would have to vote in rounds in order to fill the positions completely. Annual meetings would sometimes run into the evening, ending around 10 or 12 p.m.

"Each time you put out a paper ballot, it would take roughly two to three hours by the time you got the ballots out, got them marked, collected them, ran them back, counted them and reported the results. We would have board elections that would run 10-12 hours since have to go through several rounds," said Oberholtzer.

THE SOLUTION

USBC Chief Operating Officer Kevin Dornberger was first exposed to audience response at an Olympic committee meeting. After seeing Turning Technologies' interactive software TurningPoint and ResponseCard keypads in action, he asked Oberholtzer to explore the idea of using response technology in lieu of paper-based surveys. Turning was the only vendor the USBC considered.

"We purchased the system on a Monday and we implemented it the following Saturday. It was very fast, and we had never even seen the system before," said Oberholtzer. "I had one of my developers take a look at the software. He was able to master it and get our PowerPoint ready to go in about 20 minutes. He didn't think it was difficult at all."

During the meeting, members submitted bylaw voting responses using both voice votes and ResponseCard keypads. The results matched each other closely, indicating that the response system was accurate. When the board of directors voting took place, only the ResponseCards were used to tally results. Three rounds of voting took a mere 35 to 45 minutes as opposed to the six or seven hours it took using paper ballots.

CONCLUSION

Since the annual meeting, the TurningPoint system has been used in various other events. COO Dornberger is also the President of the World Ten Pin Association, which held elections a few months ago using audience response. The association was "more than ecstatic" with voting via ResponseCards. A few other organizations such as the Greater New York Bowling Association have also loaned out the technology, and plan its continued use in the future.

"The best part about the system is that it's simple and fast. It's amazingly simple to set-up, and that was the main priority for us," said Oberholtzer. "We will continue to use TurningPoint in our annual meetings as well as with sister organizations that need it every now and then. It's being used in events at least once a month - we're definitely not letting it sit around. It has worked out well for us."

For more information about Turning Technologies' audience response systems for your organization, contact us at 866-746-3015.