BOMA Fort Worth Gets Renewals Done in Hours with GrowthZone AMS

Discover how BOMA Fort Worth streamlined renewals, events, and communications with GrowthZone AMS, replacing days of manual work with hours and recovering processing fees the association had been absorbing.

Running Solo, Never Unsupported

Michelle Lynn, who has run BOMA Fort Worth for 14 years, handles nearly everything for the association’s 220-plus members on her own, from event registration to invoicing to governance. After her previous AMS lost the hands-on support a one-person office depends on, she moved to GrowthZone AMS. Renewals now take hours instead of days, and an ASAE training session uncovered $20,000 to $25,000 a year in processing fees the association had been absorbing.

Renewals in Hours, Not Days

A full dues renewal cycle that once took a couple of days now takes Michelle a matter of hours, with members paying online more often and renewals coming in faster each year.

Support That Stays on the Line

From a first renewal walked through step by step to a same-day fix for an admin access issue, Michelle has found GrowthZone support there whenever she calls.

Fewer Tools to Juggle

Built-in forms, surveys, and an email designer replaced SurveyMonkey and Constant Contact, ending the need to sync a member list across separate systems.

Recovered Processing Fees

A one-on-one training session revealed BOMA Fort Worth was absorbing an estimated $20,000 to $25,000 a year in card fees. Zero Fee now passes that cost to the member at checkout.

A Staff of One: Running an Entire Association Solo, With a Little Help

Michelle Lynn has run BOMA Fort Worth for 14 years. Today the organization has a little over 220 members, on the smaller side within the BOMA network, though creeping toward medium. She handles nearly everything herself: event registration, invoicing, governance, day-to-day member management. She has a board and volunteers, but when it comes to running the systems, it's her alone.

She does contract out the deeper financial work, bank reconciliations and budget entry go through an outside bookkeeper, and her board still prefers paper checks over any bill-pay platform. But the operational core of the association, dues, events, communications, runs through Michelle and GrowthZone.

From a Spreadsheet to a Platform That Outgrew Its Own Support

When Michelle started 14 years ago, BOMA Fort Worth had no AMS at all, just an Excel spreadsheet. She eventually moved the association onto MemberClicks, a relationship she genuinely liked, until MemberClicks was acquired and the hands-on support she'd relied on as a one-person office started to fade.

"Being a one-person office, you don't know how to do everything and you need some help figuring things out... when they sell and they kind of lose that handholding feeling that you sometimes need when you're working through the process, that's when I started to look around."

She met GrowthZone's Amy at an ASAE expo, kept the conversation going across a few BOMA conferences, and made the switch roughly three years ago. Talking to other BOMA locals who'd already made the same move helped, especially learning that BOMA Dallas, a fellow BOMA local with real member overlap given the geographic proximity, was about to switch as well.

Dues Renewals: From Days to Hours

Before GrowthZone, running a full renewal cycle took Michelle a couple of days. The first time she ran it in GrowthZone, working membership type by membership type and following GrowthZone's step-by-step renewal guide, she got nervous enough to call support directly. A rep walked her through the entire process, confirming each step in real time, and by the end of that call, every invoice was out.

That renewal process now takes her a matter of hours instead of days. Members pay online more often now, though anyone who still prefers to mail a check can print their invoice easily from the confirmation email. Renewals have also started coming in faster year over year, meaning less time spent chasing people down.

Events, Support, and What Got Replaced

Setting up events used to be a task Michelle dreaded. Now, since most of BOMA Fort Worth's events repeat year over year, she copies a prior event, adjusts the dates, and she's done, work she says she can knock out casually while watching TV in the evening.

Support has come through for her directly more than once. Built-in forms and surveys let her drop SurveyMonkey entirely, and GrowthZone's email designer replaced Constant Contact, no more manually syncing a separate member list across two systems. When her own back-end admin access mysteriously got restricted with no clear cause, a support call resolved it the same day.

"Anytime I've called them, anytime I've called customer support, they have been on the line figuring out the situation and it's fixed. I've never waited long on a call."

One integration is still on her list rather than in use: connecting GrowthZone to QuickBooks. She expects it to be a real time-saver once she gets to it this year.

A Training Session That Paid for Itself

Michelle's clearest example of ongoing support came from a one-on-one session at ASAE. Two issues had been nagging at her: BOMA Fort Worth's membership directory wasn't displaying correctly, occasionally letting non-members see member-only content, and something was off in how the association handled credit card fees on invoices.

The directory issue got fixed. The invoicing issue turned out to be worth real money: BOMA Fort Worth had been absorbing the cost of credit card processing rather than passing it to members, an estimated $20,000 to $25,000 a year in fees the association was quietly eating. With Zero Fee configured correctly, that cost now passes to the member at checkout instead.

"We were losing 20 to 25,000 dollars a year... we were able to recoup that."

Advice to Other One-Person Offices

Asked what she'd tell another solo association staffer on the fence about switching, Michelle doesn't undersell the effort involved, but she's clear about where she lands.

"It is a daunting task to take on a new AMS, but the team that you have behind you with GrowthZone will make your job easier and less painful in the end... it's definitely worth the change."

Her one practical piece of advice: plan the timing carefully, both around your own schedule and around when your old system needs to fall off, rather than trying to force it into a busy stretch.

We were losing 20 to 25,000 dollars a year... we were able to recoup that.

Michelle Lynn

Executive Director, BOMA Fort Worth

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