It would be useful to have satellite communicator addresses on the roster along with contact information. This could be voluntarily entered on the member page, not publicly visible, just of use by the roster, similar to the emergency contact.

The reasoning: Unless replying to a message, a person's Garmin InReach can only be contacted directly using this InReach address. However, these are seldom shared among party members. The ability to directly contact a party member via satellite is a powerful tool in an emergency. Separated party members could communicate with each other. Overdue parties might be contacted. Additional contact would be available in an emergency callout.

Two-way satellite communicators, other than Garmin's, should have a contact address that looks like a phone number or email address.

This is similar to:
http://feedback.mountaineers.org/forums/273688-general-feedback/suggestions/33887968-promo-codes-dollar-amount-discount-for-entire-s

However, I would suggest instead of promo codes that we simply maintain a "store credit" for each member, kind of like how on Amazon you have a gift card balance. You could use the balance as payment for anything on the Mountaineers website like books, courses, donations, etc.

You could use it for things like volunteer recognition (eGift-cards) but, more importantly, we could use it to have a unified, consistent policy toward late course cancellations.

Prior to the course registration closing date, students could cancel for a full refund less the cancellation fee (the current policy). However, for those who cancel after the course has finished, our "default" solution, rather than throw it to the committee or course lead (who I guarantee want no involvement in adjudicating any "case-by-case basis") would be to credit the cost of the course fee to the member's gift-card balance.

In this way, the member would be able to use the amount toward a future offering of the course, or any other course, or any merchandise, without the club losing any money because the gift-card balance would not be redeemable to cash (which is, I believe, pretty standard practice).

In our branch, our policy tends to be, if you cancel after the course starts, you get no refund but you can take the course the next year at no additional charge. This creates admin burden for the course leads (especially if there's turnover) and harms the club because it would stand to make more if the student paid the current year's course fee (which is usually higher).

I would argue that this approach is:

1) ideal for volunteers since it will largely insulate them from these kinds of frustrating requests and means they don't have to track down old emails and old roster notes to adjudicate requests.

2) ideal for the club because it decreases revenue lost and increases future revenue by making students pay the future year course fee

3) fair to students since it ensures they never "lose" their fee and gives them more options for applying their course fee (which is also great if someone takes scrambling and realizes halfway through it's not for them!)

Allow PDF (and other browser viewable files) to be viewed in the browser.

The Seattle Sea Kayaking Committee is storing minutes as PDF documents. When you click on the file name (blue) what happens depends on the browser you are using. Some browsers (Firefox) allows the user to choose to download or view in a browser window. Other browsers (Safari and Chrome on Mac) always download the file.

If I just want to view the file, having it downloaded to my computer is inconvenient. Now I must navigate to the downloaded file, open it, and later decide if I want to keep it. This inconvenience is multiplied when I search through past minutes for when a topic has been discussed. Every document that matches must be downloaded and then opened.

It would be far more convenient if I could just open the PDF in a browser window. From there I can later decide if I wish to save the document to my computer. This functionality should be applied to all browser viewable formats. Images are the other category that come to mind.

For Course rosters people can be associated with one of a hard-coded list of roles and can be advertised as a public contact for the course in that role. We are proposing that the list of roles be extended to better support current common practices. Specifically, we propose adding the following roles:

Co-leader
Assistant Leader
Content Manager

The Co-leader and Assistant Leader roles are self explanatory. Larger courses may want to show multiple leaders as public contacts but still be able to identify a single person as the primary leader.

The Content Manager is the person who manages registration and other data for the course. This role has been common in the Mountaineers for years, but the website currently associates it with the committee roster instead of a course roster. Adding this role at the course level will allow the Content Manager to be listed as a public contact for the course (which is where most students will look), and will allow programs that offer multiple courses to have different Content Managers for different courses if they choose. (Note that due to COVID-19 some programs are offering multiple instances of the same course - the "cohort model" - to keep group sizes small, so the number of programs that offer multiple courses is increasing.)

For Committee rosters people can be associated with one of a hard-coded list of positions and can be advertised as a public committee contact in that position. The way Mountaineers Committees are typically administered has changed over the last few years. We are proposing that the list of positions be extended to better support current common practices.

We propose adding the following positions:

Safety
Vice Chair
Chair Elect
Chair Emeritus

"Safety" is meant to indicate the Safety Officer. Most Committees are now basing their Committee Charter on the Clubwide charter template, which specifies that the committee have a Safety Officer. Adding such a position allows the committee's safety officer to be publicly visible on the committee page, and could set the stage for automatically sending safety reports to that person in the future. We think the term "Officer" is weird, and propose just calling the role "Safety", similar to how the Leadership Chair role is just called "Leadership".

The standard committee charter template also specifies that committees have a Vice Chair, hence the addition of that position too.

The Chair Elect and Chair Emeritus positions are becoming more common as committee succession plans become more mature and more committees adopt the three-person Chair Elect/Chair/Chair Emeritus leadership model.

Youth forms expire every year. It would be super beneficial if there could be an email notification to families when the form(s) expire. Currently I have to go into every child's profile, check to see if their forms are current or expired, and then email each family that has a child with expired forms. This takes up a significant amount of time that I could be using to improve the curriculum and trips for our youth. Expired forms make it so the families can't sign up for trips; through observation, the families already have a hard enough time figuring out the website, so thinking to check to see if forms are expired is not generally on the top of their list.