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Membership systems

Every membership organisation has rules that no off the shelf plugin quite fits: a concessionary rate, a committee approval, a renewal date everyone shares, a grace period nobody wrote down. Where members also need documents back from you, that part is [a client portal](/services/client-portal). A membership system is those rules, made to work without somebody in the office keeping it all straight by hand.

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Ten of my fifteen years were spent on enterprise platforms, mostly ServiceNow, for FTSE 100 companies, central government departments, and local authorities. Rules with exceptions nobody wrote down are the normal case there, not the difficult one.

A member record beside a renewal year, with reminders sent ahead of the date and the payment marked paid

Where it usually hurts

Renewal season is manual
Somebody exports a list, sends the emails, chases the non payers, and reconciles what came in. It works, and it eats a month of a person's year, and it goes wrong quietly when that person is on leave.
Lapsed is a grey area
The date passes, the payment has not arrived, and the question of what a member can still see is usually settled by whoever is asked. Written down properly, it becomes a rule the system can apply without anyone feeling harshly treated.
The tiers are more complicated than the software allows
Student rates, retired rates, corporate seats, honorary members. Standard membership plugins offer three tiers and a bolt on. Real organisations have exceptions that predate everyone in the room.

What the job covers

  • Joining, in a flow that matches how you actually accept people
  • Renewals with reminders, and a payment link that works on a phone
  • Tiers and exceptions as you describe them, not as the software prefers
  • Member only content, gated by rules you can explain to a member
  • An admin view for the person who has to answer the phone about it

What it has to talk to

Payments and direct debits
Stripe for cards, which brings Apple Pay and Google Pay with it, and direct debit through GoCardless or Stripe for the ones who would rather not think about it again. Both reconcile back to the member record, so the answer to has this person paid lives in one place instead of three.
Your accounts package
Renewal income has to arrive somewhere your finance person recognises. Exports are shaped around their month end instead of the format the payment provider happened to offer.
Email that is not a mailshot
Renewal reminders are transactional and have to arrive, which is a different problem from the newsletter. They go through a service built for it, sent from your own domain with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC set up properly, so they land in inboxes instead of the promotions tab in March. Getting that wrong is the single most common reason a renewal cycle underperforms.

A worked approach, not a client

How I would approach a renewal cycle that runs on spreadsheets

  1. 01

    Write the rules down first

    Every exception, every grace period, and every concession, in one document, agreed. This is the hard part, and it is usually the first time it has all been in one place.

  2. 02

    Automate the boring three quarters

    Reminders, payment links, receipts, and status changes run themselves. The awkward quarter still reaches a human, on purpose.

  3. 03

    Give the office a real view

    One screen showing who has paid, who has not, and who is in the grace period, so the person answering the phone is not guessing.

Questions I get asked about this

The ones that come up on almost every first call. If yours is not here, ask it and you will get a straight answer.

We have unusual membership rules. Is that a problem?

It is the reason to build rather than buy. Off the shelf membership tools, and the WordPress plugins that do the same job, handle simple tiers and then ask you to change your rules to fit them. Building it means the concessionary rate your council agreed in 2014 still works, and nobody has to remember to apply it by hand.

Can it handle direct debits as well as cards?

Yes, and most organisations want both: cards for people renewing at the last minute, direct debit for the ones who would rather set it and forget it. Both reconcile back to the same member record.

What happens when someone does not renew?

Whatever you decide, applied consistently. Usually a grace period, then a change of access, with the member able to fix it themselves at any point. The value of writing it down is that everyone gets treated the same way.

Can you import our existing members?

Yes, and the import is usually where the interesting conversations happen. Exporting the list is straightforward. Deciding what to do with the twelve records that have two email addresses, or the member who has been honorary since 2009 with nothing written down, is the part worth doing carefully.

Can members change tier part way through a year?

Yes, if your rules allow it, and the system applies whatever you decide about pro rata amounts and refunds. This is the sort of rule that usually lives in one person's judgement, and writing it down is often more valuable than automating it.

What can we see about renewals as they happen?

One screen with who has paid, who has not, who is in a grace period, and what has been chased. The point is that the person answering the phone in renewal season can see the answer instead of asking someone to check a spreadsheet.

How do we stop renewal emails going to spam?

Send them as transactional mail from your own domain, with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC configured, and keep them separate from your newsletter. Mixing the two is the usual mistake: the newsletter gets marked as promotional, and the renewal notice inherits the reputation.

Is it PCI compliant?

Card details never reach the site. Stripe handles the payment and the site stores a reference, which keeps you out of the scope that makes compliance expensive. That is the standard arrangement and the one I would recommend even if you asked for something else.

What does it cost to run once it is built?

Hosting plus your payment provider's percentage, and very little else. There are no per member licence fees, no seats, and no tier you get pushed into at a certain membership number, and the public side of it is an association website if that is what you are running, which is where hosted membership platforms tend to get expensive.

Related

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