Hello Friends,

I'm interested in learning about how various organizations manage their membership. Are you using a commercially available purpose specific package? Or perhaps, something like MS Office or Google Docs with a database/spreadsheet of your own design?

If you are not comfortable putting this sort of information on a message board please send me a PM.

Thanks,

I have been trying to find this info. out as well. There is commercial software or web based systems available, but they are rather expensive and for a small organization most of membership dues would go just to pay for the management software, thus making the whole point moot.

Please clarify - are you interested in software that helps you manage information about your membership list, such as contact information, something that is useful for scheduling people into slots, or something used for controlling activities and making assignments?

dave

I'm interested in managing:

Membership contact info
Membership type
Renewal date tracking for 1, 2 & 3 year membership
Donation tracking
Generating mailing lists
Tracking referrals and gift memberships
Tracking volunteer hours

There is a huge value in tracking and managing these things. Not only in dollars and cents but in building membership and volunteers. Like brother Rick stated, some of the packages can cost the full amount paid in membership dues.

How many members are you planning on tracking -- a few hundred or a few thousand -- and are you planning on having your members renew on line, or by mail?

You should also look at the information and software packages offered at Techsoup.

Bob H

I'm looking at under 500 members but would like to grow that number. We do not have online memberships right now.

Add them as soon as possible. I'm a member of a model railroad club, and I used to have to mail in my dues. I only write about a ten checks per year, mostly for magazine renewals and the like. Everything else is paid online. So I have to dig out my checkbook, find some stamps ("Where did I put them? Am I out? I don't want to go to the post office!")

It was a hassle, my dues were late, they'd send me a reminder, etc, etc. Now we can pay by paypal, I get the notice, two or three clicks and it's done, on time, no hassles on their end, I have a receipt. Quick, easy and efficient.

Anything that makes it easier for your members to pay their dues, and thus more likely to join or renew, should be embraced as quickly as you can.

This is unfortunately a very, very sore point with organizations. You have the generational disparity of persons who used to do it the way they used to do it & refuse to "modernize" to the point of taking their marbles with them (and probably the membership list printed on paparyus) or getting THEIR way by holding hostage their "services".

When I see a "send check to...." on a website for whatever reason there is a major problem with communication and outreach. And that probably is the surface of the problem. There now is no earthly reason for membership and donations to not be made electronically - and the organizations newsletter to boot!
I have not personally looked at membership software, but I'm confident that there is a fairly wide variety of products out there to accommodate groups ranging from the 4th & Drucker 3rd Eye Teacup Museum to the Metropolitain Museum of Art. There may even be freeware/shareware.
What is needed is a dedicated person or persons to undertake the project AND provide sufficient documentation to have a replacement easily take over when aliens beam the above up to meet Elvis.
What the lack of now standard electronic communication methods means for an organization is the appearance of being static & not reaching out to new and different members. Ditto for the website which hasn't been updated in a year or more, which is best not brought up here.
As for the folks who worry about privacy issues - a statement to the effect of "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" is all that is needed, or "send check or a case of Scotch to...".
The issue more is with the management of the organization and those tasked to perform those duties. Realise that if the old Membership Chaiman (and I mean old) does not want to be dragged kicking into the the 21st century, someone else has to be cultivated for this mission critical task. If all the people in the organization just want to scrape paint or watch the turntable spin, Houston, we got a problem.

It is not a matter of scale you need to worry about, competent software can handle anything from a score to thousands of members just as easily. It is the ancillary services and modules, i.e. features which add value and cost. Do you want to link the newsletter into the membership, do you want to group your donors by class, do you want to send an e-mail blitz by zip code - all desirable, but now you have to focus on a specific software.

Finally, your platform should be chosen wisely. Do you want the software as an app on your I-phone?, a PC running Windows 2000?, on a Unix Server?, in the "cloud". What you choose now determines maintainability, scaleability and future usefullness.

I am a proponent of a digital membership system along with anything repeditive that can be computerized. Perhaps an inventory system would be nice so you can find that UC valve in the B&M boxcar - or was it in the Metro-North baggage car - or did we trade it for an "L triple".

My NRHS Chapter uses an Access database for most membership tasks. I'm not the Membership Chairman, so I don't know the database details. However, for those of you that are 501(c)(3) organizations, I urge you to check out http://www.techsoup.org. They make quite a few programs from major companies freely available to non-profits, once you register with them.

I handle the membership, web site and social media for my organization. The membership data is in Access, the web site has on-line membership and donation payment (via Paypal), and I send something out periodically to our social media sites (Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook) to let our followers know we're still alive and kicking.

As far as a membership database goes, using Google Spreadsheets is a godsend.

It doesn't let you do the nice relational stuff of Access, but it DOES let multiple people access it, and have the "latest" data at all times.

It's what we do for the Conrail Historical Society, which is very helpful, because a number of different parties need access to the info (approving membership accounts on the website, sending out mailings, etc...).

Then it all comes down to the design of your spreadsheet, which will vary depending on what your actual organizational needs are.

The WW&F Railway Museum uses Giftworks Premium, now produced by FrontStream. http://www.giftworksconnect.com. We purchased this about 5 years ago now for about $800, we now pay $90/month for support and upgrades (so I suspect the price is now much higher than $800). It allows you to set your own renewal dates, generate thank-you letters from donations, and you can get giving reports (important for IRS 990 forms if for nothing else). There are new versions every year.

Prior to this, I had built a home-grown MS Access database which frankly didn't work very well because I didn't know much about Access. After another attempt at a home-grown solution I asked myself why were we trying to re-invent the wheel when somebody out there had already done it. I undertook a pretty exhaustive search, and thought this was pricey but not too pricey.



I am not sure if Giftworks can do this.



Giftworks also has a Volunteer module that you can (for extra money of course), but it didn't fit our needs. I track volunteer hours with a home-grown program using MySQL and a purchased program builder. There are lots of volunteer trackers out there, but all the ones that I have seen want you to enter the number of hours worked per day. Our volunteers sign a paper log book with begin and enter times, which my program allows me to enter so that I can calculate down to the minute the amount of time they volunteer. I'm lazy and don't want to try to figure out the number of hours between 8:47 AM and 5:21 PM, I let the computer do that.

Anybody ever thought of using punch cards like they use at the workplace to "clock in"?
there is also some good tools out there like
www.tracksmart.com Free for 20 employees or under (last time I checked)

The trouble with most of the volunteer hour tracking software that you can buy is that it handles up to X volunteers. Usually the "X" is way too low for us - we typically have 150 volunteers or more during the year. Some of them only show up for two days a year, but we still have to count them.

PastPerfect, a museum/archive management software, has a membership management component that addresses the needs you listed, Tom.

If your question is related to HRCV, they already have PastPerfect.



James Reaves
Baltimore, MD