Why Membership Renewal Automation is so Important

Introduction

There are some tasks that every club has to juggle, and one of the biggest challenges lies in handling the list of active members and processing membership renewal. There are lots of steps involved, and it can take a tremendous amount of time for you and your other volunteers to communicate out and track every individual member through the process.

By automating your membership renewal process with Clubistry, you’re saving yourself time and energy, and reducing errors along the way.  Give your members the tools they need to manage their own renewal online with Clubistry’s self-service membership portal, improving retention and keeping your roster up to date. 

Just Managing the List of Active Members is Hard

Before we even tackle the renewal process itself, consider the Herculean task of managing your existing member list.  How often do you assess the state of your roster? How clean is it? Is it up-to-date? Especially as your roster grows, the likelihood of outdated information increases, creating a management headache. The larger your roster, the greater the chance that some data is stale. An outdated list poses not only logistical challenges but also risks alienating members with communication lost to an old address. 

How do you update your list?  If you’ve got a chairperson in charge of membership, perhaps you’re handling updates to the list through one-off requests from members.  Emails come in at odd hours, whenever that member might remember they need to notify the club of their new contact information.  The person responsible for getting that posted to your “master roster” has to sift through their email to find these updates.  All of this happens slowly over time and it’s all too easy to miss an update.

When Members Slip Through the Cracks

All of these changes about a member’s information happen slowly, because they’re not obvious or easy—and because in most cases, everyone is a volunteer.  As a result, the truth about a member's status can be elusive. Is it tucked away in an email, or perhaps lost in snail mail?

Even when you’ve got a trusty Excel file called “Club Master List.xlsx”, relying solely on spreadsheets proves limiting, leaving room for members to slip through the cracks.

Have you ever had a member drop out or disappear because they weren’t getting updates from the club anymore, due to a bad address or similar problem?  If clubs are all about belonging to a group, there is nothing more alienating than being left out.  It’s up to administrators to manage the membership roster responsibly and in a timely manner, to battle attrition and keep everyone up to date.

The Tidal Wave of Renewal Season

If your club all renews at the same time of year, renewal season can feel like a tidal wave hitting all at once. Coordinating a massive renewal effort simultaneously for the entire club is a recipe for chaos. The logistical nightmare of processing renewals manually not only increases the likelihood of errors but is also an incredibly time-consuming process. 

• The first step is sending out the renewal notices, which depends on your membership roster being up to date. As we’ve already seen, managing your list can be a real challenge.  

• As payments come in, you need to keep track of who has paid, and if they paid the correct amount. 

• As the close of your renewal period approaches, you have to decide if you’re sending out reminders to those who have yet to pay. 

• When the renewal period is complete, you have to go through your roster and remove those who haven’t renewed. 

Hey, You've Got a Life Outside of Administering Your Club

Managing renewals via email or other manual methods is not only tedious but also prone to errors. With life's myriad responsibilities, spending hours on administrative tasks can become a burden. Automating the renewal process frees you up to get back to being a part of the club, and not just an administrator.  

This may be the biggest pain point for membership renewal chairpersons.  For 2-3 months (or more) out of every year, you’re burdened with the stress of keeping up with everyone else’s renewal, and doing so much of the work yourself by sifting through email and physical mail and carrier pigeons.  There’s got to be a better way!  (Hint: there is—check out how Clubistry can help you with membership renewal)

Juggling the Responsibility with Multiple People is Tricky

If managing member renewal relies on just one person, then the whole effort is riding on one person’s ability to keep it all straight.  But adding more people to the mix doesn’t necessarily make this easier.

When managing member renewal is a shared responsibility, coordinating efforts among multiple individuals adds an additional layer of complexity. Miscommunication and coordination gaps can result in missed renewals and frustrated members. This sort of juggling between volunteers is one of the main ways in which the spreadsheet roster can get messed up, with different versions in the hands of different volunteers. Merging these back into one document can be further time consuming, and can lead to further errors. 

Conclusion

At Clubistry, we believe running a club should be fun. That’s why we’re working to make this monumental task of wrangling members just a little bit better, through the use of good tools.  

In the world of club management, automating your membership renewal is the key to streamlining operations and ensuring a smooth experience for both administrators and members. Clubistry is the solution that takes the hassle out of renewal, keeping track of member status for you, and allowing you to focus on what truly matters—cultivating a thriving and engaged club community.