Membership Management Overview

Use Membership Management to organize member accounts, membership types, applications, renewals, and the member-facing pages that support them.

What membership management includes

Membership management spans a few connected areas of the Club Management Portal:

Members for member accounts and profile data
Membership Types for dues, renewal rules, and membership-specific roles
Applications for applicant intake and review
Membership Renewals for renewal timing and member status changes
Member-facing pages such as the dashboard, roster, and profile
Roles and permissions for access to content and administrative tasks

Member accounts and self-service

Members can sign in to their account on your site and manage their own details. Their member pages — the dashboard, profile, and roster — appear in your site navigation once they sign in, based on what their permissions allow.

Those pages include:

the member dashboard, the main landing page for logged-in members
the profile page, where members update their own information
the roster page, the member directory
payment history, linked from the profile area

From their profile, members can update their contact details, choose what shows on the roster, and set whether they want to receive electronic communications. None of this changes anything for other members, so they can adjust it whenever they like.

Membership types and roles

Membership Types define more than just labels.

They are used to control things like:

dues and renewal amounts
renewal timing and grace periods
membership-specific roles
filtering in member tools such as reports and roster settings

Because membership types affect renewals, permissions, and member organization, they are one of the first areas to review when setting up a club site.

Applications and applicants

If your club accepts online applications, Applications become part of the membership workflow. Here's how the flow usually goes.

applicants submit forms on the website
authorized staff review those submissions in the portal
approved applicants move into the club's membership process

The exact review steps depend on how your club chooses to handle applications and permissions, so you can shape this to fit how your board already works.

Renewals, payments, and lapsed access

Membership management also includes renewal status and payment handling.

Depending on your setup, Clubistry can support:

membership renewal tracking
lapsed-member access rules
Stripe-backed online payments
payment history for successful membership payments, paid forms, and e-commerce orders

Even after a membership lapses, the member can still sign in and reach their dashboard and profile, so they always have a way to renew and stay connected.

The member pages

Clubistry comes with a set of member pages already created for you in Pages, so you don't have to build them from scratch. There's a Members page that opens to the member dashboard, and grouped under it are the dashboard, roster, and profile pages.

These pages are limited to logged-in members, so the public never sees them. You can edit their content and adjust who can view them in Pages, just like any other page, and you decide whether and where they appear in your site's navigation.

Roster and board-related displays

Membership management overlaps with your member directory and board displays. These use two separate sets of privacy choices, and it helps to know the difference.

the Roster uses the member's roster privacy choices, such as Show my email address on the roster and Show my phone number on the roster
the Board page uses separate Board-page privacy choices, such as Show my email address on the Board page and Show my phone number on the Board page

Each member controls these on their own profile, and the two sets are independent. A member can choose to share their phone number on the roster without sharing it on the Board page, or the other way around.

A practical setup order

For most clubs, this order works well:

Roles — create any custom roles and the membership-type roles you'll need. These have to exist before Membership Types can point to them. (System roles like Admin and Board are already set up for you.)
Membership Types — define dues, renewal timing, and the role each type grants.
Renewal Reminders and Notifications — set these up right after Membership Types, while renewals are top of mind.
Member Custom Fields — these feed your applications, member profiles, imports, reports, and roster.
Applications — build on your Membership Types and custom fields.
Import Members — bring in your existing roster.
Board Positions — assign these last, once member accounts exist.

A few things sit alongside this list rather than in it:

Stripe payments need to be connected before you can test online renewals, paid forms, or your store. See Set Up Clubistry Payments.
Connecting your own domain is the very last step, when you're ready to go live. See Use Your Own Domain.