Membership Management Software
Thanks and appreciation to Melissa Lena, Office Manager, New Jersey Library Association, who compiled this PowerPoint spreadsheet of the membership management software applications each state library associations uses (June 2016).
Below are comments following discussion that occurred on the alacro-l e-list in January 2017. See also Archive.
California Library Association
Here is California’s. I’d be happy to answer any questions you or anyone on the listserv has. Beth Wrenn-Estes, Business Manager, California Library Association, bwestes@cla-net.org
http://www.cla-net.org/?page=MembershipLevels
Membership Levels - California Library Association www.cla-net.org
Individual Voting Membership; Benefits Details Register; Eligibility to run for association officer; Eligibility to participate in association committees
California Library Association is using yourmembership (http://www.yourmembership.com). You might want to take a look. We do all our conference registration and membership with it. It has some quirks. We had hoped it would interface with QuickBooks in a better way than it does but you might want to take a look-see.
District of Columbia Library Association
This is timely for me because I am very unhappy with WildApricot - I HATE that there's no easy way to get a snapshot view of members that were active on a particular date to track longitudinal membership numbers - but I'm curious about those of you using YourMembership: I just had a call with them yesterday and it sounds like it's orders of magnitude more expensive than WildApricot.
I posted on a Prospect Research listserv about this a few months ago, and YourMembership came widely recommended, but it seems out of our price range.
The one comparably priced system I've identified is ClubExpress, which, unlike WildApricot, offers customer support. Does anyone have experience with them?
For CiviCRM users, can anyone comment on the startup costs associated? Did you do an installation yourself, or did you pay a consultant for the implementation?
I'm wondering if any of you have membership systems with a listserv function, like this one. Also, do you allow nonmembers to subscribe to your chapter mailing list?
Is there any institutional history on why ALA doesn't have a central AMS that lets users manage their chapters, and gives chapter administrators privileges with that platform?
Florida Library Association
The Florida Library Association began using Memberclicks in the fall of 2016
Idaho Library Association
Our state library association is on the hunt for a membership/payment management software to replace the unwieldy multiple spreadsheets--manual emails--complicated Wordpress plugin system we currently have for maintaining our membership rosters.
Ideally, we're looking for features like:
- web-based
- provides members-only access to files and information
- generates automated membership renewal emails and lists of lapsed members
- allows for multiple levels/types of membership
- accepts payments/donations on the fly
- supports QuickBooks integration
- look and feel can be customized to match our website
Does your state association use such a program? What do you love/hate about your management solution? Are there questions you wish you'd asked before deciding?
Kentucky Library Association
The Kentucky Library Association is wanting to look at revamping our current dues structure. In addition to what system is being used for dues collection and management, I would love to know about each state's dues structure (flat rate vs scale). And do any states offer a "corporate" membership, where say one library can pay a lump sum and it covers all librarians. If so, what does that look like. Thank you in advance for you input and information.
Mississippi Library Association
The Mississippi Library Association uses Wild Apricot for membership registration, event registration, and for our website content management system. It has quirks, but works well for us. Our only concern is that the price went up for us this year.
Nebraska Library Association
Nebraska Library Association is using YourMembership for membership and event registration.
We used to use memberclicks. After a learning curve, we've become more comfortable with YourMembership and its automated features so we recently changed from a calendar membership year to a rolling year. We do not use it to interface with QuickBooks.
We used to have a scaled membership based on salary and converted to set categories a couple years ago. It is working well and most of our membership falls within our Annual category. I hope that we can add a corporate/community membership for libraries in the future and would like to hear how other associations structure it.
Our membership page is at http://www.nebraskalibraries.org/?page=join
New England Library Association
NELA uses Wild Apricot right now. For the most part it is good for the membership database side of things. I think it ticks off all the boxes for what you said you were looking for.
We are struggling with the events and registration part of what they offer and would like to find something that would either do everything (membership & registration) or two products that could be integrated and work together.
I would be very interested in learning what you find out, if you could share that with us.
New Jersey Library Association
NJLA uses civicrm as our software. It also does meeting and conference registration.
The New Jersey Library Association uses the open source product CiviCRM for membership, event registration, donations, mailings and email list maintenance. Like any one stop solution it has its quirks and we utilize some support from a third party vendor for technical support. It ticks all the boxes listed in the original email, though I can't speak for the integration with Quickbooks.
New York Library Association
I wanted to chime in – I participated in an online sales demo for NationBuilder.
It is indeed spiffy, and offers some really cool advocacy tools – a vast majority of which are already provided to every chapter by ALA via the CapWiz/Engage platform – FOR FREE.
Engage allows for online petitions, and all the same advocacy related features as NationBuilder.
As for volunteer management, it does not offer many of the prerequisite function of many of the other membership database platforms that are available (and in the case of most chapters) and already in use.
Tracking volunteers in NationBuilder would be either redundant to your membership database, or – if you don’t have a membership database, lacking in many of the critical functions needed for managing a membership association.
Short version – skip NationBuilder and make use of Engage.
Oklahoma Library Association
Oklahoma uses YourMembership. We started with Affiniscape and went with YourMembership in 2014 when it merged.
I believe we are as happy with this system as we would be with any system. It is a complete system and our members are learning to use it.
The webmaster and I like the system even though occasionally it takes us a while to figure something out. We have had to use customer service very rarely.
Tennessee Library Association
Tennessee’s dues structure can be found at this link https://tnla.site-ym.com/?dues We do not have a corporate lump sum for a library, but that is an interesting option.
Virginia Library Association
The Virginia Library Association uses Memberclicks. We signed on when it was in it’s “classic” mode and we’ll be switching over next month to their more responseive site, so I may have more positiove things to say after that time. Overall, I like it and I think it’s made a lot of things easier, but it’s needlessly clunky for users.
Washington Library Association
We are also very grateful for this thread! Here in Washington state we use the latest version of MemberClicks, and while we have many praises for them, there are some issues that are frustrating.
PROS:
- Their customer service is incredibly responsive; we have had times where we contacedt them several times a week!
- It’s web-based; manages all of our conference, workshop, and event registrations, as well as membership dues and renewals.
- It hosts our E-lists for all of our Sections, Divisions, Committees, etc., and it has a robust contact center with templates to use for our weekly digests and other all-member communications. And it does allow us to subscribe non-members to our weekly emails and other general communications.
- It sends out reminders for renewals, lapsed notices, etc.
- For an association our size, the price point doesn’t break the bank.
CONS:
- It is supposed to be compatible with QuickBooks but we continue to struggle with its functionality.
- If someone wants to pay for conference registrations, memberships, etc. for multiple members with a credit card, each transaction must be completed separately (this is incredibly time consuming).
- There are minor issues with creating forms and how it generates invoices, etc., that we would like to change, but they may not cause problems for others.
- There is extremely limited storage for email accounts. We have to manually archive emails elsewhere (also time consuming and frustrating).
- Exporting data can be cumbersome.