Duesvo answers

Every answer below is aimed at a question people measurably search for, is written from named sources, and links to the page that handles the job itself. None of them is a landing page in disguise.

Answers for the person who keeps a membership rather than the person who holds one: what the record has to contain, what the card and the directory can honestly claim, what the agreement has to say, and which of the software categories on sale is the one your body is actually shopping for. Every figure comes from the numbers you enter and the method printed beside them.

• Membership cards: the three fields that make one checkable at the door

  A membership card is a claim about the record. Here is what it must carry, and the 3 fields that decide whether anybody can check it.

• Digital membership cards: only as honest as the record behind them

  A digital card is issued, not designed. What the software must know, and the 3 record fields it reads before it can issue one.

• QR code membership card: what the code should point at, and what the door needs

  A QR code is a lookup, not proof. How to create membership cards a door can check in 2 seconds, and what the code should point at.

• Membership directory template: the fields it holds, and the consent behind each

  A directory is the membership list with consent applied. The 6 fields it holds, and the one question to ask before publishing it.

• Membership agreement: what it has to say about renewal and lapsing

  An agreement exists to answer 4 questions at renewal. What it must say, and why the record is what makes it enforceable.

• Membership CRM: what it does that a spreadsheet cannot, when one administrator runs the body

  A membership CRM answers who belongs today. The 4 questions that tell you whether your body needs one, or a record.

• Association software: what association management covers, and which parts a small body needs

  An AMS is a suite; a membership record is one part of it. The 8 jobs an AMS covers, and how to tell which 3 you need.

• Nonprofit membership management software: what it has to do that donor software does not

  Members are not donors. The 3 fields nonprofit membership software must hold that a donation tool does not, and why it matters at renewal.

• Membership form: the six fields the record needs, and what to leave off

  A joining form should ask 6 things. What to ask, what to stop asking, and how the answers become the record.

• Member database: the six fields it holds, and when software earns its price

  A membership database is 6 fields and a rule. What it holds, and what the free tiers cap before your renewal spike.

• Membership management system: the job, and the questions that separate real products

  Five names, one job. What every membership management system must do, and the 3 questions that separate them.

• Free membership software: the four shapes of free, and where each one stops

  Free comes in 4 shapes and each stops somewhere different. Which cap you are choosing, before you load a year of members.

• Membership tiers: how many a body should have, and what each costs to administer

  Every tier is admin forever. How many to run, and the 3 tests a tier must pass before you add it.

• Membership tracking: the three lists, and what a churn rate is really telling you

  Tracking is 3 lists: due, overdue, lapsed. What each must show, and how churn is worked out from your own dates.

• Alumni management software: the record an alumni body needs before the network

  An alumni body has 2 problems and one is a record. What the database must hold before any network is worth building.

• Association CRM: what it adds over a membership record, and who should buy one

  An association CRM assumes staff. The 3 things it adds over a record, and whether your body has anyone to use them.

• Non profit membership software compared with membership software for clubs

  Nonprofit and club software differ in 2 places: how dues are treated, and what proof of membership is for.

• Membership certificate: what it should say, and when a body should issue one

  A certificate is a dated claim. The 4 lines it must carry, and why an undated one is a problem years later.

• Membership payment system: what it has to do beyond taking a card

  Taking the money is the easy half. What a payment system must do to match dues to members, in 3 steps.

• Non profit association management software: what a tax exempt association needs that a charity CRM does not

  Members, dues and chapters on one side, the annual return on the other. What an exempt association needs from software, and where the free tiers stop.

• Club management systems: what they run that a membership record does not

  Courts, lanes, sessions and a till on one side; members, dues and renewals on the other. Which a club buys first, and why it matters to a US club.