Club Management Software

Here, we’ll answer tech questions you might have around getting a website for your group, marketing your group and your events, online communication between members, taking dues payments, and more.

Maybe you’re starting a new group, or growing a group, or need to update an established group. Your time is valuable. You may be looking to minimize manual tasks when coordinating with members and publishing events, and you want to make things easy for your members. Or maybe keeping a small budget is important. There are several kinds of digital tools that your club may depend on, but how do you choose the tools that are the best fit for your group? How do you choose tools that help you create a vibrant group and avoid a floundering one?

We’ll cover tools for creating a website, communication tools, online payment processing, and privacy. We’ll talk about Facebook, Meetup, Google Sites, and GroupFlow as the basis of your online platform, and we’ll mention tools like Signal, Discord, Paypal and Venmo for online communication and payment processing.

Bringing Members Together Online

Let’s start with attracting new members. Smaller groups might choose a platform like Facebook or Meetup to make the group visible to prospective members. These platforms are inexpensive, and they help guide prospective members to your group. Both platforms come built in with a large number of users, and the platforms steer some of those users to your group.

Facebook and Meetup come with disadvantages too. Neither of these platforms give you access to your member contact information. Lack of contact information, such as email addresses and phone numbers creates a big challenge when you want to move off of either of these platforms onto another one. You could lose contact with your members when you try to move away from the platform.

If you want to avoid the restrictions that Facebook and Meetup impose, while keeping your costs low, you might try piecing together individual tools for a low-cost solution. For example, you can create a simple website with Google Sites, an online chat group with Signal or Discord, and payment processing with PayPal or Venmo, to take member dues and event ticket money. Prospective members can fill out a member application you create with Google Forms.

Low-Cost Tools

Stitching together separate pieces of functionality like this might be inexpensive, but there are drawbacks too. Managing these tools requires more manual labor on your part, and members get a less cohesive experience. A patchwork of tools can lead to confusion for your members. But still, this might be sufficient for smaller groups.

There are more integrated website solutions, like Wix and Squarespace. These platforms give you sophisticated tools to design your website. They also come with a large array of functionality, such as payment processing, members management and events management. Some of the functionality is relevant to clubs, and some isn’t. Learning the web design tools these platforms provide can be challenging. The member management and events management tools might be enough for your group, but sometimes, these tools don't always fit together to create the kind of cohesive experience your group needs.

Another tool for web sites is Wordpress. A website built with Wordpress is usually less expensive than Wix or Squarespace, but the tradeoff is the need for more technical expertise and the need for regular maintenance. A less expensive and relatively easy website solution is Google Sites. This can cost as little as $6 per month.

GroupFlow is another solution that includes a website. The company will create your website design for a modest setup fee, so that you don’t need to invest in the time to learn web design, or use a design tool. Or, you can choose from templates they already have.

Whichever tool you use for your website, the ideal website will have a memorable domain name, so that someone can enter the domain name into their web browser’s address bar, and it brings up your website. Domain names can be purchased for about $10-20 per year.

Let’s review the costs so far. If you have a website, you need to pay for web hosting. For a Wordpress website, this is usually going to cost somewhere between $8 and $20 per month. For a Wix or Squarespace, it’ll be around $16 to $39 per month. GroupFlow costs $60 to $120 per month. The second cost is a domain name, which is usually around $12-$20 per year.

Member Communication

The next consideration is how you plan to stay in contact with your members. How will members learn about your group’s events? How will members communicate with each other when you’re not meeting in person? Is it a privacy concern to allow members to see each other’s contact information? Will you want members to participate in an online discussion around an event? For example, attendees might want to coordinate ridesharing to the event, or ask for additional details about the event. Meetup is good at this. So is GroupFlow.

What technology do members prefer to use for staying connected electronically? Older folks tend to prefer email, while younger ones are more comfortable with apps or text messaging. Ideally, you’ll be able to provide communication choices for members. Meetup provides email and mobile app notifications. Facebook does too, but Facebook often controls or suppresses messages at its own discretion. GroupFlow provides both communication methods.

Online Payments

Does your group charge member dues, or does it charge money to attend events? Do you take money in person? How easy is it for members to pay? How easy is it for you to process payments? When taking money online, how much is the transaction fee?

A service like Paypal is often used for online payments. Sometimes PayPal charges a transaction fee, depending on the circumstances. The more official your group is, the more likely you will need to pay transaction fees. If you’re a business or a registered organization, then transaction fees probably can’t be avoided. Keep in mind that a significant number of people in your group may refuse to use Paypal. Also, you’ll need to integrate it with your website, and members will need to jump between two platforms: your website, and Paypal.

Venmo is very popular for paying and receiving money electronically. But the major downside with Venmo is that it requires you to provide a dedicated phone number, and that phone number can be associated with no more than one Venmo account. Few groups have a dedicated phone number they can use for Venmo.

If your website takes payments via bank card, there are always per-transaction fees involved. These are often charged as a percentage of the payment amount, plus a flat amount added on top. For example, for each transaction, Square charges 2.9% of the transaction amount, plus $0.30. Payment processing is built into Wix, Squarespace, and GroupFlow. You can also try to integrate a payment processing service such as Square into your existing website. That requires technical skills. With these integrated payment processing solutions, you’ll need a business bank account.

Privacy

Privacy: With many clubs, privacy is top of mind for members. If they don’t feel the group protects privacy well enough for their standards, they may not join. To protect privacy, you may want to show member profiles only to members who are current with their member dues, and the profile being shown can only be of a member who is current with their dues. When a member’s dues expire, they should lose access to member-only events, member-only discussions, and other member-only content.

How public do you want your events to be? Do you want some events to be public, while making others accessible only to members?

Integrated Solution

Ideally, you’ll have an online platform that combines all the critical features you need, so that members are delighted, not confused. If all the pieces come from separate platforms, some members will get confused trying to jump between the different pieces, and they might give up trying to apply to become a member or register for your event.

GroupFlow provides all the functionality discussed so far, and it does it as an integrated whole. It costs $120 per month for medium to large groups. Smaller groups pay $60 per month. GroupFlow is created for the unique needs of clubs.