Non-Profit Membership Management Software

[oldmannickels]

I volunteer at a small non-profit which is a community organization. Basically hold neighborhood meetings, organize cleanups, point of contact for city reps. To fund the organization we collect voluntary membership fees from residents. All of this is tracked in a huge excel file that I keep current.

That's all fine, but what drives me crazy is every time someone sees me they ask if their membership is due. Is there a online database tool that I could use where members log in to see if they are current or not without seeing everyone's information?

[Paul | pdgessler]

Have you heard of CiviCRM? This might be more work than you bargained for, but setting it up could save time/frustration in the long run if you are managing a lot of members and/or significant turnover of membership.

It is free, open source software but would require setting up your own hosting for the system or using a provider that would host this system for your non-profit (for a fee). Once you have the membership database created, you can integrate this backend with various front end website systems (such as Wordpress) to display selected data to members. You can also use it to manage contact information, renewal reminders, email campaigns, events, and lots of other things that you may or may not be doing manually (or in other systems) right now.

Depending on your org's size, this might be complete overkill, so don't dive in without thinking it through! And if you or someone else in the org don't have a tech background, it may not be for you. But I thought I'd throw it out there since I've been researching these systems myself lately and I saw that you haven't had any replies. If anyone knows of a simpler tool for oldmannickels' immediate need, by all means let us know!