Membership fees for non-profit organisation

I've been asked to help set up a membership subscription for a non-profit local group, to help them collect online payments. The payments are very small (currently $10/year) and very few members (<30) but they'd like to get more people joining annually, for income but also to get more volunteers in the future. They are a local eisteddfod (music/dance/performance) for young people that has an annual 10 day event.

They are on the lowest level website plan, so don't have commerce options. They are ok with the 9% fee that Squarespace would take from a membership subscription, and they can build it in to their membership fee. They don't really have anything to offer in a membership site subscription, aside from an annual supporters morning tea type event. And I thought I could suggest reserved seating for members. Really the likely members are older people in the community who enjoy supporting young artistic kids. 

I haven't set up a membership site before.

Am I right in thinking that if we continue at the website level plan and use the free member site option we would have the 9% fee plus a stripe processing fee? Is that all that is needed? I started setting it up but got confused with the requirement to include at least one digital product in the membership option. But to do that we'd need to upgrade the website subscription plan which isn't mentioned when Squarespace says you can have a free member site with the 9% processing fee.

Are there simpler options for an annual membership fee for a non-profit? Am I overlooking something?

I'm in Australia if that makes a difference.

Hey Michelle, I don't have an exact answer for you other than to share I would proceed cautiously. I set up a membership site for a non-profit about a year ago and ran into the issue of having to upgrade (then upgrade again) for lower transaction fees etc. I believe SQS has improved their transparency on pricing fees somewhat but for the costs you're describing, I'd really encourage looking into a different membership system that won't have as many additional processing and site fees.

I forget the investment for MembershipWorks or Memberspace but the options for renewals, communications and reporting etc. seem to be better overall–especially if you don't need a gated member area for people to access here. The member access area is why I opted for SQS originally for my client but am regretting it as the farther we got into using their system. We keep discovering more issues and just basic things that are missing somehow. Like being able to see a list of members who canceled...crazy to me that these things aren't included already.

Sorry this isn't an exact answer but hopefully some helpful input. 

Edit: I forgot about this option > https://www.zeffy.com/home/membership-application-form-nonprofits-associations I haven't used it personally yet but learned about it recently and thought it might be an option for you.

On 9/20/2024 at 3:57 AM, LJCarter said:

Sorry this isn't an exact answer but hopefully some helpful input. 

Thanks LJ. I've been digging a lot into this and there are a lot of membership software options but they all seem so crazy expensive and have too many features for a simple membership need. I'm thinking I might encourage them to stick with bank deposits and manual payments.

I have found this UK Membermojo looks ok, https://membermojo.co.uk/mm/pricing, and CheddarUp looked great until I found out that you have to have a US bank account to use it. Zeffy looks amazing but also only available in US or Canada 😞 

This plugin for Google forms looks ok but you still need Stripe anyway. https://workspace.google.com/u/0/marketplace/app/payable_forms/353824655747.  I don't know why stripe doesn't have an option inbuilt (you can set up recurring invoices but looks like you have to do them one at a time. Same with Square. Unless I'm overlooking something!

Michelle