Case study

Association membership and events management system

Membership years, applications, event registrations and board information in one system.

Home screen with the association's mission and membership actions at the top: join, renew or end membership.

ProblemMembership cannot be a simple tick box. It has a start, an end, a payment status and a history that must survive even when a member leaves and returns a few years later.

SolutionMembership and payments are recorded separately for each year. Applications are kept apart from members, and both members and external participants can register for events.

Context

Running an association is measured in years. Membership runs from one year to the next, fees are paid per period, and the board admits new members by reviewing their applications.

While there are a dozen or so members, all of this fits in a spreadsheet. As the membership grows, the administrator spends more and more time working out who is a member this year and who is not.

What needed solving

Membership cannot be a simple "yes" or "no" tick box. It has a start, an end, a payment status and a history that must survive even when a member leaves and comes back two years later.

Registration for association events often depends on membership: members pay one price, guests another, and some events are open to members only.

The public part of the website shows the board, news and a gallery. Staff needed to manage this content themselves, without a developer.

How the system is structured

Each member's membership is recorded separately for every year, with its own status and payment. The history is preserved, and a question about any specific year always has a clear answer.

New members join through an application with its own workflow. An application is not yet a member: some are rejected, and that remains visible.

Both members and external participants register for events. This makes it possible to apply different terms and later see how many members actually take part in the association's activities.

Payments are recorded separately and linked either to a membership or to an event. At the end of the year you can see both the total and what it is made up of.

The public section publishes categorised news, board member profiles and galleries. Emails to members are sent from the same system, so the mailing list always matches current membership status.

Technical decisions

Membership is recorded per year. It is the only way to answer who was a member last year and to handle a returning member correctly.

Applications are kept separate from members. Rejected applications are part of the association's history. Deleting them would remove the basis for why a given decision was made.

Emails from the same system. A mailing list kept in a separate tool goes out of date within a few months, and emails start reaching former members.