Membership, Events & Wild Apricot

An overview of membership, conference planning/registration, and settings in Wild Apricot (WA).

Under construction.

General | Summary | Renewal Policy | Negative File | Fields
Board Group | Conference Registration

• We should be careful about granting access to WA since it includes all our members’ personal data. Perhaps greater than one year of membership and vouching by at least two current board members.

• Membership used to be extremely time-consuming, requiring many hours of work each week using PayPal and an Excel spreadsheet. Since we transitioned to WA (and its automated functions), the workload for collecting dues and tracking membership has gone down markedly.

• Because of automation, the Membership Secretary’s workload is an hour or so per week.

  • Handling member requests—normally log-in and payment problems

  • Updating expiration dates when not handled automatically (see below)

  • Handling manual payments (i.e., via check) in coordination with the treasurer.

• Conference planning and registration are handled through WA.

• Levels

  • Lifetime—some were granted in the past, others paid for lifetime membership. Almost no records survive to explain who got the membership and why. Also, there’s no easy way to make sure lifetimers are still interested in being members.

  • Regular membership—a holdover from our first membership system (where we didn’t have 2, and 3-year memberships. Many former members are now archived and have this membership status. We’ll keep it until we’re sure of the impact deletion would have.

• Active—dues current, not lapsed (see lapsed)

• Renewal overdue

  • Dues paying members—from renewal date to renewal + 14 days, the member will show as renewal overdue. At the +14 day point, members get their “last chance” to renew. At +15 the system changes membership level to associate. The system cannot update the renewal date to one year in the future, so the membership secretary must manually update the renewal date. This is one of the few membership actions WA does not handle automatically.

  • Associates—same as above, except that if the member doesn’t renew their free membership, they are automatically archived (i.e., removed from the active portion of WA). No manual actions required.

• Lapsed—should only occur during the time the renewal date is pending adjustment.

• Pending—to reduce workload, we’ve had the system automatically approve membership once dues are received.

  • Online dues payments are immediately reflected

  • Payment via check requires coordination between membership secy and treasurer, and a manual entry to show invoice is paid.

• 1, 2, and 3-year renewals are handled automatically in WA. No action is required on our part.

  • Renewal used to be by calendar year (i.e., everyone renewed on Jan 1). Of course, this required manual calculation of prorated dues for those not joining on the first of the year.

  • Now, WA automatically sets renewal dates at the appropriate intervals.

• To see/edit renewal policy in WA:

• Go to Membership, Levels (See image 1)

• Select the desired membership level

• Each membership level has a tab for general, renewal, and new applications. (see images 2-3)

• Most renewal activity happens automatically in WA

• Problems occur for dues-paying members (1, 2, and 3-year members) transitioning to associates after their dues lapse. The system automatically sends emails and changes their membership level to associate 15 days after dues expire. However, it does NOT update the new associate member expiration date. To fix this, I have updated the “lapsed” email (which only goes to system administrators) to show this action needs to happen. Manual action is still required.

• Level Changes also cause problems

  • If the member chooses to change levels before their existing term expires, the system will NOT prorate dues to account for any lost and pre-credited time served, nor provide a refund! Example: a 2-year member changes to 3-year member only one year into her 2-year membership. WA will reset her dues expiration date to three years after she upgrades and charge her the full $120. I.e., she loses one year of membership for which she’s already paid.

When the board votes on member expulsion, downgrade, or problem documentation, the board secretary and the membership secretary need to keep a list for future reference.

This is most important when the nomination committee is vetting possible candidates for leadership positions.

We created a file in 2024 (Membership Issues), located in the Membership directory. (no link due to sensitive nature of document)

• To update, go to membership, groups, manage group.

• Use two boxes to add or remove members

• Registration is set up in WA; the registration form is embedded in our main website (coding required).

• John left a draft registration event in Squarespace so that we could copy that coding to embed the new conference registration form each year.