"One day we really need to sort out our membership management/update our website/get online subscription payments/standardise our event management..." We've all heard this, and we've also heard the excuses, "But the Membership Sec. is wed to his spreadsheets",  "We don't have the technical knowledge/money/time", "We have more important priorities". And so it rolls on round for another year. The committee changes, the trustees move on, a new CEO is appointed, the member admin retires, and membership records get into even more of a mess,

So how do we get out of this spiral? Well, the first thing to do is get "New membership management system and/or website" onto the minutes of the board meeting, committee meeting or AGM. Ideally, a working party or a knowledgeable individual would be set up to look into it, but more realistically, it will likely roll through a number of meetings without being addressed, often because it's hard to estimate how much it will cost, and how much work will be involved.

The solution? Set an outline budget for the project, both in terms of the setup costs, and the ongoing costs. But how much? There are many possible solutions, and they all have different costing mechanism. Much will depend on how many paying memberships you have, how many total email addressees you need to keep track of, and how many emails you send a month. 

In my experience, a system for managing, say, 100 paying members and a further 100 contact emails will cost around £750 a year including web hosting and e-blasts. If you have a mix of member organisations, contacts and prospects at, say, 2,000 total, annual costs will be somewhere around the £2,500 mark, jumping to £4,500 for up to 5,000 mailable contacts/members.

But what about the costs of getting started? The first point to make is that a cloud or SaaS product is likely to have no up-front charges, and will probably have a short trial period for free, and can be paid for by the month. But how easy is it to get up and running? Well, if your starting point is an existing spreadsheet of members, and you are going for a new-look website, any reasonably tech-savvy staff or committee member should be able to follow the step-by-step instructions and videos that most cloud-based packages use.

On the other hand, if you need to migrate data from an existing system, if you have complex membership structures, if you need the website to match an existing front-end or design, if you don't have a suitable project manager, or if you simply don't have enough time from your day jobs, then you should consider appointing a consultant to help you. 

How much do they cost? Well it could be anything from a few hundred pounds for a small project using a one-man specialist consultant, to several thousand pounds for a complex project, or from a generic IT consultancy firm. Don't be afraid to ask, and don't be put of by the "Ahh it depends..." response. The way to word it is "How much do typical projects like ours generally end up costing?"  

Before taking these numbers back to your board or committee, check out whether there are any charitable grants, discounts or pro bono arrangements that might apply - many companies loan out staff as part of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) program. Also, there are now many retirees from long careers in IT who may be willing to help a charity.  

When you do take the numbers back, present them in an easy-to-relate way. How much of each subscription paid would need to be diverted in order to fund the ongoing cost of a reliable and robust collection system? What proportion of members fail to renew each year due to poor reminders? What proportion of an admin's salary would you be spending to equip them with modern and productive tools? What would happen if they left the organisation? Is the old-fashioned website putting people off, especially on phones and tablets? Who knows how to update it, and how long could a breakdown be tolerated? Are members always asking to pay online, or complaining about misdirected emails? 

If you need help to put a case together, contact us, and we'll be happy to guide you, with no obligation.