The membership year, month by month
Written for the person who inherited this job and was not given a handover. It assumes a membership year rather than calendar months, so "month one" is whenever your renewals fall.
The point of writing it down at all is the handover. Most of what a volunteer secretary knows is undocumented, and it leaves with them.
Two months before renewals
- 01
Check the dues are still right
Not whether to raise them — whether the amounts in the system match what the board last approved. A rate the board changed and nobody updated is the single most common source of a year's worth of quiet under-collection.
- 02
Clean the email list
Look at hard bounces from the last year and fix or retire those addresses. A renewal reminder that never arrives looks identical, from your side, to one that was ignored.
- 03
Write the renewal emails now
While there is no deadline pressure. Three of them: before, on the day, and after lapsing.
Renewal month
- 04
Send the first reminder to a test address first
Yourself, or a board member. Check the links, the amount, and how it looks on a phone. Then send it to everyone.
- 05
Watch the first fifty payments, not the total
If something is wrong with the payment path — wrong amount, broken link, a receipt that does not arrive — it will be visible in the first fifty and expensive by the five hundredth.
- 06
Keep a list of who paid by something other than the link
Cheques, e-transfers, cash at a meeting. These are the payments that get recorded late or not at all, and they are the ones that cause a member who has paid to receive a lapse notice.
One month after renewals
- 07
Send the lapsed-member email
Once. Then mark them lapsed rather than deleting them — a former member with a history is the cheapest recruitment list you have.
- 08
Reconcile against the bank, not against the system
Total collected in the system versus total that arrived in the account. These should match and occasionally do not, and the gap is always easier to find within a month.
Before the AGM
- 09
Pull the membership numbers the board will be asked for
Active now, joined this year, lapsed this year, and net change. Four numbers. Have them before someone asks, because reconstructing them live is how a board meeting loses twenty minutes.
- 10
Check who is actually eligible to vote
Usually members in good standing on a cut-off date, which is a different list from members today. Work out which list your bylaws mean before you need it, not during the vote.
Any month, if you are handing over
- 11
Write down the things that are only in your head
Which members pay by cheque. Who the bank contact is. Why that one family has two records. Which supplier needs chasing. None of this is in any system and all of it is what makes the job hard for the next person.
- 12
Transfer the accounts properly
Add the new person as an administrator before you remove yourself, and change the shared passwords rather than passing them on. An organization locked out of its own membership system because a volunteer moved house is a genuinely common story.
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