Creating a membership form allows you to manually record memberships as an administrator, or let your members sign up online on their own. This saves you valuable time when recording and tracking your memberships.
This article covers the following topics:
- The benefits of managing memberships in Springly
- Setting up your membership form
- Saving and publishing your form
The benefits of managing memberships in Springly
Managing your memberships in Springly lets you take full advantage of the automations built into the software.
Whenever a membership is recorded on your membership form (by an administrator or the member themselves):
- the accounting entries related to the membership and its payment are recorded automatically;
- the member and their information are saved in your Community (if the contact already exists, the membership is simply added to their profile);
- invoices or receipts are automatically generated and sent to the member;
- you can offer online payment by payment card.
All of this saves you a significant amount of time.
Setting up your membership form
Existing membership forms are listed on the Forms > Memberships page.
If no form has been created yet, you will be prompted to create your first one from this page.
You will land on the form creation page, where you can choose between two types of forms:
- Immediate membership form: this is the standard option — people who sign up are considered members right away;
- form with membership request: people who want to join must be approved by an administrator before they are considered members. This allows you to review and filter requests.
This article provides a general overview of the different steps involved in a form.
To learn more about managing forms with membership requests specifically, we recommend this section of the Help Center.
1. General information
This is the essential information that will be visible on your membership form.
Enter the name of your form in this section (required).
The description and image are optional, though we recommend them: they'll make your membership campaign more appealing to your members. You can also add terms, general terms and conditions (T&Cs), or attachments.
This section lets you explain how the membership process works. Feel free to add as much information as possible to clarify the steps for your members. Note that you can edit them at any time.
2. Pricing & membership bundles
This step lets you build your pricing structure using membership bundles.
You must offer at least one membership bundle. You can also add optional add-ons (e.g. a class or workshop selection).
Feel free to watch the short video below to get a quick handle on this step.
For each membership bundle, you must specify:
- the bundle name: this will be displayed on your membership form;
- the price: either a suggested price, a free-choice amount, or free;
- the period during which a person who takes out this membership will be considered a member (they will have a yellow badge in your Community). Three options:
- Date to date: members will be recorded as active over a fixed period you define, regardless of when they join;
- Fixed duration: members will be considered active for a set period starting from the date they join. If you set a 12-month period, a membership started on January 5 will expire on January 4 of the following year;
- Lifetime membership: members will remain active permanently.
The "Lifetime membership" option must be enabled before you can use it in your forms. To do so, go to Settings > Forms & ticketing > Advanced Settings section (at the bottom of the page) and enable Lifetime membership.
Once your first membership bundle is created, click + New to create additional bundles.
Pricing types
- Membership bundle: this rate is mandatory and forms the basis of the membership;
- Optional service: allows for example the choice of a class or workshop;
- Product sale: a product complementary to the membership (sale of clothing or equipment).
Click the gear icon to open more details.
To go further, see the article on managing rates.
Advanced options
You can fine-tune your membership campaign settings by going to Settings > Forms & Ticketing.
You can:
1. Customize the information and rates displayed on your campaigns
- Limit the number of participants in a campaign;
- Limit the number of participants for a specific rate / bundle;
- Limit the number of sign-ups allowed per person for a given campaign;
- Restrict rates or bundles to certain groups in your community.
To learn more about this setting, see our dedicated article: Control the number of registrants on forms and ticketing
2. Automate and customize certain actions triggered by sign-ups to your membership, donation, or ticketing campaigns
- Assign people who chose a bundle to a group (fixed groups only);
- Assign each membership to a specific accounting account;
- Send a confirmation & sign-up receipt for manual additions;
- Create discount rules based on a person's group membership or the number of participants in the same campaign.
To learn more about this setting, see our dedicated article: Set up automations between your forms and other features
3. Display settings
- For a membership form, donation form, or ticketing campaign, you can choose whether or not to display the list of participants.
To learn more about this setting, see our dedicated article: Display participants for an event
4. Other advanced settings
- Lifetime membership: if you want to offer this type of membership on your forms, enable this setting. To learn more, take a look at this section.
- Checkout customization: customize the landing page shown after a membership, donation, or event sign-up is confirmed. Or enable the cart system: allow people to participate in multiple forms before confirming their order.
To learn more about this setting, see our dedicated article: Customize the checkout experience and enable the cart system
Pricing Groups
If you offer a large range of pricing options, you can organize them into pricing groups to make the display clearer. You can check out this article for more details.
Discounts
You can add discounts to offer reduced rates to certain members. How they work is explained in this article.
3. Form
Form Settings
This section lets you collect information about your members when they sign up.
Here you will find:
- the general information fields set by default in the software;
- the custom fields you have configured for your nonprofit from Community > Settings.
The information entered by the member will populate their profile, accessible through the list of registered persons. For more information, see the dedicated article.
Fields can be required at sign-up, hidden, or simply optional.
Good to know: if you do not make the email field required in the general information, members will not be able to log in to their account.
Information Displayed at Renewal
When a member renews their membership, Springly only displays information that has not already been filled in, reducing the number of fields to complete and simplifying the process.
Sometimes information entered the previous year needs to be updated by the member at sign-up (such as a course or workshop selection).
In that case, we recommend deleting the fields at the end of the membership period and creating new ones. This will clear the previously entered values so the field appears again at renewal. You can also create a field for each season/period (e.g., "certificate 2022" and "certificate 2023").
4. Payment and Confirmation
Payment Methods
If you have opted for the online form, you can offer several payment methods to your future members.
Online payments (in full or in installments) are collected through your e-wallet. To collect payments without restrictions and transfer funds to your organization's bank account, follow the steps described in this article on e-wallet verification.
If you manage your accounting with Springly, remember to use cash deposit and deposit slip to record check or cash payments in your bank account.
For more information about installment payments, please refer to the following article: How installment payments work
Confirmation email
You can customize the message in the confirmation email, which is a great opportunity to include a personalized thank-you note.
The tax receipt is issued for the entire cart. If not all pricing options are eligible for a tax receipt, create separate forms. An invoice can only be issued if tax receipt generation is disabled for the form.
5. Publishing
The first question to ask yourself is: do you want people to be able to sign up on your form on their own?
If the answer is "yes" (which we recommend), choose one of the first 2 options:
- Via a link
- Published on the website
This won't prevent you from adding people manually.
If the answer is "no", select "No online membership". All that's left is to save, and you're done.
This article explains the difference between an online form and an offline form.
To go further, check out the article on manually adding a member.
Let's say you've chosen online memberships: let's move on to the final settings.
Publishing via a link
Specify who can access the page:
- either anyone with the link you've shared;
- or specific people based on custom rules (Community, Members, etc.). In that case, they need to be logged in to their account on your Springly platform.
Finally, you can set availability dates for your membership form. Outside of these dates, people will not be able to register through your form. Dates can be changed at any time by administrators (for example, if you want to extend a form).
Publishing on the website
The On the website option lets you publish the membership form on a page of your Springly website. For the form to be visible, the page hosting your form must be added to a website menu under Website > Menu and Pages.
As mentioned above, you can set availability dates for your form.
To access the form via this link, your website must be active (not in maintenance mode). You can manage this from Website > Settings and theme.
Save the form and publish it
Once all sections are configured, click Save.
The form status will then appear as Published. You can later change this publication status by switching the form to Draft, Sales suspended, or Archived form.
If saving the form fails, the section causing the issue will be highlighted in red. You will need to fill in the missing information and save again.
If you simply saved your form as a draft to check how it looks, don't forget to go back to the Configuration tab to change its status from "Draft" to "Published" and then save.
It's then time to share your form link so people can sign up for membership! You'll find it in the "Distribution" tab. This is also where you can publish the form on an external website by embedding the form as an iframe.
Go further
To dive deeper into this topic, we recommend the following articles:
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