Some nonprofits include legal entities among their members. This is the case, for example, with professional associations where businesses, rather than individuals, hold membership.
For these nonprofits, the Entities feature is especially useful. It opens the door to memberships for legal entities. Here's how it works:
- How membership forms work
- Creating a membership form dedicated to Entities
- Manually adding an entity to the membership form
- Online membership
How membership forms work
The membership form for entities works exactly the same way as the one for individual members.
It lets you:
- Enable online memberships (by entities themselves) and/or manually add entities as an administrator,
- Collect information that will be saved in your Community, under the Entities tab,
- Offer different membership rates and payment methods,
- Automatically record memberships in your accounting, and more.
Creating a membership form
Setting up a membership form for entities is similar to setting one up for individual members.
Go to the Memberships feature (from the left-side menu), then click "Create a new form".
Select Entities when asked Who are your members?
Once you've made your selection, you'll land on the configuration page for your Entity membership form. Follow the steps provided and fill in:
- a title, a description, and a photo to make your membership form attractive,
- membership fees and any additional options,
- the information you need to collect about member entities - it will be saved in each entity's profile,
- accepted payment methods, etc.
If you choose to allow online memberships - our recommendation to lighten your workload - don't forget to publish your membership form. You can edit it at any time.
For more information on creating a membership form, check out this article.
Manually adding an entity to a form: offline memberships
Just like with a form for Persons, you can add an Entity as a member through a membership form.
Go to Community > Memberships > Registrants.
1. Add a member
In the registrants list, click the "+Add a member" button.
2. Choose the membership bundle
Enter the Entity Name and its email address. Then select a membership bundle from the available options.
3. Fill in the entity's information
At this step, you can edit the entity's contact form.
However, you cannot add information about the individuals linked to this entity.
4. Add payment information
Case 1: you have already received the membership payment
If you have already received the entity's offline membership payment, this is the time to record it. Enter the payment details (check, wire transfer, etc.), the amount, and the bank account affected. Don't forget to save.
The corresponding accounting entries will be generated automatically.
Case 2: you have not yet received the membership payment
If you have not yet received the membership payment, simply check "Later Payment" and save.
When you receive the payment, come back to your membership campaign:
- in the members list, find the entity that sent you their payment (if needed, use the "No Payment" or "Partial Payment" filter),
- click the eye icon on the right of their row,
- click "New" next to the "Payment" row and enter the details.
Please note: Once an entity is saved as a member, it appears in your Community as such, with an active yellow badge. This is true whether or not it has paid its membership fee.
Online Membership
Like individual persons, entities can join online if you give them the option.
The main advantage is time savings: you don't have to enter the information yourself — the person joining on behalf of the entity does it themselves. All they need to do is go to the form link you've shared with them and follow the steps.
The process is similar to that for individual persons. The following video shows an example with online payment.
To go further:
- Set up payment methods for a membership form
- Create a membership form
- Why and how to complete E-wallet Verification on Springly?
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