Expert Advice on How to Shop for Association Membership Management Software

Shopping can be a stressful process, with so many options available not to mention trying to keep to a budget, and when you do find something you like you have to make sure it’s the right fit.

Shopping for membership software is not that different from shopping for your summer wardrobe, only the stakes are much higher. The price tag is also substantially higher and the product has to fit with multiple users such as staff, volunteers and members. The association membership management software solution also needs to last longer than one season.

In a recent survey asked by Capterra to various nfp software providers about: What’s the most important piece of advice you would give to someone in the industry as they’re looking to purchase software?

Their responses gave valuable insight into important factors in how to shop for membership management software.

Amanda Miller from Agilon – Made a note not to short change your training or implementation time. She suggested having training up front so the membership organisation could improve the processes rather than struggling down the road.

Andi Conti from Active network – thought when researching membership management software it’s important to understand the true benefits of the cloud.

Founder of Regpack Asaf Darash – suggested that it important to look at the problems you want to solve rather than looking at software solutions that offer all the features. Even if an association membership management solution has all these great features you need to think if you really need all of them and 9 times out of 10 you don’t. “Always start with a problem and then work your way to finding a solution you need, not the feature that the software offers”.

Becky Cole from More-Opportunities – defines data to being the key and that you need to make sure to look into your processes first. If your processes and data collection methods are bad to begin with all you will be doing is automating bad data. You want to think about what reports can we get?

Brendan Noone Neon CRM – stated that it’s very important to find a member management system that simplifies your processes and more importantly how the software will aid your member organisation to improve management and relationships. 

Jon Biedermann DonnerPerfect – highlights how crucial it is to find a solution that you won’t outgrow where it should be able to scale in features and price based on your needs.

We hope these insights were helpful in determining how to go about shopping for your new association membership management solution.