FOR LODGES, POSTS, GUILDS, LEAGUES AND GARDEN CLUBS
Your club has a secretary.
Give them an office.
The roster, the dues, the minutes, the newsletter and the officer election in one place, on a screen your members can read and on paper when the club wants it.
Dues arrive as checks at the meeting. Half the members do not use email. The minutes live on one laptop. That is a normal club, and it is what this was built for.
$348 a year for a club of up to 50 members, which is $29 a month. Send us your roster in whatever shape it is in and we set the club up for you on the phone.
THE SECRETARY'S YEAR
Six jobs, one place, and paper at the end of each one.
Nothing here is locked behind a bigger plan. A twenty-member garden club gets exactly what a four-hundred-member lodge gets.
The roster
One living list of members with their addresses, their phone numbers and how they want to be reached. Members with no email are on it the same as everyone else, because a club is not a mailing list.
Dues, recorded when the check arrives
Set the dues period, then record a payment with its method, its check number and the date you received it. The reminder ladder goes out before the due date and after it, and a member can be marked exempt without an argument in a spreadsheet.
We never touch the money. There is no card processing here: the check goes to your treasurer the way it always has.
The sign-in sheet and the dues statement
Both print. The sign-in sheet is your roster with a signature line, a proxy column and the quorum line at the bottom, sized so a sixty-member club lands on two pages. The dues statement and the reminder letter print per member, ready for an envelope.
Minutes that file themselves
The agenda becomes the minutes: attendance, quorum, the discussion, each motion with its mover and its count, and the action items. Publishing them files them into the club record where the next secretary can find them, and prints them for the bulletin board.
The newsletter
Write an announcement once and it reaches every member on the roster, with a permanent record of what went out and to whom. A weekly digest gathers the week into one email for members who would rather have one.
Text messaging under this brand waits on its own carrier approval, so today the newsletter goes by email and by post.
The officer election
The annual election of officers runs on the vote.direct election engine: a verified list of eligible members, a secret ballot, and a tamper-evident record of the result. Members with no email can be sent a printed letter carrying their own credential, and it lands in the same tally.
ONE PRICE FOR THE CLUB
One band, billed once a year, and every band gets everything.
Clubs are priced by how many members they have, not by how many officers touch the software. There is no per-seat charge and nothing is tier locked.
Your treasurer can pay by card, or ask for an invoice and send a check. Many club treasurers cannot put a card on file at all, and that is a normal way to buy this rather than an exception we grudgingly allow.
WHEN TO BUY SOMETHING ELSE
We do not build websites and we do not take payments.
Two of the products a club secretary gets recommended do both, and if that is the club's real problem you should buy one of them instead of us.
Wild Apricot
Builds and hosts your club website and processes payments online, so dues and event money move through the product. If the club needs a public site and a card reader more than it needs the minutes, buy Wild Apricot.
Compare Wild Apricot and governance.center
ClubExpress
The other name a club secretary is given for a website, online dues and event registration in one product. We could not read its own pages on the day we checked, so read them yourself rather than taking our word for anything about it.
Compare ClubExpress and governance.center
memberplanet
An association management system for the member hub, the payments, the newsletter and the events. Its own associations page names no voting and no board election, which is the part we do.
Compare memberplanet and governance.center
Every price on those pages was read off the vendor's own page and carries the date it was read. Where the vendor is the better buy for your club, the page says so.
FEDERATIONS AND STATE ASSOCIATIONS
We work with your federation.
A garden club federation, an Elks state association, a VFW department or a quilt guild council can put its chapters on the same footing instead of leaving every secretary to start over.
- We set up the first chapter with the federation on the phone, and the shape we agree becomes the shape every other chapter starts from.
- Each chapter keeps its own roster, its own dues register, its own minutes and its own officers. A federation does not get to read a chapter's record, and a chapter does not get to read another chapter's.
- Chapters that already have a website or a payment processor keep them. We are the governance year, not a replacement for what already works.
- Federation officers who want to see the product before recommending it get a call and a walkthrough with the person who builds it. Call or text (512) 222-8191.
WHAT WE DO NOT DO
The limits, before you find them.
A club that discovers a limit for itself stops believing the rest of the page, so here they are first.
- No payment processing. Dues and assessments are marks in a record. The money moves between the member and the association, never through us, and no bank account is connected to this software.
- No violations. There is no violation notice, no fine ladder and no hearing tracker here. If your board needs one, say so on the phone and we will tell you honestly whether it is coming.
- No work orders. Maintenance requests, vendors, bids and work orders stay with your management or accounting software. We run the governance year, not the property.
- No legal advice. Where we quote a statute we say it is our reading, to support your review, not legal advice, and we tell you to have your attorney confirm it before the board acts. We never tell a board that it is compliant.
- No inspector of elections in California. Cal. Civ. Code 5110(b) disqualifies anyone under contract to the association for other compensable services, and the association pays us for the software. California boards get a published directory of independent inspector firms instead, and we take no part of their fee.
Our reading, to support your review, not legal advice. Confirm with your attorney before the board acts. We never tell a board that it is compliant.
QUESTIONS CLUB SECRETARIES ASK
Answers, before you have to call.
What does it cost for a club?
$348 a year for a club of up to 50 members, which is $29 a month, billed once a year. That is the band most lodges, posts, garden clubs and guilds sit in. Larger clubs pay more only because they have more members, and every band gets every part of the product.
Our dues come in as checks at the meeting. Does that work?
Yes, and it is the normal case rather than the exception. Recording a payment takes the method, the check number and the date it was received, so the register matches the treasurer's deposit slip. We never process a payment and no bank account is connected to this software.
Do our members need a login or an app?
No. A member gets a link and the link opens their own page: their dues standing, the minutes, the announcements and the ballot when there is one. Nobody creates a password. The officers who administer the club do sign in.
Some of our members have no email address. What happens to them?
They stay on the roster with their mailing address. Dues statements and reminder letters print for an envelope, and for an election they can be sent a printed letter carrying their own credential, or a full ballot packet with postage both ways. Those land in the same tally as the members who voted online.
Will you build us a club website?
No, and we are not going to. Wild Apricot and ClubExpress do websites and online payments, and a club that needs those should buy one of them. We run the roster, the dues record, the minutes, the newsletter and the officer election, and we print.
We are a chapter of a state federation. Can you work with them?
Yes. Call (512) 222-8191 and we will talk to your federation or state association directly. We set up the first club with you on the phone, and when a federation wants its chapters on the same footing we work with the federation rather than making each chapter start over.
Can you set it up for us?
Yes. Send us your roster in whatever shape it is in, a spreadsheet, a printout or a stack of cards, and we set the club up for you on the phone in one sitting. Call or text (512) 222-8191. There is no charge for that call.
NEXT
Where to go from here.
Read the price
The whole ladder, the annual number first, and what is not in it.
See every band
Write minutes now
Type the agenda, fill in the motions, print the minutes. No account, nothing stored.
Open the minutes tool
Print a dues reminder letter
The letter a club treasurer mails when the check has not arrived. Fill it in and print it.
Get the template
Read the limits
No payment processing, no violations, no work orders, no legal advice.
What we do not do
THE SHORTEST WAY IN
Send us your roster. We set the club up on the phone.
No form to fill in first, no demo to sit through, and no charge for the call.