How to Collect Membership Dues Online (Step by Step)

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Why move membership dues online?

Dues give whoever runs them two jobs: getting paid on time, and knowing who is current. Checks make both slower. The treasurer waits for the mail, takes a stack to the bank, then updates a spreadsheet by hand. After that come the emails to members who forgot. Online collection removes most of that work. With the right setup, each payment is tied to the member who made it, so the roster and the bank agree without a year-end reconciliation.

Setting it up takes five steps. Here is each one, in order.

What do you need before you start?

You need a Stripe account, which is free to open, and a bank account for Stripe to pay into. You also need your dues structure settled: the levels, the amounts and the date renewals fall. You do not need a merchant account or a card terminal, and you do not need any technical skill.

The five steps

Step 1: Set your dues structure

Decide your membership levels and what each costs. A common pattern is tiers by years in practice, or regular, early-career and retired rates, plus a student rate. Then pick the renewal date. Everyone can renew on January 1, or each member can renew on the anniversary of joining. Write this down before you build anything. Every later step depends on it.

Step 2: Connect Stripe to take card payments

Stripe takes the card payment and pays the money out to your bank account. Opening an account is free. Its standard US rate is 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction. Before you choose a platform, ask what it adds on top of that fee. Wild Apricot adds 20% to its subscription price for US and Canadian accounts that collect through a third-party processor such as Stripe. Veldun adds nothing. Dues go into the organization's own Stripe account, so everything beyond Stripe's fee reaches your association.

Step 3: Publish a page where members pay

Give members one place to pay. The simplest version is a public payment link: anyone with it can pay by card without signing in. On Veldun, each member has a dues page showing their level, price and renewal date, with a button to renew. They sign in with a one-time code sent to their email, so there is no password to forget. New and lapsed members can pay from your public join page without signing in.

Step 4: Match each payment to the right member

A payment link skips this step. Each payment has to update the member who made it: their status, their next renewal date and their receipt. Without that, someone matches bank statements against the roster by hand. On Veldun, a payment marks the member current, moves their renewal date forward by one term and emails them a receipt. The roster always shows who has paid.

Step 5: Send renewal reminders automatically

Send each member a reminder before their membership lapses, with a link straight to the page where they pay. Veldun writes a personal reminder to each member whose membership is about to lapse. It sends it 30, 14 and 7 days before, in your association's name. Nobody reviews these before they go. The board's part is the renewals page. It lists who is coming up for renewal and how engaged each member has been, so the board can decide who deserves a personal word.

Payment link or membership platform: what differs?

Both take a card payment. They differ after the payment clears, when the roster either updates itself or someone updates it by hand.

When is a simple payment link enough?

For a small group whose members all renew once a year, a Stripe payment link and a spreadsheet are a fine choice. If that describes your association, keep the link and skip paying for software you do not need.

A platform earns its place when reconciling and chasing renewals becomes the real work. That might mean members renewing on their own anniversaries all year, or a treasurer who spends renewal season matching payments to names. It also matters when the board changes. On Veldun, the records sit in a Veldun account that belongs to the association, so a new treasurer is given access instead of a handover. If none of that is true yet, stay with the link and move the year it stops being enough.