GroupWorks has informed its customers that it is ceasing operations as of June 21, 2024. With many GroupWorks customers scrambling to find a new membership management software provider, we’d like to help you evaluate if MembershipWorks is a good fit for you.
How MembershipWorks Can Help GroupWorks Customers
MembershipWorks offers similar club management features as GroupWorks, including:
- Membership management
- Member billing, including processing one-time and recurring credit card payments and sending customizable automated reminders for payments
- Categorizing members; MembershipWorks allows you to categorize members using Labels and Folders
- Event calendars with online RSVPs and payments, including member and non-member ticketing
- A member directory where members can look up another member’s contact information and send a message (when the other member’s privacy controls allow)
- Unlimited secondary admins on paid plans
Request a free demo from MembershipWorks to learn more about how the system works.
How is MembershipWorks Compares to GroupWorks
Website Integration
With MembershipWorks, you will integrate your calendar, signup form, and other features directly into your group’s website (see compatible website builder list) instead of using a stand-alone system. This can benefit your organization in a number of ways including:
- Members and prospective members stay on your website to RSVP for events, join the organization, view the member directory, etc. This creates a more seamless, branded experience for your members that inspires confidence in transaction security.
- You can offer more member perks, including the ability to restrict access to member only content on your website. You can decide what information you want to present to prospective members and nonmembers versus what members see.
- Administratively, you can designate certain members with website editing access while others manage members and/or events.
Features
MembershipWorks offers a number of features that GroupWorks customers may be looking for, including:
- Shopping carts – sell items to members and/or non-members
- Custom forms – allow members to sign up for committees, indicate their interests, and take surveys
- Classified ads – allow members to sell items to each other and/or a wider audience
- Integration – Send information to MailChimp, Quickbooks, Xero
- Reporting – See stats and trends related to membership, though individual members are not scored in terms of engagement.
- Announcement boards – Posts/announcements are handled differently by MembershipWorks than GroupWorks. Attend a demo to learn more.
Messaging
MembershipWorks has multiple ways that organizations can contact their members. Organization administrators can:
- Create automated messages: membership renewal reminders, new member signups, membership level changes, event confirmations, receipts, listing submission confirmations, and more.
- Manually send: event reminders to registered attendees, renewal notices, invoices, and more.
- Bulk message: set up our free or premium integration with MailChimp to send bulk messages such as event promotions, newsletters, and other news.
GroupWorks customers are used to new event notifications automatically sending when new events are created. MembershipWorks does not offer this feature at this time. Instead, if you wanted to continue the practice, you’d need to manually send a bulk notification to members using our integration with MailChimp. Additionally, GroupWorks facilitates member communications with Posts and comments while MembershipWorks provides Announcement Boards. Comments are not a feature of Boards at this time. You could explore using your website’s blog feature for making announcements as well.
Request a demo to learn about Boards and other features.
Support
MembershipWorks offers free, unlimited support by phone, email, and one-on-one screen share training sessions. Most questions are resolved on the same or next business day.
How to Transition from GroupWorks to MembershipWorks
Clubs who are leaving GroupWorks should do the following:
- Optional: request a free demo from MembershipWorks to get an overview and ask questions.
- Export as much data as possible from GroupWorks, especially your club member data.
- Sign up for an account with MembershipWorks. There is a free plan for up to 50 accounts if you want to test things out. We also offer a 30 day money-back guarantee if you sign up for a paid plan and then determine it’s not a fit. Even free accounts have unlimited access to free support by phone, email, and one-on-one screen share training.
- Set up your payment gateway and tie it to MembershipWorks. MembershipWorks integrates with Stripe, Authorize.net, and PayPal.
- Set up your membership levels in MembershipWorks.
- Optional: Set up labels for your members to categorize them.
- Create any custom fields you need in MembershipWorks
- Get your GroupWorks member data ready to import into MembershipWorks and then conduct the import
- Integrate MembershipWorks features like the member sign-up form and member manage form into your website. Test your signup form to be sure transactions are working properly.
- Create folders for groups and assign admin access by folder.
- Optional: Set up a MailChimp account for mass emailing purposes and connect it to MembershipWorks
- Send an email to announce the use of the new system to your members.
In Conclusion
We understand that transitioning to a new system brings challenges and new ways of doing things. We’d love to talk through your needs to help you see if we are a good fit. Be in touch. Should you decide to sign up for one of our free or paid plans, our free support can make this transition easier.
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