Chapter treasury software
ChapterDues gives volunteer officers a single membership record, an annual dues run that actually closes, and a handover report the incoming treasurer can read in ten minutes. Your term ends in June. The books should not be the reason you dread it.
Chapters do not fail because members stop caring. They fail because the record of who paid, who lapsed and who moved lives in four places, and only one officer knows where.
One copy on the membership chair's laptop, one attached to an email from March, one printed for the last meeting. When three lists disagree, the treasurer reconciles by hand at the kitchen table.
9 hours a quarterMembers intend to renew. Then the invoice sits in a personal inbox behind a school calendar and a work deadline. Nobody follows up because following up is somebody's fourth job.
14 percent lapse rateTwenty six people say yes on a social post, eleven pay, and the caterer needs a count on Thursday. The difference comes out of the chapter's reserve or the officer's own card.
$640 per eventThe outgoing treasurer passes along a bank login, a folder of receipts and a promise to answer texts until August. The new officer spends her first two months auditing instead of leading.
2 months lostNothing here asks you to change how your chapter runs. It asks you to keep the record in one place that the next officer can also open.
Upload the spreadsheet, the export from your old association tool or a printed list you retype. ChapterDues merges duplicates, flags members with no email on file and asks you to confirm each match before anything is written.
Name your categories the way your bylaws name them: active, sustaining, life member, first year professional, student. Set each amount, the renewal date and any prorated joining rule, then open the dues run.
Members get a notice thirty days out, a second at renewal and a courteous third two weeks after. Each one carries a payment link and stops the moment she pays. You never send a fourth email to someone who already renewed.
On the last day of your term, generate the treasurer handover report: opening balance, dues collected by tier, event revenue, outstanding members, and every adjustment with the officer who made it. Hand it over with the binder.
| Member | Category | Dues | Renewed | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Adeline Barrow | Active | $140 | July 2, 2026 | Paid |
| Priya Raman | Sustaining | $260 | July 9, 2026 | Paid |
| Denise Whitfield | Life member | Waived | Permanent | On file |
| Camille Okonkwo | First year professional | $85 | Reminder sent | Open |
| Roberta Vance | Active | $140 | August 1, 2026 | Paid |
President, treasurer, membership chair, program chair. Each one sees the part of the record she is responsible for, and every change carries a name and a timestamp.
Every member has one row: contact details, category, joining date, chapter offices held and the full history of what she has paid. Membership chairs edit it directly, so the treasurer stops maintaining a shadow copy.
Open a dues year, apply your tier amounts and send the whole run in one action. Members who joined mid year are prorated by the rule you set, not by mental arithmetic on a Sunday night.
Three notices on a schedule you choose, in your chapter's own wording, signed by the officer who sends them. The sequence ends the second a payment posts, so nobody is dunned after she has already renewed.
Post the fall reception, set a member price and a guest price, and watch the head count against the paid count in the same table. Export the list for the caterer or the name card holders in one click.
A dated, signable statement of the chapter year: balances, dues by category, event results, write offs and outstanding members. It is the document your incoming officer needs and the one your board minutes should attach.
Give the program chair RSVP access without opening the ledger, and retire an officer's access on the day her term ends. Every edit records who made it and when, which is what an audit committee asks for first.
These are the four numbers officers report back to us most often, and how the software produces each one.
Chapters running the three notice sequence renew 93 percent of active members, against 79 percent in the year before they moved off email and spreadsheets. The reminders arrive on time and carry a link that works on a phone.
The treasurer stops rebuilding the list, chasing individual payments and answering the question of who is current. Officers report about eleven hours a month returned to program work and recruiting.
Closing used to take most of a summer. With the ledger already reconciled and the handover report generated from live data, the average close now runs four working days from final meeting to signed statement.
Lapsed members who simply never saw the invoice come back when a polite second notice reaches them. Across chapters of 120 to 200 members, that is a median of $3,180 collected in the first year that would otherwise have gone uncounted.
Three chapters, three different sizes, three treasurers who were handed a term and a shoebox.
I inherited a roster with 41 duplicate rows and a bank account nobody had reconciled since the fall. The import caught the duplicates in an afternoon, and by our November meeting I could tell the board exactly what we had. My successor will not get the shoebox I got.
Our alumnae association had drifted to 380 names and maybe 210 paying members. The second reminder brought back 58 women in six weeks, most of whom told me they had never seen the first invoice. That is not a technology story, that is a follow up story, and the software does the following up.
The event page and the roster being the same record is the part I did not know I needed. I ordered for 74 at our spring luncheon instead of guessing 90, and the chapter kept about six hundred dollars that used to evaporate every year on empty chairs.
Chapters are volunteer run and the budget is voted on in advance. Pick the plan that matches your member count today and change it whenever your roster changes.
$25
per month, in US dollars
For chapters up to 75 members, new colonies and single city alumnae circles.
$59
per month, in US dollars
For established chapters of 76 to 400 members with a full slate of officers.
$129
per month, in US dollars
For state associations and alumnae bodies running several chapters under one charter.
Every plan is billed monthly in US dollars and can be cancelled at any time from your account, with no term commitment and no cancellation fee. Your roster and ledger stay exportable for the whole of your subscription and for thirty days after it ends.
If your question is not here, write to us and a person who knows chapter treasuries will answer it.
Small Chapter is $25 per month, Chapter is $59 per month and Association is $129 per month, all in US dollars and all billed monthly. A chapter of 160 members on the Chapter plan pays $708 across a full chapter year, which most boards approve as a line item next to insurance and the annual meeting. There is no setup fee, no percentage taken from dues and no per member charge on top. If your roster grows past your plan limit we will tell you before the next bill, not after.
Most officers finish the import in one evening. You upload the spreadsheet, map your columns once, review the duplicates the importer flags and confirm the tier amounts from your bylaws. On the Chapter and Association plans we sit with you on a call and do the first import together. Chapters that come to us mid year usually open their first dues run within a week of that call.
The chapter owns its roster and its ledger, not us. Records are encrypted in transit and at rest, access is limited to the officers you name, and every edit is written to an audit trail with a person and a timestamp. We do not sell, rent or share member contact details with anyone, and we do not use your roster to market anything. You can export the whole record to a spreadsheet at any hour without asking us.
Yes. Dues payments post through the processor your chapter already holds an account with, and ChapterDues records the reference so the ledger matches your bank statement line for line. Rosters export to CSV for your mailing tool, and event lists export in the format most caterers and venues ask for. There is a calendar feed for meeting and renewal dates that works in Google Calendar and Outlook.
You cancel from inside the account and the plan stops at the end of the month you have already paid for. Before you go, generate the handover report and export the roster and ledger, both of which stay available for thirty days after the subscription ends. If an officer leaves abruptly, any account holder with the president or treasurer role can remove her access and reassign ownership without contacting us.
That is the exact problem the product was built around. The record does not live on anyone's laptop, so a new treasurer inherits the ledger rather than reconstructing it. Officer roles are assigned by term with an end date, and the handover report is designed to be read by someone who has never opened the account before. Chapters that have now been through two or three handovers tell us the June transition takes an afternoon instead of a summer.
One dated document, printed or signed on screen, that answers the questions an incoming treasurer is too polite to ask twice.
Opening balance, every deposit and disbursement in date order, and the closing figure that should match the bank statement she is holding. Adjustments carry the name of the officer who entered them.
Active, sustaining, life, student and first year professional, each with a count, a rate and a total. She can see at a glance which category carried the year and which one is thinning out.
Who has not renewed, how many notices she received and the last date anyone spoke to her. This is the list that turns into the fall recruitment call, not a number written on a sticky note.
Head count, paid count, revenue and cost for the luncheon, the reception and the annual meeting. The next program chair plans against real attendance instead of last year's optimism.
Who could see the ledger, who could edit the roster and whose access ends with the term. Reassigning ownership takes one action, and it is recorded like any other change.
Outgoing officer, incoming officer, date. Attach the report to the board minutes and the chapter has a real record of the transfer, which is what your audit committee and your national office will ask for.
Our magazine for the officers who hold these roles: dues pricing, filings, renewals, gala math and the June handover, written without consultant fog.
Practical guide
A working method for pricing annual dues: build from your real fixed costs, decide what national takes, model renewal loss at each price point, and put the increase to the board with evidence.
Comparison
Incorporation brings limited liability, a bank account in the chapter's name and a filing calendar. Staying informal costs nothing but leaves officers personally exposed. Here is the honest tradeoff.
Regulation and compliance
Gross receipts thresholds decide whether you file the 990-N postcard, the 990-EZ or the full return. Miss three years in a row and exemption is revoked automatically. Here is the calendar.
Tell us how many members you carry, when your dues year turns and what the last handover looked like. We will show you the same chapter run inside ChapterDues, with your own numbers, in about twenty five minutes.
A person reads every request and replies within one business day. Prefer plain email? Write to jimenezjulien42@gmail.com and we will pick it up from there.
