A club membership system is the record of who belongs to the club, and for a volunteer-run sports club it has to answer five questions on any day: who is a member, which section and fee tier they are in, whether they are paid up, when they joined and when they lapse, and what the club may hold about them. Club membership management software is sold to associations, alumni bodies and gyms as well as to sports clubs, and most of it is built for a member who is a customer with a card on file; a sports club's member is also a volunteer, a parent, a committee member and a player on a team sheet. This page sets out what the record has to hold for a sports club, how a member moves through it, and what the club has to keep about them and for how long.
The member, the section and the tier
Every name in the record sits in a section (seniors, the Tuesday squad, the under-twelves) and a fee tier (full, off-peak, junior, family, social), and the two decide what they pay and where they appear. The tier carries the season's figure, so raising a fee is one change; a family or student rate is a tier of its own rather than an edit, so the subs still add up. The club treasurer subs sheet on this site works the subs due, the arrears and the surplus from the counts in each tier, which is the figure a committee sets the fee table against.
Paid up, in arrears, lapsed: the status the coaches read
A member's status is the one field every coach, manager and gatekeeper reads, and it has to come from the treasurer's record of payments rather than from a tick on a spreadsheet. Recording each payment against the member with the date it cleared gives a paid-up status that is true on Saturday morning; a member with subs outstanding after the club's grace period is in arrears, and one who has not renewed by the date the constitution sets has lapsed and comes off the team sheet and the register. The record keeps the dates, so the AGM report and the affiliation return are a filter on the list.
What the club holds, and for how long
A club membership system holds personal data, and in the UK the club is the controller of it under UK GDPR; in the US a club collecting details about children online has COPPA to follow. The record should hold what the club needs to run, the contact details, the tier, the payments, the emergency contact and the medical note for a junior, and no more; it should keep them for as long as the member is a member and the club's policy says after, and it should be exportable at any time so the club, not the vendor, holds its own list. The free worksheets on this site take counts, not names, for exactly that reason.
Questions people ask about club membership system
Is a club membership system the same as club management software?
The membership system is the member record: names, tiers, status, payments. Club management software usually adds the registers, the team sheets and sometimes booking and a website. For a sports club the member record is the foundation and the registers and team sheets are drawn from it.
How should a lapsed member be handled?
Kept in the record with a lapse date, off the team sheet and the register, and deleted or anonymised when the club's retention policy says so. A lapsed member who rejoins is the same record with a new join date, not a new name.
Who in the club should be able to see the record?
The treasurer and the membership secretary edit it; coaches and managers read the paid-up status and take registers against their sections; the welfare officer reads the junior registers. Everyone reads the same list, which is the point of keeping one.
Sources
- ICO, UK GDPR guidance and resources: what a club keeping its members' details has to do as a controller
- FTC, Complying with COPPA: frequently asked questions, the rules a US club collecting details about members under thirteen online has to follow
- GOV.UK, Register as a community amateur sports club (CASC): what an amateur club in the UK must be and keep to register with HMRC