Beacon makes it easy to collect memberships online. You can also use the same system for sponsorships, or any other specific wording you use at your organisation. There's no code to write, plus we take care of a lot of the things you probably don't want to worry about, like:

We connect with industry-leading payment processors like Stripe or GoCardless so you can securely process credit card payments and direct debits online.

To make it possible for Beacon to accept donations, go to Settings > Payments in your sidebar (you'll need to be an admin), and connect with at least one payment provider. The following payment providers are supported with memberships:

Once you've connected your payment provider(s) with Beacon, you can create your first membership form.

The following sections take a closer look at how to set up your memberships.

Whilst we call them 'Memberships', you might run a 'Sponsorship' program, or maybe you call your members 'Friends'. These are all possible! You can adjust the wording on the form by setting three different words to use. We even provide an example so you can check that it reads nicely.

A membership option describes a specific type of membership that a new member can sign up for. You might have a membership option for individual adults, one for children, and one for families. Membership options allow you to specify the important details about each membership, like how much they cost and when they need to be renewed.

Your membership options are displayed at the top of your membership form and they are configured in the Membership options section of your form configuration.
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Each membership option corresponds to a single membership type. You can only have one option for each membership type. Your available membership types are defined in the type field of the membership record.

Memberships can have different frequencies. A frequency describes how often the member has to pay for their membership. Memberships can be monthly, annual, or lifetime memberships.

Single payments are collected via credit/debit card through Stripe and are charged immediately.

When a single membership payment is made via a Beacon form, the data flows into Beacon like this:

If a membership is paid for with a single payment then the membership will expire and the member will need to renew their membership. You can find the expiry date by looking at the Expiry date field on the new membership record.

If the payment is for a lifetime membership the Expiry date field on the membership record will not be set (as the membership never expires).

Recurring payments are handled a little differently than single payments. They're collected via either Direct Debit (GoCardless) or credit cards (Stripe).

Each month or year, the amount is automatically taken from the member's account until they cancel their membership.

It usually takes GoCardless 1-2 weeks to set up a direct debit mandate with a bank (this is normal!), and then the mandate becomes active. Once active, payments will be automatically charged directly to the member's bank account.

For credit cards, the first payment is charged immediately.

As such, when a recurring membership payment is made via a Beacon form, the data flows into Beacon like this:

We also set up a subscription in GoCardless/Stripe, which will automatically bill the member at the earliest possible date, and then every month after that.

When each monthly/yearly payment comes in Beacon automatically saves them on your behalf, linked to the relevant subscription and member. This happens in real time; Beacon gets notified as soon as each payment is processed.

You need to collect information about your new members. This is done in the Member details section.

Here you can configure each membership option to specify the information you want to collect about your new member. Each membership needs a "primary member", this is the person to whom the membership belongs. Some information about the primary member will already have been collected elsewhere on the form, so this is an opportunity to collect additional information about the member.

Sometimes a membership is for more than one person. For example, a Family membership might allow for up to two adults and up to three children to be members within the same membership. The Additional members section at the bottom of the Edit members dialog allows you to collect information from these members.

When you add an additional member you will need to provide a label for the member along with a maximum number of members of this kind that are allowed for this membership option. For example, in our example above we would allow for a minimum of 0 and a maximum of 1 additional "Adult" members, and a minimum of 0 and a maximum of 3 "Child" members.

Remember that these are members in addition to the primary member. In our example, the primary member counts as one of the "Adult" member types.

You can allow memberships to be given as gifts.

If you select the Allow memberships to be given as gifts? option you'll see some new options appear. You can customise the labels on the options for giving memberships as gifts by changing the Gift Option and Personal Option values. You can also choose to only allow this membership to be given as a gift. If you select the Only allow memberships to be given as gifts? option then the form will behave as if the user has chosen to give their membership as a gift and will not show the option to buy for themself.

You can also allow the user to set a custom start date. This means that a membership can be given as a gift but won't start until the special occasion that the gift is being given for.

If a membership is given as a gift you need to collect information about both the gift giver and the primary member - these are now two different people! The Edit Members dialog displays a new section in which you can specify the information you want to collect about the primary member if they are receiving the membership as a gift.

Importantly, giving a membership as a gift changes the way that the membership data is stored. Beacon creates separate Person records for the person who is paying for the membership and the person who is going to become the new member (the primary member).

All memberships can be given as gifts - one-off, recurring, and lifetime memberships.

If some or all of your members are Organisations rather than People, change the 'record type' of the new member from 'People' to 'Organisations' and choose the fields you want to include as questions on your form.

When a new member creates or renews their membership you can take this opportunity to ask them for an additional donation. This works in the same way as a donation form.

You can choose whether to allow members to give additional donations in the Donation amount section of the form.

You can configure the donation amounts and frequencies in this section just as you would with a donation form.

Donations are created as entirely separate payments and charges in Beacon which makes it easier to track where payments are coming from and to claim Gift Aid.

You can use a membership form to renew memberships.

This functionality is set in the Membership Options section.

An existing member can enter their membership number and add their payment information to renew their membership or convert to a recurring membership. Beacon will use their membership number to join up their new payment with their Person record and extend their existing Membership record in Beacon.

If you'd like your form to open the renewal option selected by default (instead of a new membership), you can simply add ?bcn_member_number=TRUE to your URL. Learn more about URL parameters.

You can add a section to your membership form which invites the member to increase their payment to cover the costs of processing.

You can choose a percentage to reflect how much this membership will cost to process. You can also decide whether this box will be checked by default.

This additional amount is added to both the membership payment and any additional donations, increasing the value in the 'Amount' field. Gift Aid will be claimed on this total amount, if eligible, and processing fees are charged on the total amount.

When an additional donation is made when buying a membership, both payments will be increased by the desired percentage. The percentage amount added to each payment will be stored in the respective 'Covered fees' section.

When someone creates a new membership via a Beacon form, Beacon immediately sends an acknowledgement email to them.

You can customise the subject and content of this email, as well as the team member who the email is from in the acknowledgement part of the form settings:

There are a number of different emails that are sent under different circumstances:

It can be useful to know when someone has created a new membership online through one of your forms.

In the notifications section, you can customise who receives email notifications from Beacon each time a membership is created, as well as the subject and content of the email.

There are a number of different emails that are sent under different circumstances. Donation emails are sent in addition to membership notification emails when an additional donation is made. The Gift email is sent to a gift giver instead of a membership email.

When membership forms are submitted, we automatically create the relevant records in your Beacon database. There's no manual entry.

Each time a new membership is created, you'll probably want to make sure it's categorised in the right way. For example, it might make sense to set the following on all new membership payments:

This is how the fixed data section helps you. It makes it easy to segment your data going forwards.

When new people, memberships, payments, subscriptions, or declarations are created via a Beacon form, Beacon auto-sets the fixed data on each record created (as well as the data that comes from the form).

You can customise the fixed data that Beacon sets to fit your needs:

This functionality is particularly handy when someone is purchasing a Gift Membership - as they can choose to have the membership start at a later date. The functionality here will differ depending on what payment option they choose

Beacon's membership forms can register members for any of the options that are in the 'Type' field on your Memberships record. If you'd like to change what types of memberships your organisation offers, you can edit this directly in the field in Beacon (rather than the form).

Back on your form, you'll now be able to add your new types 🙌

If someone signs up twice, in Beacon they'll now have two membership records. As such, they'll also have two member numbers. This can be a problem if you'd like to use the member number to uniquely identify a member.

If someone bought a new membership instead of renewing it, we recommend that you merge the memberships.

What to do if somebody fits the following?

We would recommend keeping both the old membership record and the new membership. You should require them to use the new membership number. This is useful to better understand how they have interacted with you over time.

At the moment, no. However, you can filter your memberships in Beacon to find out the expiring/expired members, and either use document merge to generate them a letter asking them to renew, or export to Mailchimp or Dotdigital for bulk emailing. If you want to send individual emails directly from Beacon, you can set up an email template to quickly issue reminders with key details from the member's records.

If a member renews their membership for another year, Beacon will update their expiry date differently depending on when they renewed: