Managing Memberships with Automatic Renewal – Help Center

Do your memberships renew automatically by default? Want to skip the hassle of annual membership renewals by offering your members a fully automated renewal and payment system?

This feature is built for you.

In this article, we cover:

How does membership renewal work?
Setting up memberships with automated renewal
The membership journey for your members
Specific cases

Memberships with automatic renewal are available on the Serenity and Professional plans.

How does membership renewal work?

The Automatic Membership Renewal feature lets you create Membership Campaigns that automate both the membership renewal AND the associated online payment.

Here's an example.

Year 1 (N)

John becomes a member. He signs up online in February of year N for $100.00 and pays by credit card.

Year 2 (N+1)

When John's membership expires, it is automatically renewed:

It renews for another year at the same amount as the previous year ($100.00);
Payment is charged to the same payment method he used the year before.

Year 3 (N+2)

Same as Year 2.

Year 4 (N+3)

John moves away. He wants to put his nonprofit involvement on hold and no longer wishes to renew his membership. He can do this directly in the platform — or you can do it for him!

At the end of the membership period, John's membership is not renewed.

Setting up memberships with automated renewal

Here's how to set up your Membership Campaign with automated renewal.

Enabling the feature

This feature is not enabled by default. You can turn it on by going to Settings > Forms and ticketing.

Once this option is enabled, go back to the Memberships module to create your Membership Campaign.

Creating a Membership Campaign with automated renewal

Choosing the campaign type

With this option enabled, go to Forms > Memberships and create your Membership Campaign.

When creating a campaign, you can choose between memberships with or without automatic renewal. At this step, select "Automatically renewed memberships".

Once you've made your selection, you'll land on the campaign configuration page, which follows the same steps as a standard Membership Campaign.

For more details on creating and configuring a Membership Campaign, see our dedicated article: Creating a Membership Campaign. Here, we'll focus on the elements specific to campaigns with automatic renewal.

Pricing and membership plans

At step 2, you configure your membership plans and the active membership period.

For membership plans, you can create plans with a fixed price, a free-choice amount, or free memberships.

Please note: for memberships with automatic renewal, it is not possible to add other pricing types, such as donations, optional add-ons, or product sales.

For membership periods, you can only configure one period per campaign. You have 2 options depending on your nonprofit's needs:

Memberships for X months from the sign-up date (rolling memberships): the person becomes a member on the day they pay and remains a member for the number of months you've set. The membership renews on its anniversary date for the same duration as originally configured.
Memberships starting on a fixed date: the person becomes a member on a fixed date, regardless of when they sign up online. You have 3 options:
- Annual memberships:
  If you choose this option, you can configure 2 elements:
  - The membership start date, based on the month your membership period begins: January 1, February 1, etc.
  - The membership period (in months): this defines how long someone can sign up for the current year.
    For example, if your membership runs from January 1 to December 31 and you consider that anyone who joins on or after September 1 should be counted as a member for the following year rather than the current one, you should set a membership limit period of 8 months. This way, everyone who joins between January 1 and August 31 (8 months) is counted as a current-year member; anyone joining between September 1 and December 31 (beyond 8 months) is counted as a next-year member.
- Quarterly memberships
  If you choose this option, you can configure 1 element: the membership start date, based on which month of the quarter your membership begins: 1st month of the quarter, 2nd month of the quarter, 3rd month of the quarter.

Please note: it is not possible to edit the membership limit period. So, if you have quarterly memberships running from January to March, then April to June, etc., and someone joins on March 15, their membership will cover the current period. They will be considered a member from January 1 to March 31 and their membership will renew starting April 1.

- Monthly memberships:
  If you choose this option, there is nothing to configure.
  If someone joins during the current month, they are counted as a member for that month and charged the monthly membership amount. The membership will automatically renew on the 1st of the following month.

Payment and confirmation (step 4)

At step 4 of your campaign, you set the payment method. Membership Campaigns with automatic renewal only support credit card or online payment — since the whole point of these campaigns is to automate renewal billing.

Please note: installment payments are not available for campaigns with membership renewal.

The membership journey for your members

You've created your Membership Campaign with automatic renewal and are ready to start managing memberships through it.

Below, we walk through the key stages of the membership lifecycle with automatic renewal: from the initial sign-up, through renewal, to cancellation.

Step 1 — The member signs up

The first step is when members of your community sign up through a Membership Campaign with automatic renewal.

They go through 3 steps:

Choosing a membership plan;
Entering the personal information required to sign up: first name, last name, email, phone number, and any other information you've configured in your Membership Campaign;
Payment.

Step 2 — The membership renews

Once this step is complete, the person becomes a member for the period you've defined — for example, from January 1 to December 31 of year N.

On December 31, the membership expires. The system will then automatically:

Renew the person's membership for the same duration (one year in this case);
Charge the payment method they provided when they first signed up;
Notify the person by email 3 days before the renewal and charge.

Step 3 — The member cancels their renewal

Now let's say the person wants to leave the nonprofit and stop renewing their membership.

An Administrator — or the member themselves — can cancel the membership renewal at any time.

To do so, go to the member's profile, click the Memberships tab, then click End renewal.

Once this is done:

✅ The membership and its associated payment will not be renewed at the end of the membership period.

However:

❌ The membership does not end immediately when you take this action. The person remains a member until their expiration date (December 31 in our example);
❌ No partial refund is issued automatically.

Specific cases

What happens if a membership renewal payment fails?

Above, we described the automated renewal process when everything goes smoothly. But, as they say — things don't always go according to plan.

Between the first event (your member signing up) and the last (the renewal), a lot can happen:

Their payment method may have expired;
Their credit card may have been lost or stolen;
Your member may have changed bank accounts;
And so on.

Good news — we handle these situations for you.

If a membership renewal payment fails:

We send the person an email to notify them of the failed payment;
They can then update their payment method directly from that email.

How can a member change their membership amount at renewal?

Say John is one of your members. He signed up two years ago and now wants to switch membership plans (for example, from a standard membership to a premium one).

He can do so by following these steps:

Cancel his current membership renewal;
Re-enroll in the Membership Campaign, selecting the plan that suits him.