You’ve done the work. You sent out dues payment requests to your club members and made the deadline for the payment clear to everyone. Yet, more than a few weeks have gone by and you’re still waiting for outstanding payments. We get it, the last thing you want to do is start chasing members down to pay their dues. So how can you make dues reminders less of a struggle? Here’s our guide to making dues payments less personal and more efficient.
Set expectations early on
Chasing late payments is one of the most uncomfortable and awkward jobs for any club treasurer. No treasurer wants to come off as rude or overly aggressive, but at the same time, without dues, your club activities are put at risk. So what can you do?
Create dues payment guidelines that state how much time each member has to pay their dues, what the reminder process looks like, and the consequences if payments aren’t made on time. Have all of your members sign this document before you send them their first dues request. Having agreed-upon guidelines makes sure that everyone is on the same page about late payments and makes things less personal — members won’t be surprised when you reach out to them because they’re overdue, better yet, if you set it out in your guidelines, they’ll notify you if they can’t meet the deadline.
Craft a uniform message
Having a go-to script for late payment reminders will not only save you time, but it will also make communicating with your members feel less like a personal confrontation. There is absolutely nothing wrong with asking someone to pay for the money they owe your club, however, you’ll want to make sure your message doesn’t sound overly aggressive or demanding. Our advice? Make your message direct yet polite, and keep things straight to the point.
Give your member the chance to get on a call or meet with you if there is a financial issue that is preventing them from paying their dues on time. Speaking about money can be uncomfortable for both you and your member, so using a go-to script and making things less personal goes a long way.
Choose the right channel of communication
With Crowded’s mobile-friendly app, payment reminders get sent to members with push notifications that go straight to their phones. We designed our dues reminders based on research and feedback from treasurers all over the country who said they were looking for ways to make payment reminders easy to manage and the conversation way less personal.
As a treasurer, you simply open the Crowded app, tap on your dues payment request, and tap on ‘send a reminder.’ You have the option to send reminders to all overdue members at once or select specific members. Furthermore, you can decide to send each member a customized message or send the same message to everyone who is overdue on their payment. The reminder will then appear as an app notification with the message you’ve attached.
Keeping club communication separate from your personal messaging makes things more official and helps you and your members communicate about club finances with one, centralized system.
Want to learn more? Click here!
Originally published at https://www.bankingcrowded.com on September 11, 2022.
