A simple system to help small non-profit organisations manage membership renewals

If your non-profit organisation is a registered society, most of your members are likely to be ordinary members -which means that their subscriptions will need to be renewed on an annual basis. And if your organisation does not have any paid staff to help out with secretariat matters, the job of managing membership renewals is likely to fall to the office bearers.

Without a proper reminder and management system in place, things could get quite chaotic. Members are likely to have forgotten when they joined, and/or when they should renew their subscriptions. The office bearers are not likely to remember either, so when the Annual General Meeting rolls around, they might be unpleasantly surprised to find that almost all of the members are no longer members.. as their memberships have already lapsed!:-)

The above scenario can be avoided by creating and implementing 3 easy-to-implement standard operating procedures (SOPs):

1) An SOP to admit and record new members
I've outlined a SOP for this part in more detail, in an earlier post. To recap, firstly, a membership form should be designed for new members to fill in and submit to the secretariat along with their payment. This could be a printed form, or an online PDF which members can fill in by hand, sign, scan and email back to the secretariat. The form should contain key information fields such as name, NRIC number, residential address and contact details - email address & cellphone number. The member could either make payment in cash to one of the office bearers or, make an online or ATM transfer to the registered society's bank account. If this is the preferred payment method, the member should also email a scanned copy of the bank in slip, or the online transfer reference number, to the office bearer in charge. You could then create a simple spreadsheet in which to key in the details of the new member, populating it with the same fields as the membership form. Make sure to include a column to indicate when the new member's membership will lapse. This document can be referred to as the Register of Members.

2) An SOP to prompt members whose memberships are expiring, to renew
Set up a reminder on an online calendar service to prompt you to check the Register of Members once at the end of every month. If you see that a membership is about to lapse in the coming month, send a reminder email, watsapp message or SMS to the member, inviting them to renew their membership. The communication should include brief instructions on how to renew, ie. the bank in slip or online payment reference number needs to be communicated to the secretariat as well as date of payment and details of the member (unless the member wishes to make a cash payment).

3) An SOP to record renewed members
Once the member has confirmed that he or she wishes to renew for another year, and the society's bank statement reflects that the online/ATM transfer came through, or once the cash received has been banked in, you can now update the Register of Members to reflect that the member has renewed his/her membership and also record the next renewal date (which should be 1 year from the date of earlier renewal).

Hopefully, the above simple tips will help your non-profit organisation manage its membership renewal process more easily. Questions or suggestions for future topics, email me at spiral1701@gmail.com.

Tips on how to process claims efficiently

OK, so claims processing is one of those day-to-day operational things that the founders of a new non-profit organisation were not really thinking about when the organisation was formed and it was all about the long term vision and mission of the non-profit organisation! :-)

And yet, setting up and managing an efficient and accurate system to process claims is super-important. Why? Because firstly, when volunteers spend their own money on behalf of the organisation, they definitely want to be reimbursed as soon as possible :-) They will not be too happy if their claims take too long to process, and may hesitate to advance funds in future knowing that there is going to be a long wait ahead until they get reimbursed. 

Also, from a regulatory and governance point of view, all non-profit organisations have a duty to manage the funds of the organisation properly. Efficient and effective systems need to be in place in order to track and account for every cent that has been donated to your organisation, or supplied in the form of grants.Tracking and recording the movement of cash going in and out of the organisation is therefore of fundamental importance. However small your non-profit organisation may be, if it is a registered society as most of them are, the accounts will be audited after the close of each financial year. In addition,  if your organisation has tax exempt status,, there could be further audits or requests for records and documentation from the Inland Revenue Board. So it's really important to focus on what (some may consider to be) the rather tedious details :-)/ 

Large and well-funded non profit organisations would probably have part-time or full-time administrative staff to handle the nitty-gritty aspects of running a secretariat like claims processing, but small, new non-profit organisations may find that it just costs too much to pay regular salaries. In such cases, one of the founders themselves, or an office bearer like the Treasurer, is likely to end up with the role (in addition to their day jobs) :-)  

So to help juggle it all, here are some simple tips on setting up a workable system to manage claims which a volunteer, founder or executive committee member/office bearer could try out:

i) Create a set of general headings, under which all claims will be categorised.

If your organisation is a registered society, you may wish to follow the general headings set out in the Registry of Society's financial reporting template on its e-ROSes portal. General headings under the "Expenditure" section are "Operating Expenses", "Activity-related/Fundraising Expenses" and "Administrative Costs".

ii) Create a template claim form and email it to the members and volunteers in PDF. The format of the claim form is pretty much up to you but you'd probably want to include a space for the name of the person making the claim, plus a table with columns for a description of the item, category of claim and RM amount. You should also add a space for a signature (of the person making the claim) and a counter-signature (of the Treasurer of the society, or other authorised office bearer such as the President). Also, print out copies of the form and leave them at the office or registered address, in case members/volunteers drop by in person to make claims. Another helpful hint is to keep a supply of paper clips next to the forms, so that claimants can clip their receipts to the form. 

iii) Create a process flow for getting the claim form to you for processing. The members/volunteers need to know what they need to do once they have filled up the form and clipped their receipts to it. Should they scan the completed form as well as all the receipts, and email them all to you? Or, should they drop off the documents somewhere? Or will you need to meet them in person to collect the documents? This info should be clearly stated on the claim form, so that the person making the claim knows what to do with the form and the receipts. You may also wish to give the member/volunteer an idea of how long processing will take, just to manage their expectations in terms of timing. 

iv) Create a set of internal SOPs to process the claim. For example, you might want to create a series of steps such as these to be followed.

1. Review the claim form and ensure that the claims are made under the right category.

2. Check the receipts to ensure that the RM amounts are correctly reflected.

3. Ensure that the form is properly signed and counter-signed.

4. Record the claim in your accounting system and prepare the cash reimbursement and voucher to be signed for the member/volunteer once payment is received.

5. Arrange for the member/volunteer to collect the cash and sign the voucher. 

Hopefully the above tips have been helpful! :-) If you have comments or requests for info on particular topics, do email me at spiral1701@gmail.com.

Tips for small non-profit organisations on managing multiple projects

Most non-profit organisations have some form of paid support. Such support could range from a part-time administrative assistant or two, to a fully-fledged secretariat with dozens of employees.

Small non-profit organisations which are just starting out however, rarely have the resources to channel towards staff salaries. So, projects are largely volunteer-driven.

Some small organisations might be lucky enough to have a few "full-time volunteers" ie people who do not work full time elsewhere and really have some spare time to contribute. But for the most part, our volunteers are likely to be ordinary working folk like ourselves, who have to juggle their volunteer work along with their full-time jobs and family obligations.

Given the time constraints that such volunteers inevitably face, what are some tips and strategies we can share with our fellow volunteers to help ourselves keep multiple projects moving forward and on track?

The most important step seems to be to create a system that allows for regular tracking of activities related to a project, as well as other project-related information.

Open a word document, spreadsheet, a mobile phone app, a paper notebook or a physical file for all the different projects. Identify project outcomes and break the project into mini-steps or milestones. Note down the stakeholders involved in the achievement of project outcomes, as well as any relevant target or actual deadlines.

Each time you work on a given project, keep a record of what you did on that date, which milestones were completed, and what the next steps are moving forward (as well as who is responsible to get them completed).

While recording all this may sound extremely tedious, it is actually a failsafe way to ensure that you don’t lose track of where things are on any given project and (most importantly) what still needs to be done. The human memory is only so efficient… without a proper tracking and recording system, more and more to-do’s will inevitably fall by the wayside :-)

Having a structured system to record project progress also allows for easy and quick updating of another volunteer who might become involved in the project halfway, or who might need to take over the project from you. This allows you to build in some element of scalability into your internal processes, in preparation for your organisation expands and you take on more projects.

If you have any questions or suggestions for future topics, do email me at spiral1701@gmail.com.