StarChapter Pricing, Features, Reviews & Comparison of Alternatives

Most members of nonprofits and professional trade associations are volunteers, and often don’t have a lot of time available in their schedule to set up events, manage members, create content, increase member involvement and communicate with fellow volunteers. StarChapter was created to make the lives of board members and volunteers easier by offering a complete, cloud-based business app designed specifically for the industry.

With role-tailored access to all features, board members, volunteers and members can access and update areas relevant to their profile or position, reducing the dependency on a webmaster’s intervention, and increasing membership engagement. The user interface will be familiar with anyone with even limited technical knowledge, making it easy to access and get up-to-speed on quickly, as and when board transitions take place or roles within the organization change.

StarChapter was specifically designed for a volunteers, leaders or administrators of a member association or a nonprofit, with functionality tailored to their exact needs. It helps consolidate regular tasks that volunteers or leaders carry out, with features focused on membership management, email communications, website content management, event registration, board management and payment processing. StarChapter provides full training and support on the software- allowing all users to get up to speed quickly- as well as regular webinars, video tutorials, articles, and online courses that make sure all volunteers and board members can get the most out of the app. Beyond technical support, their team is experienced with the world of association management and offers industry insights as well as coaching on improving performance such as getting more revenues and member participation.

The StarChapter team automatically migrates all content from old system, while completely designing and implementing the new website, meaning membership organizations and chapters don’t get stuck in the onboarding process and training users.

In StarChapter, there is a central Admin Area, which contains sections for creating content, managing members, communicating with these members, organizing events, and processing payments.

• Experience level: All experience levels
• Industry: Non profit, member association, associations
• Business size: Organizations with more than 30 members
• Departments/roles: Volunteers, board members, administrators, association management companies
• Budget/point: Pricing starts at $49 per month, with a one-off set up fee of $399
• Example customers: Local chapters of the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) and Project Management Institute (PMI)

Content Management

With StarChapter, organizations can choose from ten different layouts that can be customized by StarChapter’s in-house graphic designer based on color scheme, logo, branding, or national organization specifications. Each layout is suitable for the kind of features membership associations typically need on their website. To provide a good user experience, each layout features responsive web design, meaning it is optimized for whatever size and type of device you view the website on.

Behind this, is a built-in content management system (CMS) that is specifically tailored for non profits where you can easily upload newsletters, create events, and add member spotlights. This area of the admin panel is not just for written content, there is also the ability to place logos, manage ads from sponsors, and work with design and layout of each piece of content. You can edit different webpages and create new ones easily without previous knowledge of coding and website design.

Membership management

Boards change, members move on, and new members join. An issue any professional trade association or local chapter faces is keeping this member list up to date, and ensuring that all contact details are correct. Hosting an up-to-date member directory on the website is a main benefit of joining the organization in the first place, thjat’s why for volunteers to work off spreadsheets creates more problems than it solves.

With specific member access, every member can edit their own details, saving the webmaster (if you have one) valuable time. You can also manage non members, as well as create groups for different types of members, and easily search within these groups. StarChapter’s system updates the information in real time, meaning that any other part of the system that uses this information (such as email newsletters), will always have the most up-to-date details. Each chapter can also create customized fields, which they would like members to have to fill out.

Event registration and meeting management

Getting together in meetings is a huge source of revenues for any nonprofit organization. Some events are center around discussing issues, networking, welcoming new members, or interacting socially. It’s important that as many people show up to these meetings and events as possible. To create meetings, member organizations can choose from pre-built, industry-specific templates, or set up (or copy) templates of their own. Information about which groups of members to invite is pulled from the membership data, which is updated in real time. This way, event organizer can invite people based on their affiliated group, no need to copy and paste from excel or other systems.

Through the meeting feature, organizations can see the guest list, the fees collected, and group attendees according to members and guests. There are options to print badges, email attendees, create reports, process payments, manually add guest registrations, and track attendance at the entrance. Events and meetings are automatically removed from the site when they have already happened, ensuring your website is always up to date.

Email communications

To improve member engagement and grow your chapter, it’s important to regularly communicate with members between events or communicate announcements as they occur. This is an area where a lot of organizations struggle due to out-of-date information, poor branding, technical issues, and inability to manage their lists. StarChapter’s email manager lists all the different emails that have been sent in the past, with reports around how many have been opened or bounced. Each chapter can schedule emails and opt to send them on a recurring basis, for example your regular monthly email that keeps members informed on upcoming events. StarChapter also comes with industry-specific templates such as happy hour networking events, board get togethers, golf outing, and new member welcome days.

All emails are branded according to an organization’s logo and website, ensuring consistency and professionalism throughout all communication. Just as important as having the right email look and feel, is sending it to the right group of people. Integrated with the membership data, you can choose which group of people to send to, such as a people who have registered but are not members, or members who have registered but have yet paid for the event. There is also the ability to build a survey, for example one after an event in a timely manner, which you can filter only to send to attendees, as well as automate emails, such as welcoming new members when they join. The data for this comes from the central membership management portal and the meeting management area, making email creation very quick and easy.

As StarChapter is a one-stop-shop for professional trade associations and nonprofits, it does not integrate with any other software. They do offer an option to include RSS feeds for social media posts/tweets on the site.

There are four plans: Lite, Standard, Premier, and Elite depending on the size of the association and number of members. Plans start at $49 per month with a setup fee of $399 for up to 100 members and 400 non-members. Large organizations with 5,000 members and 30,000 non-members will pay a max of $150 per month.

• Designed and tailored for member associations
• Data is centrally available so no copy and paste needed
• Real time updating of content across entire site
• Self-managed, no special technical skills are needed
• Full support, coaching and continuous training
• Increases member engagement and revenues
• Saves time and improves efficiency