This blog was updated on September 19, 2024 to reflect the latest updates to Meetup’s Member Dues feature.
Offering high-quality, dynamic Meetup events is often a top priority for organizers. These can add up (it costs to bring in speakers, technology, or equipment), and collecting membership dues is a reliable way to offset your costs.
Benefits of Membership Dues
Foster better engagement: Membership dues don’t just assist with event costs but can also help foster more engagement and participation. Groups with membership fees have more consistent and accurate RSVPs, which is a great advantage for any organizer. These members are also likely to post in group discussions and pay closer attention to group messages.
Set flexible fees: Customize the cost and frequency of your dues to fit your groups’ needs. You can offer free trials, adjust the amount, and—if you decide that membership dues are no longer needed—remove them entirely.
Easily manage payments: Head to your Money page to keep track of payments and easily process refunds. Schedule convenient recurring renewal payments, and automatically notify members to pay or update their payment information. Plus, new members are automatically prompted to pay, freeing up your time as an organizer to focus on creating high-quality events and content.
Simple and efficient payment processing with Stripe—now available for all organizers
Meetup’s Member Dues feature is powered by Stripe to provide you with secure, reliable, and customizable payment options. Up until recently, this service was only available to organizers based in the United States. As ofOctober 3, 2024, we’re excited to make the Stripe integration available to all organizers worldwide (replacing PayPal as the previous payment processor).
❗If you’re an organizer based outside of the United States and you were previously managing membership dues via PayPal, please be aware that we have decommissioned the PayPal integration as of October 3, 2024. Follow the instructions under the Get started now section of this article to set up Stripe and continue collecting membership dues without interruption. Learn more about this change in our dedicated article.
Member Dues are always improving
We’ve also taken the opportunity to introduce important improvements to the Member Dues feature.
More reliable fee collection: Over time, organizers using the Member Dues feature have reported various problems with processing payments and updating member subscription statuses. Last month, we kicked off a concerted effort to address these issues—as of today, organizers can experience a smoother and more reliable payment collection process.
Better user interface: In addition to resolving many bugs and errors, we’ve also adjusted the user interface to make the process of setting up, activating, and stopping Member Dues more intuitive.
Get started now
Interested in setting up Member Dues for your group(s)? Create a Stripe account and connect it to your Meetup organizer profile. From there, it’s just a matter of determining the amount and frequency of your fee. Use the following guides for easy step-by-step instructions:
If you have questions or would like help setting up dues for your group, please don’t hesitate to contact our support team.
Last modified on September 27, 2024
