There are pros and cons to using both dues cycles. A calendar-year basis means you send out and collect renewals from members once a year. In my opinion, this seems to work well if you have under 200 members or when your non-dues vs. dues revenue ratio is 70 – 30% or greater on the non-dues revenue side. It would be easier for staff and the process could be pretty easy to manage.
More and more associations are using an anniversary or date-joined dues cycle and the trend is growing. It allows staff to send out renewals each month only to those members who have upcoming anniversaries and evens out cash flow when you depend on dues revenue.
I especially find the anniversary cycle most helpful to manage and increase membership retention. You can focus on at-risk members such as first or second year members or those you usually have retention challenges around and have time to implement your retention strategies for segments of your membership year around. You can track which months attract the most members and where drops seem to occur more frequently. And you don’t have to put all your energy into the renewal process at one given time of the year.
Read this article and share your feedback. What are your opinions about the different dues cycle and which do you prefer?