Membership Tiers

A membership tier is the offer supporters sign up for: a name, a set of benefits, and either a recurring price you collect through Crafted Call or dues you collect somewhere else. Tiers live at Settings → Membership Tiers. This article covers creating a tier, deciding how dues are collected, the discount members get on submission fees, and what a member sees. For the day-to-day work of keeping your roster accurate, see Managing and Renewing Memberships.

Availability: Memberships are included from the Core plan up. If you don't see them in your menu, an owner or admin can turn them on under Organization Settings → Features → Memberships. See Plans and Pricing.

Creating a tier

1. Go to Settings → Membership Tiers and choose Create Tier.
2. Under Tier Details, fill in Name (for example, Community Supporter), Slug, and Description. The description is what members read on your join page, so list the benefits there.
3. Set Submission fee discount (%) if members should pay less to enter your calls.
4. Under Pricing, either enter a Price (in dollars) and Currency, or turn on Use existing Stripe Price ID and paste a price you already created in Stripe.
5. Under Billing & Availability, choose a Billing Interval of Monthly or Yearly, leave Active on, and choose Create Tier.

Entering a price creates the Stripe product for you. When your Stripe account is connected and ready, the tier is joinable straight away.

You can also create a priced tier before Stripe is connected, for example while your treasurer finishes the Stripe setup. The tier is saved with its price but is not joinable online yet; online dues start once Stripe is connected. After connecting, choose Start Online Dues on Admin → Membership Tiers. Until then, you can add members and record their dues by hand.

The tier list shows Tier Name, Organization, Active Subscribers, Price, Status and Joinable. The Joinable column is the one to watch: it reads Joinable when people can sign up, Awaiting Stripe for a priced tier saved before Stripe was connected, Paid offline for dues you collect yourself, and Off when the tier is inactive.

Dues you collect somewhere else

Many organizations already take membership dues through a customer relationship management system, a paper form, or a bank transfer. You can still represent those members in Crafted Call.

On the tier form, turn on Dues collected outside Crafted Call. The tier becomes a name plus its benefits with no join button anywhere: nobody can buy it online, and members are granted the tier by an administrator or by an import instead. Everything else still works, including the submission fee discount and members-only call access.

Use a priced tier when you want Crafted Call to charge and renew. Use an off-platform tier when your own system stays the system of record.

The submission fee discount

Submission fee discount (%) is a real benefit, not description text. When a member of that tier enters one of your calls, the discount is applied to the entry fee automatically, at the point the fee is calculated. Your public join page also advertises it, in the form Members save 20% on submission fees.

The discount applies to the person whose membership is current at the moment they submit. There is nothing for the member to enter and no code to distribute.

The discount is a whole-number percentage from 1 to 100. If you charge members an exact amount instead, such as $25 for members and $40 for everyone else, leave the discount blank and set the member and non-member prices in the Price table on the call's Fee step.

Your public join page

Every organization with active, priced tiers has a join page at /org/<your-slug>/memberships, headed Become a Member. Each tier shows its name, price, description and a Join button. Tiers whose dues you collect elsewhere are hidden from this page, and a tier with no price shows Not available yet.

When someone joins, Crafted Call takes the payment through your connected Stripe account, sends a confirmation naming their tier, their renewal date and a member number, and their membership becomes current immediately.

Link to this page from your website, your call pages, and your email campaigns. It is the only self-serve way for a supporter to become a member.

Members-only calls

A call can be restricted to members. When it is, a visitor who is not a current member sees This call is open to {your organization} members only and cannot submit. Owners and administrators of your organization can always get through so you can test the call yourself.

If a member signed in with a different email address than the one on their membership record, they are not stuck: the page offers I'm already a member, which sends a verification link to the membership email and connects the two. That flow is covered in Managing and Renewing Memberships.

Renewals

A tier you price in Crafted Call renews automatically through Stripe on its billing interval. The member's card is charged, a receipt goes out, and access continues without a gap.

Crafted Call emails renewal reminders on its own, 30 days and again 7 days before the renewal date, and once more if a membership lapses. You do not need to build anything for this. If you have set up your own membership automations, yours run instead and the built-in reminders stay quiet, so members never get both.

A renewal that has been paid makes the member current at once. If it needs a human look, it also lands in the Membership review queue for you to approve, without holding up the member.

When a renewal payment fails, the membership moves to a lapsed state. Those are the members worth a note: they meant to stay and hit a card problem.

What a member sees

A member with a Crafted Call account manages their own membership at Membership in their account. Each membership card shows the tier, your organization's name, the billing interval and the current period dates, with Manage billing to open the Stripe billing portal and Cancel to stop the renewal. Cancelling keeps access until the end of the paid period, then does not renew. A cancelled membership shows Renew membership, which brings them back to your join page.

If your organization publishes a Crafted Call website, members can also sign in to it without a password. They enter their email, Crafted Call sends a sign-in link, and the link works once and expires after 15 minutes.

Editing and retiring a tier

Open a tier from Settings → Membership Tiers to change its name, description, discount or price. Turning Active off takes a tier off your join page without touching anyone who already belongs to it. Existing members keep their tier and their benefits.

Changing the price of a tier only affects people who join after the change. Members already on a Stripe subscription keep the price they signed up at until you move them.

Troubleshooting

A tier shows No price set. It has neither a price nor a Stripe Price ID, and it is not marked as collected outside Crafted Call. Add one of the three.

Nothing shows on my join page. The page lists only active tiers that can be charged. A tier whose dues you collect elsewhere is deliberately hidden there.

A member is not getting the submission fee discount. Check that their membership is current and that the discount is set on their tier, not just described in the tier text.

I do not see membership tools. Memberships come with the Core plan and up. Check that the right organization is selected, then look under Organization Settings → Features: if Memberships is switched off, turn it on and save.

Next steps

• Managing and Renewing Memberships
• Email Campaign Basics

For more help, contact support at support@craftedcall.com.