Your Members

Once you've got the basics into your SilkStart system, it's time to start building your membership options.

Eventually, all of your members will be able to go to your SilkStart site to join, pay their dues, and access the resources that are available to them. Before any of that can happen, you will need to set up your membership plans, build the enrolment process, and import your existing members.

1. Setting up membership plans

   Your organization probably already has different types of memberships available. These membership types may have different terms, costs, and privileges. Create plans in SilkStart that define those differences.

   From your SilkStart admin panel, go to Settings > Plans. Create a new plan for every different member type that you offer. Find more detailed instructions on creating your plans here.

2. Building the enrolment flow

   Make sure you're capturing all the information you need when your members sign up and pay their dues. SilkStart allows you to customize your sign-up process that your members will go through to join your organization, so that you can get the info that you need about each person.

   Go to Settings > Enrollment Flow. Choose from our presets - Highest Conversion and Most Detailed - or build your own custom sign-up process.

   Need help? Learn more about what you can do with your enrolment flow here.

3. Setting access permissions for different types of members

   If your organization offers different types of benefits for members on different plans, or if you have private resources that only members should be able to use, then you can use SilkStart to manage access to different parts of your site.

   Say you have a directory of members. Professional members should be able to create a listing for themselves in the directory, and find other members using it. Student members should only be able to see other members - not post themselves - and anyone who isn't a member shouldn't be able to see this directory at all.

   With SilkStart, you can create different levels of permission to make sure that every type of user can see as much or as little of your site as you want them to. Learn more about your permission options here.

4. Importing existing members

   Now that you've got your member plans in place, and a way for people to sign up for memberships, it's time to add your existing members to your SilkStart site.

   Use SilkStart's easy member import tool to add your existing members into your SilkStart membership database. Go to Settings > Import Data. Download the example spreadsheet, and fill in your members' data. You'll probably need to export data from your old membership system to complete this step.

   Make sure that you've created all of your existing membership plans in SilkStart before you upload your spreadsheet - you'll need this to create accounts for all of your existing members.

   Upload your member data. SilkStart will check to make sure that it matches the format, and alert you of any problems before you finish adding your members into your database.

   SilkStart won't send any automatic emails to your members until you're ready for them to start using your site.

Next: Your Website