Stripe Payments: Information for Your Presiding Officer / WMs – Groupable -- Help Center

Introduction

As a local secretary, you may be asked what Stripe is and how you might use it for your local group. This is an introduction to using Stripe with your Groupable|Connect member portal.

Groupable|Connect partnered with Stripe to allow local groups to accept online payments from their members, ensuring that these payments are recorded automatically on your member records for the convenience of officers and members alike.

Using Stripe, dues, donations, miscellaneous payments, and solicitations can be accepted year-round. Soon, your members can RSVP and instantly pay for calendar events and dinners.

Using Stripe for member online payments is just an additional tool to add to the other payment methods you already accept, such as cash, checks, Venmo, CashApp, Zelle, or even Square, to improve member payment rates and reduce your record-keeping tasks for Secretaries.

Stripe Fees 101

"How much will it cost?" is a common question. Our goal is for you to receive more funds than you receive without processing online payments while saving your officers and members time and administrative headaches.

The reality is that even with a small 2.9%+$0.30 transaction fee (that's covered by your members when checking out via Credit Card, or can be optionally donated to your local group by your members when checking out via Debit Card), the reduction in late payments or NPDs usually results in higher rates of dues collection, lowering your local group's out-of-pocket liability to your parent group. Win-Win. For more detailed information about Surcharges and Stripe Fees, please see this Help Article.

Who is Stripe For?

Stripe is for your new member who doesn’t have a checkbook, but wants a convenient and reliable way to pay his lodge dues.

Stripe is for your long-time members who pay most of their monthly or annual expenses by credit card and only use checks for a few things.

Stripe is for your long-time member who no longer lives nearby and doesn’t want to risk mailing a check to his local group.

Stripe is for your volunteer officers. It saves them hours of their time in the dues season by ensuring that member payments are automatically recorded on the official member record.

Stripe is for your local Secretary who wants to be able to accept credit and debit card payments, in addition to the checks and cash they normally accept!

Stripe is for local Secretaries that get late payments from members who don’t have checkbooks and wonder why they always pay late every year.

Stripe is for new members who have always paid late because paying with a check, money order, or cash is such a hassle. These new members are surprised that the old-timers don't realize that this makes it hard to stay active, even when they want to.

Stripe is for secretaries who spend good lodge money on mailing dues and reminder notices and would prefer to send a first notice by email to save money for their local group.

Who is Stripe Not For?

Stripe is not for everyone. Stripe is not meant to replace a check or cash for your members who don’t have a cell phone or email account. These members can still pay by mail or in person, and the secretary can still enter those member payments manually on their member records.

Stripe is not for members who prefer to pay by cash, check, or those without a credit or debit card.

Advantages and Cultural Shifts

Again, our goal at Groupable is to see your local group lower non-renewal rates, demits, and NPDs—in business language, it's reducing churn. Why use business terms? At the end of the day, if a local group can't keep a roof over its head, maintain a building or space to meet, and be a healthy, active organization, the long-term survival of the local is at stake. In our twenty years in the fraternal membership space, we've seen hundreds of local groups close their doors and surrender their charters. This loss affects communities deeply, and we want to see you succeed.

Case Study

Nearly ten years ago, one of our Grand Lodges faced a consistent, year-over-year, 6-7% NPD rate. The leadership realized how quickly that sustained loss would reduce their impact in their communities over time. Together with our team, the Grand Lodge moved to require, train, and support their local officers in adopting online payments, paired with using the member portal (OLP, now Groupable|Connect) for calendar events and news posts.

Within five years, this Grand Lodge lowered its NPD rates to an unheard-of low 2%—a 50-year churn rate. This shift didn't happen overnight, and it didn't happen with online payments alone. The use of communications tools answered the questions of "what's coming up next?" and "what were we up to recently?". This communication and engagement ensured that their current members FELT the value of remaining members, and that potential members could see the value of becoming members.