If you have decided to charge membership dues or event fees, there
are two ways that your members can pay you. In advance, using PayPal,
or at the door.
The core advantage of using PayPal is that your members can pay you in
advance so that you can concentrate more on facilitating a great event
than on money collecting. The main disadvantage is that you and all
your members should have PayPal accounts. While it is very easy to set
up a PayPal account, there may be some members who cannot or will not
do it.
One way to encourage PayPal usage is to offer a discount for members who pay via PayPal rather than at the door:
Joel Ordesky of the LA ExecTec Meetup charges a regular fee for his events.
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I offer a discount for members who pay in advance via
PayPal. So it cost $25 in cash at the event or $21 in advance via
PayPal. It cost me .80 cents per transaction (hence the $21 rather then
$20). Many of my members appreciate the discount and the advantage of
using their credit cards.
I have yet to have a member who could not pull off using the PayPal site to pay. I also have used PayPal to invoice a member/guest who forgot their wallet at an event.
Still, chances are that you will always have some members who will
prefer to pay at the door rather than via PayPal. Here is Joel's system
for collecting at the door payments:
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My system for collecting payment is simple.
I have a box with 4x6 index card dividers numbered 1-30. These numbers correspond to the numbers on the sign-in sheet. Each person signs in and gives me and email address and if they paid via PayPal writes PayPal next to their name. They then put their $25 (if paying cash) in the slot number that corresponds to their name on the sign in sheet. There is a receipt (I use blank business card I print with the logo web address and the amount plus a place to fill in the date.
This way as I am talking the sign-in sheet and box goes around the room. When the evening is over I can double check the box. But there is no need since anyone not paying would be obvious and I could contact them about their payment after the meeting.
This takes a lot of the stress out of collecting the money at the meeting.
