Coming Soon! AAFD Member Management to MemberLeap Forward

AAFD is excited to announce the first major upgrade to the AAFD Member Management association management system since 2008!  Coming very soon, the AAFD is upgrading the AAFD’s Member Management system by partnering with the best in class MemberLeap member relationships platform.

The AAFD migration to the MemberLeap Association Management Platform will provide a significant upgrade to the AAFD’s signature association management capabilities, including all of the following:

• AAFD chapter leaders will have access to chapter member data as controlled and protected by each chapter!
• Chapters will enjoy an unprecedented ability to customize their chapter dues and assessments, with multiple dues plans.
• AAFD members will be able to join, renew, and contribute dues and assessments online with greater flexibility than ever.
• AAFD will now have the ability to offer AAFD and chapter meeting registration and management from the convenience of the AAFD’s integrated website.
• All AAFD ‘Active’ Chapters will have a dedicated website with both public and private features.
• . . . And perhaps best of all, AAFD Member Management ‘powered by’ MemberLeap will now include dynamic ‘member engagement’ opportunities, including discussion forums, committee management, project management, and more.
• . . . and soon, the AAFD’s Member Management software will integrate with the AAFD’s accounting systems to facilitate reporting and management of chapter accounting.

“Although the AAFD has been proudly offering the greatest value in association management over the past 25 years at a fraction of the cost of other alternatives, the MemberLeap partnership will allow the AAFD to dramatically boost our service options, including efficient meeting management and member engagement opportunities, all in an integrated system,” boasted AAFD Chairman, Robert Purvin. “Apart from our signature efforts to advocate for franchisee interests, including the AAFD’s Fair Franchising Standards, this may be our most valuable advance for our members in over a decade.’

The AAFD began investigating association management tools last July when our current provided, SalesNexus, announced a major upgrade of its own. While the SalesNexus upgrade seemed impressive, AAFD hadn’t compared other member management systems for years, and we found several outstanding options. According to Purvin, “MemberLeap seemed to blow away some 20 competitors, including our current provider, for association and meeting management and member engagement opportunities.”

MemberLeap, a service of Vieth Consulting, has been ranked by the prestigious software review company, Capterra, as the Number #1 association management software for mid-range associations, and in the top five (ranked #4) among all (more than 50) association management software offerings for nonprofits! And only MemberLeap has strong tools for chapter management, meeting management, member forums, and QuickBooks integration that are key criteria for AAFD chapters!

Our Time Table

The migration to MemberLeap is a major undertaking. We need to build a customized platform and then migrate thousands of member and prospect records and data all mapped to our new system. Then we must test the new system before we flip the switch to run AAFD Member Management to our new software. Actually, pretty scary stuff!

The MemberLeap and AAFD teams are already hard a work building the platform and testing data, and we hope to flip the switch to our new software system before May 1, the beginning of the AAFD’s fiscal year.

We are doing our best to assure a smooth transition, but we are also mindful that software conversions seem to always have unexpected issues and bumps. We hope that our AAFD members will be patient and understanding as we work toward a successful conversion. The AAFD intends to maintain our existing SalesNexus licenses for some time into the future.

Four AAFD chapters, mainly new chapters that are easier to convert, have agreed to be ‘test or pioneer’ chapters for our new AAFD Member Management 2.0 system. Other chapters will soon have the opportunity to migrate. We fully intend to use the new system for our member registrations for the AAFD’s 2018 Franchisee Leadership Conference this coming October.  So stay tuned.

Dues Increases and Fees

The advance to MemberLeap does come with added chapter costs that we believe are overwhelmingly justified by added value. In combination with rising costs, and some well-earned compensation increases to AAFD team members, the AAFD Member Management upgrade has necessitated some dues and chapter fee increases that are being announced concurrently with this major announcement from the AAFD.

Once the MemberLeap program goes live, all AAFD Active Chapters will incur a one-time set-up fee of $500, which includes a private MemberLeap sub-account for each chapter (at a steeply discounted cost!), a fully functioning chapter website, and chapter forums. AAFD ‘active chapters’ will also incur a $50 per month MemberLeap management fee which will cover ongoing support, chapter leader access to the chapter database, and website hosting. The monthly service fee is also a steeply reduced cost for AAFD chapters.