Membership Toolkit Reviews

Very good for PTOs

Comments: Overall my experience has been great. The system is easy to use and we use 80% of what the site offers. This has given us the opportunity to combine outside services (i.e. newsletter programs + donation tracking) so we don’t have to pay for them all separately.

Pros:

This is a tool that is very easy to use for PTOs. With the right volunteers in place, this is a system that will provide you with what you need to run a successful non-profit Parent/Teacher organization.

Cons:

The stores are a little confusing to set up.

Membership Toolkit for Non-Profit Organization Supporting College Students and a Public University

Comments: Very positive overall; I have shared information about Membership Toolkit with three other organizations similar to our organization within the last year. We set up Zoom meetings during which we could share our screens to show them some of the features. One organization purchased the software, another is currently in the demo period and the third has a Zoom set up with us in a few weeks.

Pros:

- Ease of learning - Ability to give limited administrator access to board members pertaining to only their area and not access to every area - Integration of all functions of our organization: membership, accounting, website, sales, communications with members, etc. - The app is easy to use - Quick response of customer service

Cons:

- We cannot use its directory templates because they are student-centered; our directory needs to be parent-centered so we have to export the data and use different software to create our membership directory which is very time-consuming and frustrating. - Our treasurer would like to have an easier way to modify the accounting reports each month to be a more usable format for our organization. - We would like to have a way to send communications to prospective members because we can only send e-mails and newsletters to current or previous members who are listed as "contacts" in our members database. We have a huge batch of prospective members every summer and have to use other software to communicate with them until they become members. - If a member attempts to log in with a different email address (such as their work e-mail if their account was originally set up with their personal e-mail, the software automatically creates a new member record for them. This duplicate record is not linked to their initial membership record so it appears as if they are not a current member. We have to manually remove these duplicate records as we become aware of them. It becomes even more complicated if their membership is on one record but they make a purchase on another record. There is not a way to "merge" the two accounts. We have to select one account, manually update it to reflect the payment on the other account and "cancel" the duplicate member account. - We would like to have a way to acknowledge our sponsors on our home page, either with a scrolling feature or rotating logos and have a way to easily update them.

MTK wants you dependent on them

Comments: If you need someone to run your organization for you, without taking into account your needs then by all means choose MTK.

Pros:

None of the features are worth giving up administrative autonomy of your organization.

Cons:

MTK is trying to slowly force their customer base to become dependent on them for all its database, managerial and financial management needs. All customers were forced into using LumaPay or give up the ability to accept online payments. The change was forced on their timeline, not in the off peak time for their customer base.Once that forced change took place, if you wanted to make a change to your payout schedule through stripe, you had to create a help ticket in MTK for them to make the change for you. If you ask MTK help desk a question they don't want to answer, they just ignore the question.

Membership Toolkit a seamless way to manage your non-profit.

Comments: Mtk is pretty seamless overall. I would recommend this to similar organizations looking for an easy to implemment platform. While there are features I'd love to see its a great value for the functionality.

Pros:

Membership Toolkit is a relatively easy way to manage your non-profit's website. It is a one stop shop for membership, volunteers, directory, calendar and content. Administrators do not need to be web developers to manage this site.

Cons:

While MTK has a very responsive support team they often send videos or detailed directions that are difficult to follow. It would be great if there was a level of membership where they would do the updates of us. We currently have the middle membership and the next level up doesn't offer the support we'd like. Additionally, the volunteer sign up is very limited and we have gone back to Sign Up Genius for volunteers.

Incredibly valuable tool

Comments: Incredibly positive! Amazing customer service, intuitive software, and easy to use.

Pros:

MTK is literally designed to do what we need to do - manage membership, purchases, and donations for a large school PTA or Foundation. They seem to have thought of everything and are incredibly open to feedback and requests. The customer service both technical and client based is some of the best of any organization or business I've ever worked with.

Cons:

Honestly I have no complaints. Recently they switched to only allowing online payments via LumaPay, which has been limiting since as a non-profit we preferred to shop around for a payment processor with lower fees - but certainly worth it to have all of the features and abilities of the software.

nivigation difficult but software great

Comments: Support is great. I do think some of the classes offered should come with our membership each year. Or a refresher class should be offered to current members. Again, the site is great but can be difficult to navigate/set up/

Pros:

I do like that everything is in one place.

Cons:

It is difficult to navigate, I do not think it is user-friendly. I have been using it for a few years and still can not easily go into MKT and feel confident to do what I need to get done. There are so many steps to get one thing done.

Excellent for PTO/PTA

Pros:

I love the ease of use for people of all different technical abilities. It is easy to pass down from person to person as volunteers change, and their help desk is incredible!

Cons:

The cost of membership toolkit isn’t cheap, but we are able to justify it because of all the features it has.

Very useful to run our Non-Profit HSA for the school

Comments: It’s been overall great, customer service is always helpful.

Pros:

It lets us keep track of everything in one place. Ease of communication is vital and tracking volunteers

Cons:

Sometimes it feels like there are too many steps to do things. The spreadsheets have too much information and we have to revise them after downloading.

Great toll for basic membership management

Pros:

The customer service is fantastic. They are very responsive via email. The interface is pretty easy to use as well.

Cons:

You can't call someone to speak on the phone. There should be a scheduling option for classes.

Great tool for our PTO

Pros:

It's a great all-in-one tool for school PTOs.

Cons:

I wish they included a texting component.

Best Product on the Market for Parent Teacher Associations! (PTAs)

Comments: Our experience with Membership Toolkit has been top notch. The Customer Support team is extremely efficient and knowledgeable. Questions are answered very quickly and effectively.

Pros:

Membership Toolkit allows your PTA to house ALL of your PTA information on one streamlined website. Parents, faculty, and community members can visit your ONE website to purchase a PTA membership, donate funds, buy Spirit Wear, view a calendar of upcoming PTA events, sign up to volunteer, and view an online membership directory. We no longer rely on multiple websites to run our events and sign up our volunteers. Membership Toolkit is our ONE streamlined software. Because parents are now visiting our website more often to view all PTA information, our membership has already increase by 200+ members from last school year.

Cons:

Membership Toolkit offers EVERYTHING your PTA needs in order to streamline the way run your organization. Because there are so many helpful features and tools, the software can take a little time to learn. But once you learn, you will never look back.

Marching Into the 21st Century

Comments: As stated above, we've only been using this for three months and my time has been severely restricted. Our program is "live" for nine weeks every summer and I'm the only contracted staff person available. I have enjoyed watching our numbers grow - both in memberships and in financial donations. I continue to try to recruit our members to use it.

Pros:

Online donating is probably what meant the most to us. Our building was closed the last two years. This meant giving was down and fundraisers were either cancelled or cut back. We struggled. We're hoping that this program will make it easier for our folks to give and to buy our products. We've only been doing this for three months. Time will tell.

Cons:

It's still a big learning curve for me and every time someone wants to do something new or asks me if I can set something up via the website, it causes anxiety while I figure out IF and can do it and HOW can do it. The help tickets are great - always prompt, helpful answers. The videos and articles are great, too. It just takes time to search through and then complete the task and there is only one of me. :)

Game Changer

Comments: The other benefit is that it makes it easier to pass the job to the next person, because it is a functioning system that is easy to use. When I took this job on it was very stressful, and now it's a pleasure. I can't say enough about how great Membership Toolkit is. It is worth every penny.

Pros:

This software completely changed our organization. Having members input their contact information increases accuracy and engagement. Parents wanted a centralized location for the information they needed and now they can find everything on our MT site: calendars, forms, trip information, show schedules. It's reduced the overwhelming barrage of emails that we previously used to inform them. The biggest benefit for me as treasurer is the accounting system. When I started we had no system, and I managed student payments with spreadsheets. Nothing was integrated. With MT the student payments are a breeze to handle, and parents can always see what they have paid and what they still need to pay. It's easy to send receipts and reminders. The financial statements are seamless, easy to set up, and well formatted. The reports you can generate are amazing.

Cons:

Set up took some time and there is definitely a learning curve, but it is well worth it, and the customer service team is there to help at every step.

Productivity for Leaders of volunteers

Pros:

Background: We led a high school football booster club where traditionally a core 10% do 90% of the work. This 10% believes deeply in supporting the team and building school spirit. But over time the core 10% wears down and instead of finding joy they're simply hoping for the season's end. Our Results: Membership Toolkit significantly increased productivity of the core 10%, so they got more done and felt better about their efforts. Also the software tools improved communication and event planning which motivated many more in the 90% to step up and pitch in. Bottom Line - we grew engagement in our season and provided a great platform for future seasons to build on. Each subsequent season's core 10% got a sizable head start to set the bar even higher. 7 seasons after starting with Membership Toolkit the improved productivity and member satisfaction continues.

Cons:

Didn't know about it at the start of our season - so we had to change in the middle.

All in one communication management

Pros:

In Membership Toolkit all necessary communication tools have been combined and it meets all needs for an organization's communication management requirements with the members.

Cons:

Only way to access to the product features is the cloud, in my opinion all local based connection methods are required and would be beneficial for increasing the usage experience.

Terrible Software - look for alternative

Comments: When we were forced to migrate to this new platform from the company we used to use (company buy out) - we were SHOCKED at how horrible the new system was. Our volunteers (all full-time working professionals) have jointly invested over 250 hours and we are still unable to make this system work for us.

Pros:

I honestly have nothing good to say. We were forced to migrate to this from our old software (My School Anywhere) and it's been a terrible experience from day 1.

Cons:

No bulk upload, antiquated communication features, slow support response, and INSANELY complicated to navigate for a bunch of highly educated people. You can't even delete contacts or do an easy database clean up. It's truly unbelievable.

Easy to access!

Pros:

I love that I can filter by grade and then also by teacher. Makes it easy when finding phone numbers and addresses for my children's friends!

Cons:

A picture feature would be cool ... but I love it regardless.