How to Increase Membership in a Nonprofit Organization, and Keep It

Most advice on growing a nonprofit membership starts with marketing tactics. The decisions that matter more come first: whether your members are legal members who vote or supporters you call members, what the IRS lets you offer them without complicating their tax deduction, and whether people pay once a year or every month. This guide works through those decisions with real membership programs, the IRS rules, and the retention numbers from the original studies.

First decide what “member” means

“Member” has two meanings in the nonprofit world, and mixing them up causes problems at your first annual meeting. In state nonprofit law, members are people with legal rights in the corporation. Oregon’s Secretary of State puts it plainly: you must state whether the corporation will have members, and members “are defined as people who have authority to vote on certain things, such as directorships.” Washington’s law says a corporation may have one or more classes of members or none, and for corporations formed since 2022 there are no members unless the articles say so.

Most charities choose no legal members, so the board elects itself and decides everything. They can still run a “membership program”, which is a giving program with a name and some benefits. Island Heritage Trust in Maine is the other kind: its membership benefits include “voting rights on bylaws and trustees”. Either works, but decide on purpose, write it into your articles and bylaws, and do not promise votes in a membership brochure that your bylaws do not give.

• Legal members suit associations, cooperatives, land trusts and community organizations where accountability to a defined group is the point. They bring meetings, notice rules and quorum requirements.
• A membership program without legal members suits museums, gardens, zoos, radio stations and most charities. Members get benefits and belonging, and the board keeps control.

The IRS rule that shapes your price

Membership benefits reduce what a member can deduct, unless they fall within an IRS exception. Publication 1771 lets an organization disregard certain benefits “provided in exchange for an annual payment of $75 or less”: free or discounted admission, gift shop discounts, free or discounted parking, and member-only events within the low-cost limits. Publication 526 adds preferred access to goods or services, and sets the 2025 limit for member-only events at a cost of no more than $13.60 per person; for 2026 the low-cost article figure is $13.90.

Above $75, the exception does not apply, and a payment that is partly a gift and partly for benefits needs a written disclosure of the value received. The penalty for missing it is “$10 per contribution, not to exceed $5,000 per fundraising event or mailing,” according to Publication 1771. The publication’s own example is a $75 membership with free admission plus a $20 poster: the acknowledgment “need only mention the $20 value of the poster.”

You can see the rule in real price lists. The Atlanta Botanical Garden’s Individual membership is $80, and the garden states “$27 is not tax deductible.” The North Carolina Botanical Garden says that for its Digital through Sustainer levels “the entire membership rate is tax-deductible.” What you owe members is an accurate statement for your own tiers, set with your accountant, and our donation receipt template shows the wording.

Real membership models, with their prices

These are programs as their organizations publish them, read in November 2026. They show the range of models, from per-person pricing to no dues at all.

Three patterns stand out. Prices cluster at the low end, $20 to $80 for an individual, because membership is an entry point, not the main gift. Higher tiers turn into giving circles with a small benefit attached. And the organizations that most want renewals make paying monthly or automatically the easy choice.

Monthly membership, which is where retention comes from

Public radio stations moved to monthly “sustaining” membership because it removes the renewal decision. WYSO explains that a sustaining membership doesn’t expire after one year, and that the station spends less on renewal mailings. KMUW tells sustainers they receive “less mail and no renewal notices”, and says sustainers make up 42 percent of its annual members.

The numbers explain why. M+R’s Benchmarks 2026, covering 2025, found that monthly giving was 27% of all online revenue. It also found that 10% of sustainers stop giving within two months, but after a full year 71% are still active. By comparison, overall retention for one-time online donors in the same study was 48%, and across the sector the Fundraising Effectiveness Project measured overall donor retention of 43.3% in 2025. A monthly option on every tier, as Island Heritage Trust offers, is the change with the clearest evidence behind it.

If you do not want monthly billing, automatic annual renewal is the next best thing. The Oregon Zoo gives members 15% off future renewals for choosing it.

What renewal rates to expect

The best-known benchmark comes from Marketing General’s membership marketing study of associations, not charities, so treat it as a ceiling. Its 2026 report puts the median overall renewal rate at 82% and the median first-year renewal rate at 72%. The first year is where members are lost: someone who joins and hears nothing until the renewal notice has no reason to stay. In MGI’s 2025 report, 45% of association executives said membership had grown, down from 47% the year before and 49% in 2023.

For a charity membership program, a realistic target sits between the one-time donor figure and the association figure. Measure yours the same way every year: of the members active twelve months ago, how many renewed. Track first-year members separately, because their rate tells you whether onboarding works. Our guide to donor retention covers the calculation and what moves it.

How to get new members

• Ask at the moment of value. Zoos, gardens and museums ask at the admission desk, where the price of a visit makes the membership look cheap. Every organization has a moment like that: an event, a class, a program a family has just used.
• Make the entry price small. The Friends of the Cincinnati library starts at $20. A low first tier recruits people you can move up later.
• Give a benefit that costs you little. Early access, a shop discount, member-only events. The Bainbridge Island Land Trust gives members early access to its plant sale, and says so in its newsletter.
• Use dues tied to size for organizations. CalNonprofits and the Maine Association of Nonprofits both set dues by budget, from $75 or $100 for the smallest. Maine offers two years free to some newcomers.
• Turn donors into members. Wisconsin Public Radio treats a gift of any amount as membership. If you already have donors, calling them members and giving them something to belong to can be the cheapest recruitment you do.

How to keep them

Retention is won in the first year. Send a welcome within days, explain the benefits and how to use them, and invite new members to something in their first few months. Report back on what membership paid for, which is the job a good newsletter does. Thank members by name where you can, and use our thank-you letters for the wording. Send renewal reminders before the expiry date, not after it, and offer the monthly or automatic option at every renewal.

For members who have already lapsed, test what brings them back rather than guessing. The American Art Therapy Association tried two offers on members lapsed more than six months, a $10 coffee gift card or a three-month membership extension, and reported that the extension group was twice as likely to renew. It published no sample size, so treat the result as a reason to run your own test, not as a rule. Our guide to lapsed donors covers win-back timing.

Running the program

Below about a hundred members, a spreadsheet and your email tool are enough. Past that, renewal dates, tiers, benefits and automatic payments become the job of membership management software, which also handles member-only pages and event pricing. Whatever you use, keep one record per member with the join date, tier, payment method, renewal date and whether they are a legal member with a vote. If you do have legal members, your board needs a member list it can rely on for notices and quorum, which is a stronger reason to keep clean records than any marketing goal.

This is reference information, not legal or tax advice. Rules vary by state and change over time. For a decision that carries real consequences, check the current text at irs.gov or your state registry, and talk to a nonprofit attorney or CPA.