Web-based member application for Toastmasters

As the founding President of an online club, I have spent a lot of time thinking about how to construct smoother workflows for processes like enrolling members. This online member application submission and approval process is part of that. We’re currently piloting it at both Online Presenters Toastmasters and Club Awesome (a traditional offline club) and have seen a flurry of new applications in the space of a few days — which looks to me like evidence that we’ve successfully reduced some friction in the process.

By “online,” I mean this is an application process built where the new member fills out a web-based form that includes agreement to all the same legal terms you would find on the PDF or paper versions of the application. The completed application is saved as an HTML formatted document that is stored as part of your club’s online records and can be shared via email.

Update, June 22: I’ve now gone through the process of submitting a couple of transfer applications in this format to the Membership Department at the Toastmasters International, and they’ve accepted them with one proviso. As additional validation of the member’s digital signature, they have asked that the member personally confirm the transfer request by email.

The video below shows the user experience for the member completing the application and paying dues, as well as the reviewing and approving incoming applications, then creating member accounts on the website.

This is part of the WordPress for Toastmasters system for club marketing and meeting management. It takes advantage of the online payment features introduced a few months ago.

If no online payment has been received, the club officer reviewing the application will see a notice saying so at the top of the page. That notice is accompanied by a payment link you can copy-and-paste into your follow up email to the member. Or maybe you have received a payment by check or some other means, in which case you can ignore that alert and approve the application anyway.

Setting Up the Form

Getting this to work includes a little back-end setup to establish your club’s dues schedule and create a page on your website where the application will be displayed. There is a separate settings screen for this feature, labeled TI Application Form.

When you first load that setup screen, you will have to fill in some blanks. If you haven’t previously signed up for an account on the stripe.com online payment service and obtained the required API keys for integration with the website, you’ll have to do that now if you want to take advantage of the online payment feature.

Once you’ve completed the setup, the screen will look like this, with details on your own dues as well as the TI dues prorated by month.

Note that at the bottom of the setup page there are links to view or edit the member application page. That page will contain a placeholder code for the form itself, but you can add your own content before or after it (for example to provide some additional info on your dues).

Page with placeholder code for the application.

Before creating this, I verified with Toastmasters International that the legalese in the membership application form includes terms about how a digital signature on an application is legally binding. That’s something you agree to when submitting a digital application.

However, I believe this is much less awkward than emailing around PDFs (in my online club) or dealing with data entry issues like unreadable handwriting on paper forms leading to emails being entered incorrectly when we register a member (an issue for my offline club). It’s also one smooth process rather than a series of fragmented processes.