How You Can Use Membership Certificates To Help Your Club Or Association

Imagine I run a freediving club with 100 members. We regularly host guided dive days and snorkels that everyone is welcome to attend. We also hold competitions but require divers to complete a third-party course and listen to me rant about shallow water blackouts for at least an hour before they can register to compete. On competition day, things can get chaotic with so many people around. So, we need a way to easily verify who's qualified to compete.

So, we create a special "Competition Divers" membership level within our Member Jungle site. Divers who complete the necessary training can sign up for this level, giving my admin team time to verify their qualifications. Then, we can issue them a custom membership certificate that they can print or keep on their phone. This provides a simple and convenient way for divers to prove they're qualified and for my admins to quickly check eligibility before allowing them to compete.

 

 

The reason I bring this up is that I wanted to demonstrate a real-world example of how useful membership certificates can be. Also, I’m not joking about being able to talk about shallow water blackouts for an hour; I find them fascinating; consider yourself lucky if this article doesn’t turn into a thesis on the misunderstandings of breath holds and the dangers of shallow water blackouts.

So, with that threat hanging over our heads, let’s look at what membership certificates are and how they can really help your club or association. 

What Are Membership Certificates? 

Member Jungle offers customisable digital membership certificates that allow members to easily and formally prove that they have certain qualifications and/or are members of certain membership levels within your organisation. Unlike digital membership cards, which are for all membership levels, membership certificates can be turned on and customised in different ways for different membership levels. 

When a new member is approved to join a membership level that has membership certificates turned on, their certificate will be automatically generated. This certificate can be saved as a PDF or printed out if they want to frame it and put it somewhere (as often is the case when medical associations use this feature). 

Below is a standard membership certificate; these can be fully customised. 

 

 

These certificates can include any custom field that you collect on the relevant membership level. Everything from basic stuff like the member’s name and membership level to their qualification, membership expiration date and much much more. 

What Are Membership Certificates For? 

By now, you've probably gathered that membership certificates are a great way to track and showcase your members' qualifications. They offer a convenient way for members to prove their credentials to both your association and third parties.

This is especially useful for organisations that manage licensing or certifications. For example, a peak body for air conditioner installers could use certificates to help members demonstrate their qualifications to customers. Medical associations can use them to verify that members have completed specific training. Even clubs can use certificates to show that certain members are qualified for specialised activities, like cave diving or hunting.

Membership certificates provide a clear and readily available way to verify qualifications, streamline processes and increase trust and transparency. Plus, once set up and customised, they are automatically generated for all applicable members, saving your admin team time. 

Members can view and download their membership certificates at any time by going to the “Member” section of the Mysite area.

How Much Do Membership Certificates Cost?

Unless you are signed up for Member Jungle’s Ultimate Package, membership certificates are a paid optional add-on. At the time of writing, membership certificates cost $1299 upfront and an extra $19 a month. Please note that both those prices are in AUD. For more details on the price of membership certificates check out our Pricing Page.  

Though that’s not nothing, for clubs and associations that need to be able to easily track members' qualifications and licensing status, it is a price, in my opinion, that is well worth paying to be able to do so. 

More About Membership Certificates 

To find out more about membership certificates and their features, have a look at  Membership Certificates.

To learn about the uses of the similar Event certificates, check out Certificates of Attendance For Your Association.

Finally, if anyone does want to hear my rant about shallow water blackouts, please reach out, and I will more than happily write an in-depth article for all one of you interested.