record, find and update membership details, of course

changes are automatically saved as you make them; undo if you make a mistake (rare to find Undo in a web-app); no fussy stuff like requiring specific date formats

support the membership lifecycle: joining, renewals, reminders, expiries, cancellations etc.

different membership types and fees; household memberships with multiple individuals; catch the cases when people who were once members rejoin as if they were new

sophisticated searching, including locating members in an area on a map, combining search results, incremental searching

simply typing three or four characters of a surname is often enough to find them; find everyone within 500m of Whatever Road or in Little Village; typing Sian will find (accented) Siân and vice versa

custom fields

add, search for, sort by and substitute in messages your own fields for storing structured information that aren’t already provided: consider, for example, a date of birth field or ‘identity confirmed’ tick box

comprehensive mail merge to rich text emails, letters and labels, with stored templates for personalised acknowledgments, reminders, newsletters etc.

just one click to generate this month’s renewal reminders as a mixture of emails and letters; print on membership card blanks with barcodes and photo id; send a weekly update; no need for messing with moving mailing lists to and from MailChimp; keep evidence of mailing consent as required by GDPR

contacts too (supporters, political representatives, press etc.)

write your press release and send it to all your press contacts; send mailshots to potential recruits, clients or customers (who opted in for this, of course: spam not welcome)

customizable ready-made forms

prepare and customize forms for embedding on your public website for main functions such as joining, renewals, address updates, bookings, mailing list management, gift aid declarations, contact sign-up, and running questionnaires, petitions or other consultations.

taking payments

take payments for membership, event tickets, invoices, merchandise etc via Stripe (credit/debit cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay), Go Cardless (direct debits), PayPal, Zettle (in-person card payments), bank transfers, standing orders, cash, cheque (record deposits), and manage the tricky bit of matching payments to members and customers. For charities, track Gift Aid declarations and submit to HMRC.

book-keeping

optionally manage (hierarchical) double-entry book-keeping accounts; issue, track and take payments for invoices; quotations and purchase orders; generate financial reports

record of all correspondence

see what you told them a year earlier long after you forgot

file attachments and notes

a member sends you a scribbled note: just photograph it and attach it to their record

assign members to arbitrary lists and send them mailshots

with automatic opt-outs; let people subscribe themselves to a special-interest subgroup via your website or manage it yourself or both; compile lists of your conference attendees

reminders and notifications

“we’re moving to Belgium in six months, so we’d like to stop our membership then” – no problem, make a note of it now against their membership to pop up and email you to do it at the relevant time; also, automatically send email to members/contacts at pre-defined intervals

a complete cloud file store

with a tagging system so you can classify files; keep your committee papers, artwork and the like centrally with everything else

statistics

find out how many members you’ve got of what types; what’s your membership turnover?

reports

prepare tables for spreadsheets of selected information from membership and contact records (including custom fields).

control over who can edit and access financial information

so some people can consult the list, do mailshots and add contacts, while only your membership secretary can edit paid memberships, and treasurer has access to payment history

events, appointments and bookings

set up events like conferences, coach trips, concert performances; manage bookings, linked to existing members as appropriate; print or email tickets; even equipment hire or loan; embeddable self-service booking forms including taking payment; automatically update your WordPress website with current and past event details.

API for custom integrations with your website

you present and collect information how it suits you on your website, based on information obtained from and sent to Cameo

modern, responsive user interface

adapts to different size screens, so someone asks you about their membership at a meeting, just look it up on your phone; every membership has its own URL, so you can send links to other users; colour coded for instant recognition; keyboard short cuts for rapid navigation

getting data in and out

automated backups easily restored if the worst happens; import memberships from your old system; create spreadsheets of selected records

light on hardware

runs well even on a Raspberry Pi – so on a tiny box, it may be possible to run it in your own network if your internet connection is fast enough, rather than incurring hosting costs; or on a minimum-spec Google Cloud server; https, two-factor authentication and/or keys for security