Sample growth plan. Client name, people and figures have been changed.

Prepared by MemberFix

Member Association Growth Roadmap

Twelve findings from our audit, turned into a plan to stop members leaking away and grow your association from roughly 2,900 members toward the 20,000 people eligible to join. No rebuild: WordPress, MemberPress and Stripe stay.

12 Findings 4 Critical to fix now 0 Rebuilds needed

This is a sample. It is a shortened version of a real plan we delivered to a member association. The name, people and figures have been changed, and four of the twelve findings are shown in full.

YOUR ASSOCIATION × MEMBERFIX

The Opportunity

You already have the members and the mission

You have the members, a clear purpose and a solid site. The plan builds on that in three ways:

🌱

Grow the Membership

Remove the friction to join, so more of the people you serve become paying members.

🔗

Keep Members Longer

Fix the silent lapses and give members a reason to log in, so fewer memberships leak away each year.

⚙️

Run It Smoothly

Fix what's broken, automate the manual work, and make the site fast and secure enough to hold thousands.

You already run on a strong platform (WordPress and MemberPress). What is missing is configuration and a few upgrades, not a rebuild.

The Roadmap

Twelve findings, one roadmap

Ordered fixes first, then growth. In this sample, findings 01, 02, 05 and 06 are shown in full.

🩹01

Renewal leak

Critical
🚫02

Paying, locked out

Critical
🪄03

One-step join

Fix + Growth
🧱04

Membership foundation

Foundation
📬05

Inbox + own your email

Critical + Growth
🔒06

Lock down the site

Critical
🪪07

Right people, right access

Fix
⚡08

Fast and ready to scale

Growth
🩺09

Engine health check

Foundation
🏠10

A members-only area

Growth
🤝11

Community that keeps members

Growth
♿12

Reach every member

Growth

All twelve keep your current core stack (WordPress, MemberPress, Stripe). No rebuild required.

Finding 01 · Critical Fix

🩹 Plug the renewal leak that quietly loses members

When a membership lapses, the site sends the member to a fresh signup page instead of a renewal page, so people have to sign up from scratch just to stay on board.

1,180
Members on a manual payment method that never auto-renews
410
Already past expiration but still marked active
0
Renewal pages anywhere in the current flow
1,540
Card members renewing correctly, no action needed

🔍 What we found

  • 1,180 members pay through a manual method that never charges them again, so every one of them lapses by design.
  • 410 of those are already past their expiration date while the site still shows them as active.
  • When an inactive member logs in, the site sends them to the registration page, not a renewal page.
  • A failed card payment gets no retry, so the member drops straight to inactive.

📈 What it means for you

  • Every lapsed member has to start over as a new signup, an easy moment to lose them for good.
  • 410 people are one login away from being pushed out instead of welcomed back.
  • Getting even some of those 410 to renew protects income you're losing right now.
  • Your team stops chasing re-registrations and fixing records by hand.

🛠️ Recommended steps

  • Send lapsed members to a renewal page, not a fresh signup form.
  • Decide how members who don't pay by card should renew: move them to card payments, or send a yearly renewal invoice with a link.
  • Turn on payment retries and reminder emails, so a failed card gets a second chance before access is lost.
  • Work through the 410 lapsed-but-active members and settle each one properly.
  • Test the new renewal path on a copy of the site before switching it on.

🏆 How the best membership sites do it

An expiring member lands on a one-click renew or update-your-card page, never a blank signup form. A failed card triggers a retry and a friendly reminder instead of a silent cancellation. Members move from one year to the next without losing their history.

Finding 02 · Critical Fix

🚫 Members who pay but can't get in

We checked every Stripe payment against your membership records. Eleven members don't match: some pay but are locked out, some are charged while their record says canceled, and one was refunded but is still set to be charged again.

11
Members where Stripe and MemberPress disagree
3
Paying but locked out
7
Still charged while the record says canceled
1
Refunded, but still set to charge again

🔍 What we found

  • Paying but locked out (3): Stripe charges them every year, but their membership record is linked to an old, canceled subscription, so the payments never count and they can't log in.
  • Charged while marked canceled (7): still live in Stripe while the site shows them canceled or with auto-renew off.
  • Refunded, still billing (1): refunded in full, yet the Stripe subscription stays live and will charge again next year.

📈 What it means for you

  • Shutting out people who have already paid is a quick way to lose them and their goodwill.
  • Money moving on cards with no membership recorded invites refund requests and chargebacks.
  • It's a small, countable group, so each case can be put right quickly.

🛠️ Recommended steps

  • Reconnect the 3 locked-out members first, so they get access back the same day.
  • Correct the 7 mismatched records, so each one clearly either keeps paying or is canceled.
  • Decide whether the refunded member's future charge should be canceled too.
  • Set up a regular automated check between Stripe and MemberPress, so a mismatch is caught in days, not months.

🏆 How the best membership sites do it

They treat "paid but locked out" as a top-priority incident. Every payment maps to exactly one membership record, and a routine check flags any card charge with no matching membership before the member has to email about it.

Finding 05 · Critical + Growth

📬 Get your email into the inbox, and own your sending

Site emails are landing in spam because your domain's email authentication is only half set up, and the newsletter tool is costly and out of step with who is actually a member.

$1,100
Yearly newsletter tool cost
~150
Contacts left before the next price tier
~$800
Potential saving each year
0
Alerts when email starts failing

🔍 What we found

  • Receipts and password resets land in spam. The likely cause is a missing email signature record (DKIM) for your domain, which Gmail and Outlook weigh heavily.
  • Your domain's sender policy and the way the site actually sends mail don't line up, so some site email fails authentication checks.
  • Your DMARC policy is in monitor-only mode with nowhere to send reports, so nobody sees the failures.
  • The newsletter list syncs by website role, not membership status, so expired members keep getting newsletters and staff maintain the "paid-up" tag by hand.

📈 What it means for you

  • Receipts, password resets and notices reach members' inboxes instead of spam.
  • The likely fix for the spam problem is one DNS record.
  • A self-hosted newsletter tool saves around $800 a year and removes the contact cap.
  • Only paid-up members get the newsletter automatically, and lapsed members can get win-back emails instead.

🛠️ Recommended steps

  • Add the missing signature record so site email stops landing in spam.
  • Route every email the site sends through one trusted sending service, with one consistent "from" address.
  • Turn on DMARC reporting so you hear about failures, then tighten the policy once everything passes.
  • Move the newsletter off Mailchimp to a tool that reads live membership status.

🏆 How the best membership sites do it

They treat email as infrastructure they own. SPF, DKIM and DMARC all line up, so receipts and reminders land in the inbox. Transactional and newsletter email go through one verified service, and who receives what is tied to live membership status, not a tag someone updates by hand.

Finding 06 · Critical

🔒 Close the doors that could hand over your whole site

A security review of the custom code and server setup found issues that could give an outsider full control of the site and its member data. All of them can be fixed quickly.

2
Critical issues
4
High-risk issues
9
Admins without two-factor login
2,900+
Members' records at stake

🔍 What we found

  • Some custom code on the site did not check permissions properly before doing sensitive things.
  • A few sensitive files were reachable from the public web when they should not have been.
  • Too many people had administrator access, without two-factor login, including some who no longer needed it.

📈 What it means for you

  • Until these are fixed, an outsider could take over the site.
  • Members' names, emails and details stay private.
  • With two-factor login on, one stolen password can no longer open the whole site.

🛠️ Recommended steps

  • Immediately: remove anything sensitive from public reach and rotate any credentials that may have been exposed.
  • Add proper permission checks to the custom code.
  • Turn on two-factor login for every administrator and remove accounts that no longer need access.

🏆 How the best membership sites do it

Every sensitive action checks who is asking before it runs, every admin uses two-factor login, and backups and personal data never sit where the public can reach them. Your site already gets a lot right, including encrypted connections and strong secret keys, so this is about closing specific gaps, not starting over.

Where we would start

Fixes first to stop the leaks, then the upgrades that grow membership.

Phase 1 · Stop the Leaks

About 3 weeks

Renewals, the members paying but locked out, email deliverability, and security.

Phase 2 · Solid Foundation

About 5 weeks

One-step join, membership settings cleaned up, access and privacy, speed and hosting.

Phase 3 · Grow Member Value

About 8 weeks

A members-only area, a member community, your own newsletter, accessibility.

✅ What this roadmap delivers

  • Members stop lapsing silently, and paying members always get in
  • A site that is quick, secure, and ready for thousands of members
  • Emails that reach the inbox, and lower running costs
  • A real reason for members to log in and stay
  • Less manual admin for your team

📊 At a glance

Findings12
Critical to fix now4
Members already lapsed410
Email saving vs current tool~$800/yr
Rebuilds needed0

Next step: tell us which item matters most to you, and we'll scope it and get started.

Prepared by MemberFix · memberfix.rocks