How to Automate WildApricot

WildApricot keeps an association's members, dues and events in one database

A small association's year turns on two dates: the renewal deadline and the annual conference.

WildApricot, also written Wild Apricot and now part of Personify, is member management software for associations, chambers, clubs, charities and chapters, and more than fifteen thousand organisations run on it. Members join and renew through forms on the organisation's WildApricot website and pay their dues online, and every payment and event registration lands on the member's record.

Its contact database holds non-members too, so event guests, donors and past members stay on file, and the same account takes donations and runs an online store. There is a member directory, a mobile app for members and an admin app for the door. Behind it there may be one part-time administrator and a board of volunteers with day jobs.

The renewal deadline and the conference both land on one administrator

Take an association whose renewals fall due on the first of January, with its conference in March.

In February, sixty members are past their renewal date but not yet lapsed, and a dozen of them are people the board would hate to lose: a past president, two committee chairs, the member who sponsors the newsletter. Exhibitors have signed up, but three have not sent their logos or paid their booth invoice.

The treasurer wants to know how dues are tracking against the budget, and the membership chair wants everyone who lapsed last year and never came back. Every Friday the newsletter editor asks for the week's new members and upcoming events. The administrator gets each answer from a WildApricot search, an export and the spreadsheet the last administrator left.

WildApricot sends renewal reminders and charges recurring dues on its own

Each membership level carries a renewal policy and a timeline of renewal notices that WildApricot sends by itself. Recurring payments can renew dues automatically for a level, member status updates itself during the renewal period, and WildApricot generates and emails an invoice and a receipt for every online payment.

Events send their own emails: the registration confirmation, reminders, and updates such as waitlist changes, with members-only and early-bird pricing on the registration form. The admin app checks people in at the door and shows who has paid. Zapier and Make connect WildApricot to other apps without code, QuickBooks among them, and the admin and member APIs are there for anyone who writes code.

The reminders go to everyone on the level's schedule, the committee chair and the first-year member alike. Zapier and Make pass records on to other apps, but seeing that the sponsor with an unpaid invoice is also the one who has not sent a logo, or that three of last year's lapsed members registered for March's conference as guests, takes someone reading across several searches. Comparing this year's renewals with last year's by level means an export and a spreadsheet, and checking a chapter's members against the national association's roster means another.

WildApricot's event registrations show which lapsed members still turn up

The president's personal notes go first to the dozen members the board most wants back: the long-standing ones and the committee chairs whose renewal is overdue, each note drafted from the member's own record.

The membership chair invites the three lapsed members who registered for March's conference as guests to rejoin before the event, in a note that mentions the session they signed up for.

Before the conference, each sponsor or exhibitor with an unpaid invoice or a missing logo gets a reminder from the conference coordinator, whose spreadsheet shows which booths are still incomplete. After it, the registrants who paid but never checked in at the door receive the slides and a note from the programme chair, taken from the admin app's check-in record.

The treasurer takes renewals by membership level, set against last year, into each board meeting. A chapter secretary compares the WildApricot members with the national association's roster each month, and the newsletter editor has the week's new members and upcoming events by Friday.

WildApricot's APIs need code, so the agent uses its admin screens

Behind each of those answers sits a saved search in WildApricot, an export and a comparison against last year's spreadsheet.

WebRun is an AI agent that works a real Chrome browser, signed in as you. From an administrator login it searches members, invoices and event registrations each week, opens the chapter spreadsheet or a sponsor's shared folder where a job needs them, and sends the administrator the drafts and a one-page summary by email.

Members, sponsors and the board hear from the association only after the administrator sends each draft, and membership levels and invoices change only when the administrator changes them in WildApricot. The jobs below run those same searches on a schedule.