The foundation

Your whole association, running on one solid foundation.

We build your membership operations — members, dues, events, communications, and benefits in one place that actually connects, set up around how your organization works — so the programs that make you an authority have something solid to sit on. It's some of the oldest work we do, and we build it on Orbit, our own association management platform.
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The problem

Most associations run on a patchwork: a spreadsheet for members, one tool for dues, another for events, a separate service for email, and a website that doesn't talk to any of them. Renewals get chased by hand. Data is re-entered, exported, and reconciled. And members get a disjointed experience — a different login for every task, and details that are always slightly out of date.

The usual alternative has been an expensive, dated all-in-one system that does everything adequately and nothing well.

There's a better option.

What we build

We bring the essentials of running your association into one place: your members, their dues, your events, your communications, and the benefits you offer — set up around how your organization actually works.

Because it's unified, the work stops being about shuffling data between tools. A new member signs up once and everything updates. A renewal runs on its own. An event registration already knows who's a member and who isn't. Your team gets time back, and your members get an experience that finally feels like one organization.

We build it on Orbit, the association management platform we've distilled from years of this work. That's why you're not starting from scratch — the foundation already exists, and we shape it to you.

What it covers

Use what you need; add the rest as you grow.

  • Membershipmember records, types and tiers, profiles, and renewals.
  • Dues & Paymentsrecurring billing and online payments, with renewals that run automatically.
  • Eventsregistration and ticketing, recurring events, and waitlists.
  • Member Portala self-service home where members manage their own details, payments, and registrations.
  • Communicationsemail, newsletters, and announcements to the right members.
  • Directorya searchable member or professional directory, public or members-only.
  • Orders & Billingpurchases, orders, and invoicing handled alongside membership.
  • Benefitsmanage and deliver the perks of membership.
  • Access & Permissionsfine-grained control over who can see and do what, including portfolio-wide access.
  • Website Integrationembed member features directly into your existing website.

We've built this before

Membership and customer management is some of the oldest, deepest work we do. For the Green Building Initiative — a nonprofit that had operated for over 20 years across a tangle of separate, legacy systems — we built a single, unified member and customer portal: one account and one login for everything, a member and professional directory, orders and billing, credentials, and portfolio-wide access and permissions. We migrated years of user and project data out of their old tools (even reverse-engineering legacy logins so no one had to reset a password), and we've run and grown the platform with them since 2019.

That's the experience behind Orbit — not a generic CRM bent into shape, but membership systems built for how associations actually operate.

The foundation your programs sit on

Membership management is the ground floor — and it's where this fits in the bigger picture. Because your members, their records, and their access all live in one place, the programs that make you an authority — your certifications, assessments, and standards — plug into the same foundation. The people you certify are the people you manage. One platform underneath all of it. (With GBI, the member portal and the Green Globes assessment tools live in exactly this kind of unified system.)

Why us

Built around how you work

We set the platform up for your association, not the other way around — shaped to your membership types, your renewals, your programs.

Unified, not a patchwork

One platform instead of six tools stitched together, so nothing falls through the cracks between them.

A track record, not a pitch

We've been building membership and customer-management systems for associations for years — including a portal we've run with GBI since 2019.

A fraction of the cost of legacy systems

Comprehensive association management without the price tag of the incumbent platforms.

How we work

Switching platforms sounds painful, so we make sure it isn't. We help you migrate from your current tools — we've done large, messy migrations before — set Orbit up around how your association actually runs, and get your team and members comfortable with it. The change should be something you're glad you made, not something you endure.

Tell us how your association runs today, and we'll show you what this would look like for you.

The best place to start is a quick conversation. Book an intro call and we'll walk through your setup and where we can help.

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Membership management is the foundation Empathy Works builds under the work that makes associations lead their field — assessment & certification and standards & submissions.