I was wondering how many museums allow people to join as members entirely online. I've been signing up for memberships to a number of railway museums, and I've found some let me do it online, while others make me download a form and send in a cheque.

Those of you who do online memberships - how do you do it? Who are good providers? What sort of costs do you bear?

I think using a Paypal "Donate" or "Subscribe" button on our site is going to be how we go in the future. Paypal does the credit card processing and the money goes right into our account.

We currently have a "donate" button on our site which allows people to make online donations through Network for Good. There are other similar services. Maybe there is one that will process a payment and add the name and contact info. to the master membership database then send renewals out automatically. If it exists I haven't found it yet.

For our online newsletters we use a service from Network For Good called EmailNow. I can create HTML e-newsletters and send them to any number of addresses. You can set up different mailing lists for members, prospective members, supporters, etc. so you can target a mailing for the right group. It also automatically removed addresses that bounce. Its just like constant contact but cheaper, $29.95 a month.

The Conrail Historical Society just launched our online store using Ubercart + Drupal's. It encompasses much more than just memberships, but one of the categories of items in the store is "memberships". https://www.shoppe.thecrhs.org/?q=catal ... emberships

We let people sign up or renew using it. Since we've already gone through the overhead of hooking up online credit card processing, we had might as well use it.

We also have a "donation jar" on various pages of the site. I set this up way before we created the online shop, and while I don't think too many people have used it, it does work.
See it on the right here: http://www.thecrhs.org

If anyone is interested in learning more about either solution, just let me know.

The http://TMNY.org web site has had on-line membership though Paypal for a few years now.

The Erie Lackawanna Dining Car Preservation Society takes both Paypal and credit cards directly through our store, which also allows for printing out and sending a check as well: http://www.eldcps.org/store/home.php?cat=22