Galani Membership Manager for Associations

Association Manager is a free, complete membership plugin for associations, NGOs, homeowners associations, professional bodies, clubs and unions. Manage members and unlimited membership levels, collect membership fees, run a gated member directory, restrict content by level, and hold general assemblies with automatic quorum and secret-ballot voting — all from WordPress, with no monthly fee.

Most membership plugins sell access to content. This one is built for organisations that have statutes — where you also have to convene a general assembly, verify the quorum, put motions to a vote and keep a record of the outcome. It handles the full life of a member: joining, paying the fee, appearing in the directory, attending assemblies, voting, renewing — and it tells you at a glance who is about to lapse.

Plugin website & add-ons: galani.ro/wordpress-plugins

Everything below is included for free

• Members & membership levels — unlimited levels with their own fee, period, colour and grace; every level maps to a real WordPress role
• Member management — full member file, payment history, days remaining, optional admin approval
• Membership fees & reports — collected per year and month, per level and per method, a filterable payment list and CSV export
• Member directory — searchable, filterable by level and city, gated by membership level, with per-member privacy
• Public member profiles — description, video and contact details, with per-field visibility
• Joining & payments — public sign-up form, built-in bank transfer, optional WooCommerce, manual activation
• Membership documents — numbered, printable, delivered by email
• General assemblies & voting — automatic quorum, motions and elections, secret ballot, live tallying
• Content restriction by membership level, transactional emails, setup wizard, demo data, Elementor widgets and shortcodes

Governance and voting

• General assemblies with an agenda, statuses (draft, scheduled, open, closed, archived) and locking
• Attendance tracking with automatic quorum calculation
• Two kinds of ballots: motions (for / against / abstain) and elections with your own options
• Secret ballot — votes are stored anonymised and cryptographically separated from the voter, while double voting is still prevented
• Automatic tallying and live results
• A dedicated page per meeting

Members and fees

• Unlimited membership levels, each with its own fee, billing period, colour and grace period
• Every level maps to a real WordPress role, so access control works with any theme or plugin
• Automatic life cycle: active, then grace period, then expired, with role downgrade
• Optional admin approval for new members (none, free memberships only, or all)
• Member file with the full payment history, current level, fee and days remaining
• Dashboard showing pending approvals, who expires within 30 days, who is in grace and who lapsed recently

Joining and payments

• Public sign-up form that creates the account and the membership in one flow, with a simple arithmetic anti-spam question
• Bank transfer built in — the member gets your account details and a unique payment reference on a printable page; you confirm the payment from the dashboard
• Optional WooCommerce route, so members can pay with any gateway you already use there; the membership product is created and kept in sync automatically
• Manual activation from the admin for fees collected offline

Member directory

• Searchable directory with filters by level and city
• Three privacy levels controlled by each member: full profile, initials only, or hidden
• Access by membership level — you decide which categories may browse the directory
• Public member profile pages with description, video and contact details
• Per-field visibility: mark each field as public or members-only

Profile fields

Ready-made field packs you simply tick: Business (legal and trade name, fiscal code, contact, website, social media), Homeowners association, NGO, Sports club, Professional, and Profile page content. Any field can be marked as required.

Content restriction

Restrict any page or post to all members or to specific levels, straight from the editor.

Membership documents

Issue a numbered document for every paid membership, with your own series, association details and optional VAT line. The member can print it or save it as PDF and receives it by email.

This is a simple receipt, not a fiscal invoice. If you must report through a national e-invoicing system, the openassoc_invoice_created action hands over every detail so a dedicated invoicing service can issue the legal document.

Also included

• Five Elementor widgets and five shortcodes
• Six-step setup wizard and a demo data generator
• Automatic creation of the front-end pages and menu
• Transactional emails for welcome, grace period, expiry, pending approval and rejection
• Available in English, Romanian, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese (Brazil) and Japanese

1. Upload the plugin to /wp-content/plugins/ or install it from Plugins, Add New.
2. Activate it. The setup wizard opens automatically.
3. Create your membership levels under Association, Membership Levels.
4. The pages Members, Become a Member, Meetings and My Account are created for you.

Do I need WooCommerce?

No. Bank transfer and manual activation work on their own. WooCommerce is only useful if you want members to pay by card: it lets you use the official gateway plugins (Stripe, PayPal, NETOPIA and others) without any extra integration work.

How does secret voting work?

A secret ballot is stored without the member ID. The link between voter and ballot is replaced by a hashed token, so results can be tallied and audited while individual choices cannot be traced back. A separate marker prevents anybody from voting twice.

Can members hide from the directory?

Yes. Each member chooses between a full profile, initials only, or being hidden entirely. You can also set the default for new members and restrict the whole directory to specific membership levels.

Does it work with any theme?

Yes. Membership levels are mapped to native WordPress roles and the front end uses shortcodes and Elementor widgets, so nothing depends on a particular theme.

Is the data removed when I uninstall?

Deleting the plugin removes its tables, options and roles. Deactivating it leaves everything untouched.

2.16.0

• Added German (de_DE), Italian (it_IT), Dutch (nl_NL), Portuguese – Brazil (pt_BR) and Japanese (ja) translations.
• Fixed: when a WordPress.org language pack is installed but does not yet contain the newest strings, those strings are now taken from the translation bundled with the plugin instead of appearing in English.

2.15.1

• Fixed: changing a member’s WordPress role (Users → “Change role to…”, the profile role field, or another plugin) no longer removes their association role. Previously the membership stayed active but the member disappeared from the directory and lost level-based access.
• Tested alongside Ultimate Member 2.13: registration, login, profiles, content restriction, role changes and secret ballot voting work together.

2.15.0

• Fixed: the anti-spam question on the sign-up form could fail with a correct answer when the page was served from a page cache (e.g. LiteSpeed). The form now fetches a fresh question from the server on every visit, and a new one after a wrong answer.
• Added per-account WordPress admin access: administrators can tick “WordPress admin access” on any member’s user profile. Accounts with a WordPress role such as Editor, Author or Shop Manager keep admin access automatically, even when “Keep members out of the WordPress admin” is enabled.
• Accounts granted admin access also see the admin toolbar on sites running WooCommerce.
• Fixed: with “Keep members out of the WordPress admin” enabled, members are now sent to the association “My Account” page on sites that also run WooCommerce (WooCommerce previously redirected them to its own account page).
• Fixed: a member’s self-uploaded profile photo is now removed when their account is deleted.

2.14.0

• Added Spanish (es_ES) and French (fr_FR) translations, alongside the existing Romanian.

2.13.0

• Added an option to keep members out of the WordPress admin: non-administrators are redirected to their “My Account” page and the admin toolbar is hidden for them.
• Members can now upload their own profile photo from the “My Account” page (images only, isolated to their own account — no media library access).

2.12.0

• Added a “Single registration” option: WordPress’ own registration links and screen can redirect to the association sign-up, so visitors create their account and join in one combined step.

2.11.2

• Fixed: translations were loaded before WordPress’s init action (“_load_textdomain_just_in_time was called incorrectly” notice in WordPress 6.7+). The plugin now starts on init.

2.11.1

• Housekeeping: removed a development log file that was accidentally included in the package.

2.11.0

• Security: removed the public checkout verification REST endpoint; membership activation now happens only through a payment gateway’s server-side, signature-verified confirmation (or admin manual activation).
• Renamed the public shortcodes to use the plugin’s unique prefix: [openassoc_directory], [openassoc_register], [openassoc_meeting], [openassoc_meetings], [openassoc_account]. Existing pages are migrated automatically on update.

2.10.0

• Completed the Romanian (ro_RO) translation: regenerated the translation template and translated all remaining strings, including the sign-up / checkout screens, admin settings and emails.

2.9.9

• Added Romanian (ro_RO) translation. The interface displays in Romanian when the site language is set to Română.

2.9.8

• Fixed: pending (not yet approved) and expired members no longer appear in the public member directory. Only members holding a current membership level are listed.

2.9.7

• First public release.
• Members and unlimited membership levels, each mapped to a real WordPress role, with an automatic active – grace – expired life cycle.
• Admin dashboard showing pending approvals, expiring, grace and recently lapsed memberships at a glance.
• Membership fee reports: collected per year and month, per level and per method, plus a filterable list of every payment with expiry and days remaining, and CSV export.
• Joining flow with a public sign-up form, bank transfer built in, an optional demo/test method, WooCommerce support and manual activation.
• Numbered membership documents with printable layout and email delivery.
• Member directory gated by level, with per-member privacy and public member profile pages (editable in Elementor via dynamic tags).
• Ready-made profile field packs with per-field visibility and required fields.
• General assemblies with automatic quorum, motions and elections, secret ballots and live tallying.
• Content restriction by membership level, transactional emails, a setup wizard and a demo data generator.
• Available in English, Romanian, Spanish and French.