Templates · Service clubs

The club keeps its own books. Members can read them.

For Rotary, Kiwanis, Lions, Optimist, Elks, Masonic lodges, Junior Leagues, and independent service clubs with no parent body at all. Who was admitted, what each class of membership carries, what the club’s funds are for, and where the charitable side’s money sits, on one record that passes to the incoming board.

Quick answer

EnDAO gives a service or fraternal club a shared account its officers approve spending from, a record of every motion and its tally, and a written set of membership classes any member can read — what a class is entitled to, which seats it holds, and whether that standing can pass to someone else. The club names its own offices rather than picking from a fixed list. The charitable foundation is created as its own group beside the club, with its own money and its own administrators, and money never moves between the two on its own. Most clubs this size run on a spreadsheet and one officer’s memory, and the failure shows up at handover rather than in daily use.

What this looks like

A page from one club’s ledger.

A service club · 118 members · 9 officers

Q1 2026
Jan 12Annual member dues received · 104 of 118 members+$41,300.00
Feb 07Pancake breakfast proceeds · 312 tickets+$4,680.00
Mar 05Youth scholarship · two awards from the scholarship fund−$6,000.00
Mar 24Meeting hall lease · renewed for the year−$9,600.00

Inside one club

What the club rebuilds every time the officers change.

A club that answers to nobody above it answers entirely to its own members, and the things it has to be able to show them are the roll, the terms people belong on, what the club’s money is for, and what the charitable side did with the gifts it was given. Those four usually live in four places, and only one person can find all of them.

What goes wrong

  • The membership roll, the dues spreadsheet, and the treasurer’s inbox are three different answers to who belongs right now
  • Life, honorary, corporate, and active members belong on different terms, and those terms live in the bylaws and in what the secretary remembers
  • The club and its charitable foundation share one account, one checkbook, or one volunteer holding both sets of records
  • Officers turn over on a fixed cycle, and the incoming board starts from whatever the last one thought to export
  • A member asks what the club spent on last year’s scholarship, and answering means reassembling it from receipts

What EnDAO does

  • One roster. A person asks to join, the officers rule on the request, and the ruling is on the record with the officer who made it
  • Classes of membership are written down: what a class is entitled to, which seats it holds, whether that standing can pass to someone else. Every member can read them; officers define and amend them
  • The charitable side is its own group beside the club, with its own money and its own administrators. Money never moves between the two on its own
  • The club names its own offices, President through Sergeant-at-Arms, and hands them to the incoming board with the whole prior record attached
  • Money moves under the approval rule the club set, and every vote closes with its tally and the officers who cast it

What’s built in

The things every service club needs, already there.

Motions, put and counted

A club that runs on motions gets that word, not a generic one. A motion is put, the vote is counted, and the tally stays on the club’s record where any member can go back to it.

Classes of membership

Name the classes your bylaws already name and write down what each one carries: its share of any surplus, the committee or council seats it holds, and whether that standing can change hands.

A foundation beside the club

The charitable side is created as its own group with its own account and its own administrators. Officers of the club can step into administering it, and that still moves no money — the account answers to the people who sign for it.

Funds inside the account

Scholarship, relief, building, operating: open a fund for each and see what is left in it. A gift given for a stated purpose is recorded with the purpose the giver named.

Works for

All kinds of clubs.

  • Rotary, Kiwanis, Lions, and Optimist clubs
  • Elks, Moose, and Eagles lodges
  • Masonic lodges, Knights of Columbus councils, and Shrine clubs
  • Junior Leagues and other women’s service organizations
  • Independent local service clubs with no parent body
  • Heritage and ethnic societies with named membership classes
  • Volunteer fire and rescue associations that carry a membership roll

Common questions

Questions club officers ask first.

We charter under a national. Is this page or the chapter networks page the right one?
If what you need governed is the money moving between your club and its district or international — per-member assessments, charter fees, rebates coming back — read the chapter networks page, which is about exactly that relationship. This page is about the club itself: admission, classes of membership, the club’s own funds, and the foundation beside it. Clubs under a charter usually want both, and they are the same account, not two.
How does this handle dues?
Dues are issued against the roll, so the club bills the members it actually has rather than last year’s spreadsheet. A payment is recorded against the member who made it and applied to the oldest balance first, and arrears age on the schedule the club sets. The roll and the money stay one record instead of two, so who is current is answered in the same place as who belongs.
Can a life member belong on different terms from a first-year member?
Yes. The club defines its own classes and writes down what each one carries: what share of any surplus it is entitled to, which seats it holds, and whether that standing can pass to someone else or is held for life by one person. Officers define and amend the classes, and every member can read them without asking an officer for a copy.
Can a class carry extra weight in a vote?
Yes. A class carries a voting weight and the tally counts by it, so a club whose bylaws give life members a different say from first-year members gets that count run the way the bylaws already say. The weight sits on the class rather than in the head of whoever is counting, and the tally shows what each class carried.
Does the club’s foundation have to share the club’s account?
No. The foundation is created as its own group inside the club, with its own money, its own administrators, and its own approval rule. Money never moves between the two on its own. An officer of the club can claim administration of it, which grants nothing that moves money — the account still answers only to the people who sign for it. And when the foundation is ready to stand on its own, both sides have to agree: the club releases it and the foundation’s own administrators accept.
What happens at the annual handover?
The club names its own offices rather than choosing from a fixed list, so President, Treasurer, Secretary and Sergeant-at-Arms are the words on the screen. Offices reassign to the incoming officers and the full prior record comes with them: every motion, every tally, every disbursement. The new treasurer starts on day one with the history, not in month six.
Do our members need crypto wallets?
Members sign in with an email address. The club’s account is a multi-signature account underneath, and the officers who can move money are the ones the club named.
How is this different from ClubExpress, MemberPlanet, or Wild Apricot?
Those are membership platforms: the member database, the club website, event registration, dues invoicing, the newsletter. EnDAO is the account and the record underneath — the approval rule that runs before money moves, the classes of membership written where members can read them, the foundation held as its own group. Plenty of clubs keep the membership platform for the roster and the invoices and use EnDAO for the money and the minutes.

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