Solutions / Nonprofits & associations
Built for missions, not margins
One-time and recurring giving, member spaces, and the storytelling site around them — without a development budget.
The case for building it
Why build this instead of a donor platform?
Donor platforms tend to take a percentage of every gift, hold your supporters in their database, and give every cause the same donation page. For an association it's worse — membership, chapters, and governance don't fit a donate button at all. Kliv builds the organization's actual home: giving, membership, and member spaces composed around how your organization is structured.
Your bylaws are the data model. Membership classes with different dues, chapters with their own spaces, board materials only the board can see, renewal cycles on your fiscal year — describe the structure your organization already has and the system mirrors it, instead of flattening it into a generic CRM.
Anatomy of the system
What the organization actually knows
An association is a structure — classes of membership, chapters, a board, a fiscal year — and its software should be the same shape. Here is the system Kliv would build.
Supporters & members
Everyone who gives or belongs — their class of membership, their chapter, their whole history with the organization.
Gifts & pledges
One-time gifts and monthly giving, each with its receipt and its thank-you.
Chapters & committees
Organization-scoped spaces — each with its own roster, content, and calendar.
The archive
Newsletters, minutes, and resources — gated by membership, with board materials gated tighter.
Campaigns
Appeals with goals and deadlines — what came in, from whom, against what target.
Renewals & receipts
Dues cycles on your fiscal year, receipts for every gift, statements when supporters need them.
Who sees what
Rules the database enforces
- Board materials are readable by the board — a rule the database enforces, not a folder nobody's supposed to open.
- Membership classes gate the archive: each item carries who may read it.
- A failed recurring gift gets retries and recovery emails before anyone calls it lapsed.
- Chapter content belongs to chapter members — scoped at the row, not by the honor system.
Your bylaws are the data model. When the structure lives in the database — classes, chapters, board, fiscal year — the software stops flattening the organization into a donate button.
What Kliv assembles
A shopping list of platform pieces — each one built in, each one composing with the rest.
Giving, one-time or monthly
Supporters give once or monthly — and when a card fails, it's retried and recovered automatically.
Members & chapters
Member sign-in with organization-scoped spaces for chapters, boards, or committees.
Campaigns to the base
Keep your Mailchimp audience in step with your member list.
Ways to charge
Three funding paths
Associations rarely run on one stream. Dues carry the structure, monthly giving carries the mission, and campaigns carry the moments.
Membership dues
$120/year
The member, in the class your bylaws define
The archive, the chapter, the vote — whatever belonging means in your organization.
- Unlocks
- Active dues open the member spaces; classes with different privileges open different doors.
- Billing
- Renews on your fiscal year, with reminders before and a grace period after — recovery emails do the chasing.
- Refunds
- A board decision, recorded through the approval step.
Monthly giving
$25/month
The supporter who wants to carry the mission
A recurring gift with a receipt every month and updates on what it funds.
- Unlocks
- Supporters see their own giving history and pull statements when they need them.
- Billing
- Renews monthly; an expired card is retried and chased by email — a lapsed gift is usually a card, not a supporter.
- Refunds
- Mistaken gifts refunded on request, through the approval step.
Campaign gift
$500 one-time
The donor moved by a specific appeal
A one-time gift against a named campaign, counted toward its goal the moment it lands.
- Unlocks
- The receipt and thank-you go out on your templates, and the gift joins the donor's history.
- Billing
- One charge, one receipt, one clean record for the audit.
- Refunds
- The same approval-gated flow.
Before launch
The first week, before you launch
The first week is for making the structure real — before the membership sees it.
Shape the organization
Describe the structure: membership classes, chapters, the board, the fiscal year. Kliv builds the first preview with the governance walls already up.
Make it yours
Your name, your language, your tone — an organization's site should sound like its mission statement, not like software.
Load the real thing
Import the member roster with their classes and chapters, move the newsletter archive in, set up the first campaign.
Try to break it
Sign in as a member and look for the board materials. Fail a recurring gift and watch the recovery emails. Let dues lapse and watch the grace period run.
Then rehearse a year
In the Sandbox, with simulated money and simulated time, run a fiscal year: the renewal cycle with its reminders, December's giving spike, a card failing in March and recovering in April, a membership lapsing exactly when the grace period says. Launch with the year already rehearsed.
Bespoke, without the bespoke risk
Custom software used to mean a budget, a contractor, and a maintenance contract. This is a different deal.
Enterprise-grade parts
Sign-in, permissions enforced at the database, billing, audit, email — the components under your bespoke system are the same hardened pieces every Kliv app runs on. You compose proven infrastructure; you don't commission code from scratch.
Changes ship in order
When your process changes, say so — the change is built in conversation, you review it in a live preview, and nothing reaches your users until you publish. Commerce changes can even be rehearsed in the Sandbox with simulated money and time.
Nobody can sunset it
Off-the-shelf tools get re-priced, redesigned, and retired on a vendor's schedule — and your workflow goes with them. Your Kliv app changes only when you change it. It's your product, not a seat in someone else's.
Say it in one sentence
“Build a site for our association with one-time and monthly giving, a members area with our newsletter archive, and automatic thank-you emails.”
This is genuinely how it starts — describe it, then refine in conversation.
Common questions
Can we take both dues and donations?
Yes — recurring membership dues, one-time gifts, and monthly giving run through the same engine, each with its own receipts and thank-you mail.
Can chapters or committees have their own spaces?
Yes. Members belong to organizations within the site — a chapter, a committee, a board — and each space's content is visible only to its members, enforced at the database.
What happens when a recurring gift fails?
The platform retries the card and emails the supporter until it recovers — a lapsed gift is usually an expired card, not a lapsed supporter.
Can supporters get statements for tax season?
Yes — every gift is receipted when it lands, and a supporter's full giving history lives on their own page, so year-end statements are a lookup, not a project for your staff.
How private are board materials?
Row-level private: board content carries a rule that only board members satisfy. There's no secret folder to misplace — the database refuses everyone else.
Our renewals follow our fiscal year. Can the system?
Yes — dues renew on the cycle you define, reminders and the grace period follow it, and the treasurer's view of who's current is the database's view, not a spreadsheet's.
