Our Story

Built by a Volunteer, for Volunteers

Three years ago I became president of a small professional association and learned how CE events actually got run: Eventbrite registrations that never became a clean member list, a vendor who ran our Zoom webinars — charged per event, slow to respond, and the recordings often never arrived — an admin who needed constant follow-up to get CE certificates out, and a president (now me) doing everything else by hand.

I figured the answer was out there, so in my free time I went looking.

First I tried to buy it. Nothing fit: the platforms a small association can afford covered only a fraction of the job, and the ones that covered most of it quoted prices we simply couldn't pay. Nobody was building for volunteer-run associations.

Then I tried to duct-tape it. Thinkific. Google Workspace with automations bolted on. Constant Contact. Mailchimp. Zapier. Even the “free” platforms that quietly take a cut of every transaction. I got close, but the stack was error-prone and still needed hands-on work before and after every single event.

Two years of trying, and nothing fully met our needs — not the products, not the patchwork.

So, nights and weekends — around a full-time job and finishing my nurse practitioner program — I built it myself. Registration, renewals, CE certificates, the webinar pipeline, the flyers, the emails. And it worked. Our events finally ran themselves.

Except for one problem: I had automated the association's work onto myself. Every automation needed a maintainer, and the maintainer was me. Boards shouldn't depend on a member who happens to code — that's just a different single point of failure.

That's the problem OrgHQ exists to solve. It's everything I built, rebuilt as a product any association can afford and any volunteer can run:

• → A branded website at your own domain, live in under a minute
• → Event registration and payments, straight to your bank
• → Webinars that run themselves — recordings included, every time
• → Membership plans with automatic renewals and reminders
• → CE certificates that issue themselves after events
• → Private board files that survive every officer transition
• → A treasurer’s ledger with reports that email themselves to the board

Members sign in with just their email — no passwords to reset. No lock-in: bring your data from Wild Apricot, Join It, AMO, or a spreadsheet, and export everything anytime. And nobody on the board has to be the tech person. Not even me, anymore.

My own association has run on it since January 2024, when I started automating our work. I've since rotated to past president and treasurer — and the books close themselves now, too.

If you serve on an association board — or know someone drowning in one — take a look: orghq.org. Free 14-day trial, no credit card, no sales call.

Built by a volunteer, for volunteers. 🚀

— Jason Fisher, past president & treasurer, Ohio Association for Healthcare Quality ↗ (opens in a new tab)

Originally posted on LinkedIn when OrgHQ launched — republished here as written.