The membership lifecycle
Lead → applicant → member → lapsed.
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Lead | Someone who reached out or was imported — hasn't applied yet. |
| Applicant | Requested to join and is awaiting your review. |
| Member | An active member of the community. |
| Lapsed | A former member, or a declined application (kept for your records). |
| Guest | A one-off attendee who never became a full member. |
Approving applicants
- 1A visitor submits the “Request to join” form on your public page (or requests to join your Telegram group).
- 2They appear under People as an applicant, and your dashboard shows a pending-applicants nudge.
- 3Approve to promote them to member, or decline to move them to lapsed.
- 4On approval we email them a welcome with their membership card link, and — if they came via Telegram — approve their group join request automatically.
Everyone stays on the list
Nobody is removed from your people list by changing status. The enquiry from March, the person who came twice and drifted, the application you declined — all of them stay, with what they told you on the way in, because the useful thing about a list of people is the ones who are not members yet.
Acting on a group of them works on the filter, not on ticked boxes: search or filter until the list is who you mean, and the action applies to those. “All 240 lapsed members” is one action rather than 240 ticks across twelve pages.