Types of Memberships
Within AssociationSphere there are two basic types of memberships, individual or group.
Individual Memberships – one constituent purchases and owns the membership and just one constituent enjoys the membership benefits. Benefits include things like admission to a venue, event invitations, discounts on purchases, and subscriptions to special newsletters or magazines. Examples of individual memberships include Student, Single, Basic, Practitioner, Sole Proprietor, or Personal.
Group Memberships – one constituent purchases and owns the membership, however multiple members also may enjoy the membership benefits. Examples of group memberships include Family, Couple, Multi-member, Business, Company, or Enterprise.
For group memberships, the members nested under the membership owner can either be primary or secondary members. Primary members will have a constituent profile record. You have the option to allow secondary members to have a constituent profile record. If you do not wish for the secondary members to have a constituent profile record, then they will be listed on the membership tab of the membership owner’s profile record or in the detail view of the Membership Grid. Secondary members that do not have a constituent profile record created are not shown on the Constituent Grid; however, they do count towards your total number of constituents. Secondary members are most often children or members who would not need to receive any email communication, would not use membership benefits unless they are with the primary member, or do not need access to the member portal.
The labels assigned to primary and secondary members can be customized and you can determine what information you wish to collect from primary and secondary members in the Membership Page editor, on the Membership Settings Tab in the Advanced Content & Display Options.
When building the levels in the Membership Page Setup Tab, you can customize the number of each type of member, as well as create a la carte add on options and pricing. If you decide to allow secondary members to also have a constituent profile record, you can automatically create a relationship between the primary and secondary members if desired.
Expiration Dates
Memberships are a transaction that have an expiration date, unless they are lifetime memberships. Expiration dates can either be rolling so that they expire a certain number of days after the purchase, typically one year. Or they can all expire on the same date, for example all memberships expire on June 30, 2024. For memberships that all expire on the same date, a new membership page must be created each year. You can copy the page from the previous year, then just update the level expiration dates. Renewals must be directed to the new year’s membership page.
There is also an option for monthly memberships, which would expire at the end of each month but are set up to automatically renew. The member would need to notify your organization if they wished to cancel their membership.
Payments & Renewals
Memberships can be set up to be paid all at once, paid later via an invoice, paid over time, or renewed automatically.
Memberships that are paid over time, called recurring payments, cannot be set up with invoicing. The first payment must be made at the time of registration and subsequent payments will be auto-charged to the credit card on file.
Auto-renewal is only available for memberships which expire on a rolling anniversary date, not if everyone expires on the same day (for example 12/31.) If you enable auto-renewal, payments must be made with a credit card and cannot be set to pay-later. Recurring payments can also be set up for auto-renewal. It is recommended that you make it clear in the description area and thank you message that the membership will be automatically renewed.