Hi everyone!
We are trying to decide whether we should set up our donor levels in Tessitura as Rolling or Fixed memberships. I am curious to hear what other organizations are doing, and what the pros/cons are for each method?
It seems that rolling memberships would make it easier to track benefits, and fixed would be easier for pulling our annual program listing (which lists everyone that contributed from August 1st through July 31st - our fiscal year).
Thank you for your help!
I definitely vote for rolling since it is so much easier to administer. Otherwise you are always calculating pro-rata dues for new members who are paying for a partial year.
You can easily pull reports from Tessy that show everyone who made a gift during the fiscal year.
_______________
Julie P. Hamre
Finance Associate
Strathmore Hall Foundation, Inc.
5301 Tuckerman Lane
North Bethesda, MD 20852-3385
301.581.5136; fax 301.581.5201
in office Monday-Tuesday-Thursday
www.strathmore.org
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From: Tessitura Development Forum [mailto:forums-development@tessituranetwork.com] On Behalf Of Nicole Lee Sent: Tuesday, June 17, 2014 2:08 PM To: Julie Hamre Subject: [Tessitura Development Forum] Donor Level Memberships- Rolling vs. Fixed
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Hi Nicole,
We use rolling memberships. We rely heavily on membership expiration dates to know when to go back to our donors to ask them to renew for another year. If you don't work that way, (maybe you just do one or two big campaigns a year in which you ask everybody, e.g.,) you may not need that. If you have a rolling year of benefits from when the person makes the gift, I think it definitely makes sense to use rolling dates.
There's definitely some complexity. If somebody gives you $5,000 in January and then they give another $1,000 in October for a special project, do you apply the additional $1K toward their existing membership at the $5K level and assume they'll make another gift when you ask again in January? Or do you give them a new membership at the $1K level starting after their current membership expires? That type of situation comes up fairly regularly, especially among higher level donors. We have to make a lot of case-by-case decisions about how to apply gifts to memberships and which start and end dates to use. (Sometimes we choose wrong and have to go back and change things later, which is not always a straightforward process.)
You might find better solutions for pulling your program listings than memberships. If you poke around these forums a bit I think you'll see that there's more than one approach!
Funnily enough, we are going to be discussing the pros and cons of rolling vs fiscal alignment for memberships in a panel discussion session I've been helping to organise for conference this year, as well as other basic and complex membership issues and structures.
It's the "Establishing a Membership Program" session - it might be a useful one for you?
Brooke
Thank you everyone for the input! I am leaning toward rolling memberships, and Matthew basically hit my thought process exactly. We currently do send out 2 appeals each year (fall and spring), but are looking to use rolling memberships and the "renewal" process to more efficiently ask for contributions. And it seems like the logical way to keep track of benefits. My hesitations include the example that Matthew shared on the complexity of when to upgrade vs. renew a membership. The other problem I foresee is that if we tell patrons their membership level based on a rolling year, but pull our once-a-year program listing through a report based on fixed dates (8/1 through 7/31), would there be some discrepancies?
For instance: (For fiscal year starting August 1st) If a donor gives $200 on August 2nd, 2013, and then gives another $200 on July 15, 2014 to renew benefits/membership for NEXT fiscal year... we tell them that they have renewed and remained at the $200 level. But on a report/program listing capturing all donations from 8/1/2013 through 7/31/2014, they have given $400, which is a different donor level entirely. Maybe it would only affect a few people, but I am trying to think through every scenario before we change our entire process.
Brooke - I will absolutely attend that session, thank you! I've looked through past forum posts and just couldn't find enough dialogue on rolling vs. fixed, so that would be helpful.
We have faced the same donor list issue when people renew early – that is, their cash donations total $400 for a given period but it is really two years of $200 memberships. When we pull our donor lists, it shows what the gift is for and we can see quickly that there are two memberships in a single year. It does mean going through each gift, but for our 2500 members it actually does not take that long (and heaven knows we need to scrub that list carefully anyway!).
Tessy is set up to allow you to make some assumptions about renewals, e.g., if the gift comes during the last 3 months of the membership year (or two, or one – you get to pick) then the system automatically creates a new membership. Gifts at other times are counted as upgrades. Frankly, I wish we had so many mid-year gifts that it is a problem, but there are not so many. And when in doubt, we just call the donor.
From: Tessitura Development Forum [mailto:forums-development@tessituranetwork.com] On Behalf Of Nicole Lee Sent: Wednesday, June 18, 2014 10:10 AM To: Julie Hamre Subject: Re: [Tessitura Development Forum] Donor Level Memberships- Rolling vs. Fixed
From: Brooke Gallagher <bounce-brookegallagher8320@tessituranetwork.com> Sent: 6/18/2014 4:06:23 AM
Thank you for the input, Julie - You're right... we certainly go through our donor lists with a fine-tooth comb, regardless of how confident we are with a database's reports. I'm glad that there is a way to see when there are multiple membership payments within a single year. That's helpful.