modifying membership levels mid seaon

Heather,

We had some level adjustments here in recent months so I did lots of testing to see what would happen.

If you inactivate levels, constituents with memberships at those levels will not be affected. They would only be affected when they come up for renewal and they will have to renew at a different level because the level they are at is inactive.

If I were in your situation I would probably keep the bottom level and change the amounts then inactive the two levels above that.

I'd also do some testing in your test database to see what happens.

No matter what, you're trends are going to be a bit weird for a while.

Dale

Heather,

We have adjusted our membership levels many times and I never changed an exiting level but instead create new levels.  

We have three different revolving memberships organizations with 8 or more levels within each.  All our memberships are revolving which means they begin on the date we receive their donation and end one year later. 

By creating new levels we are still able to accommodate the old level membership forms which are still out there until they are replaced by the new membership forms.  When the old forms stop rolling in we then inactivate the old levels. 

Making new levels rather than updating exisiting levels allows us to easily see which members have rolled over into the new levels.    This also allows a gradual move into the new levels rather than having to call individuals who have received the old membership form for their renewal.

Heather,

We have adjusted our membership levels many times and I never changed an exiting level but instead create new levels.  

We have three different revolving memberships organizations with 8 or more levels within each.  All our memberships are revolving which means they begin on the date we receive their donation and end one year later. 

By creating new levels we are still able to accommodate the old level membership forms which are still out there until they are replaced by the new membership forms.  When the old forms stop rolling in we then inactivate the old levels. 

Making new levels rather than updating exisiting levels allows us to easily see which members have rolled over into the new levels.    This also allows a gradual move into the new levels rather than having to call individuals who have received the old membership form for their renewal.

We are wishing to change the start and end levels to one of our membership categories(Corporate). The start and end amounts will be modified, and the names of the levels will be modified. There are a few concerns I have.

1. We will be moving from the current 8 levels of memberships to only 6. The bottom three levels will now become one level. $.01 - $999.99. What is the best way to approach this update? Do I inactivate the lowest two levels, and change the start and end amount on the third from the lowest? If I inactivate levels, does that somehow inactive the active memberships that are tied to active gifts?

2. How will these changes effect current donors who have active memberships with the settings that are currently established. i.e. will it automatically bump them up/down to the new levels, will it not effect people with existing memberships?

I have a gift on hold from March until I can get this figured out so any help would be very much appreciated. Thanks all!

Hi Heather,

No we never delete the levels either.  We actullay keep both the old and new active at the same time.  Then as the old stop coming in we inactivate the old levels. 

To try to explain...because of the revolving issue there are always old forms out there for a while (3 to 6 months) that make it difficult for us to just change over to the new levels.  Therefore we let those old forms come in and allow them to renew at the old level if they have the old form.  This has always worked very smoothly for us even though it may take a year before everyone is moved to the new level.

Hi Heather,

No we never delete the levels either.  We actullay keep both the old and new active at the same time.  Then as the old stop coming in we inactivate the old levels. 

To try to explain...because of the revolving issue there are always old forms out there for a while (3 to 6 months) that make it difficult for us to just change over to the new levels.  Therefore we let those old forms come in and allow them to renew at the old level if they have the old form.  This has always worked very smoothly for us even though it may take a year before everyone is moved to the new level.

Heather,

We have adjusted our membership levels many times and I never changed an exiting level but instead create new levels.  

We have three different revolving memberships organizations with 8 or more levels within each.  All our memberships are revolving which means they begin on the date we receive their donation and end one year later. 

By creating new levels we are still able to accommodate the old level membership forms which are still out there until they are replaced by the new membership forms.  When the old forms stop rolling in we then inactivate the old levels. 

Making new levels rather than updating exisiting levels allows us to easily see which members have rolled over into the new levels.    This also allows a gradual move into the new levels rather than having to call individuals who have received the old membership form for their renewal.

We are wishing to change the start and end levels to one of our membership categories(Corporate). The start and end amounts will be modified, and the names of the levels will be modified. There are a few concerns I have.

1. We will be moving from the current 8 levels of memberships to only 6. The bottom three levels will now become one level. $.01 - $999.99. What is the best way to approach this update? Do I inactivate the lowest two levels, and change the start and end amount on the third from the lowest? If I inactivate levels, does that somehow inactive the active memberships that are tied to active gifts?

2. How will these changes effect current donors who have active memberships with the settings that are currently established. i.e. will it automatically bump them up/down to the new levels, will it not effect people with existing memberships?

I have a gift on hold from March until I can get this figured out so any help would be very much appreciated. Thanks all!

Hi Heather,

No we never delete the levels either.  We actullay keep both the old and new active at the same time.  Then as the old stop coming in we inactivate the old levels. 

To try to explain...because of the revolving issue there are always old forms out there for a while (3 to 6 months) that make it difficult for us to just change over to the new levels.  Therefore we let those old forms come in and allow them to renew at the old level if they have the old form.  This has always worked very smoothly for us even though it may take a year before everyone is moved to the new level.

Heather,

We have adjusted our membership levels many times and I never changed an exiting level but instead create new levels.  

We have three different revolving memberships organizations with 8 or more levels within each.  All our memberships are revolving which means they begin on the date we receive their donation and end one year later. 

By creating new levels we are still able to accommodate the old level membership forms which are still out there until they are replaced by the new membership forms.  When the old forms stop rolling in we then inactivate the old levels. 

Making new levels rather than updating exisiting levels allows us to easily see which members have rolled over into the new levels.    This also allows a gradual move into the new levels rather than having to call individuals who have received the old membership form for their renewal.

We are wishing to change the start and end levels to one of our membership categories(Corporate). The start and end amounts will be modified, and the names of the levels will be modified. There are a few concerns I have.

1. We will be moving from the current 8 levels of memberships to only 6. The bottom three levels will now become one level. $.01 - $999.99. What is the best way to approach this update? Do I inactivate the lowest two levels, and change the start and end amount on the third from the lowest? If I inactivate levels, does that somehow inactive the active memberships that are tied to active gifts?

2. How will these changes effect current donors who have active memberships with the settings that are currently established. i.e. will it automatically bump them up/down to the new levels, will it not effect people with existing memberships?

I have a gift on hold from March until I can get this figured out so any help would be very much appreciated. Thanks all!

Heather,

I agree with the other posts about creating new levels and inactivating the old ones.

1 more thing to consider is reporting in the long term. If you want to show migration or other trending reports, I would suggest creating a local system table that would be used a mapping or definitions table.

Basically, it would say, old level "X" = new level "Y". Then in your reporting you can use this local table to show that your members renewed at the same level.

Our membership dept changed all the levels once, and then 1 year later, changed them all back. OMG. Anyhow, this local table helped for certain types of reporting analysis.

Good Luck,

Christian

I wanted to revive this thread, as we're about to go through a Membership Levels refresh. We intend creating a whole new structure and will deactivate the old Levels.

This seems straightforward for new and renewals handling.

My question is about Pledges that have already had pending Memberships created in the current structure, in some cases many years ahead. 

Any advice about what to do here, do i need to manually adjust the Levels on all Pending memberships, or is there some automatic means of recalculating the Level on Pending records once we change or rules?

Thanks

Peter

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