Donor Renewals: Plans vs. Memberships

We have a small development team and we are looking to improve our routine major donor renewal process.  Of course every donor renews at a different time of year, so that is the real challenge here.  Currently our team uses a lot of Excel for this and we want to switch to using Tessitura more for this process.

I am curious if people recommend either plans or memberships for tracking major donor renewals .  It seems like there are pros to using each.  We want to use the method that is the easiest, most efficient, and makes the most sense for our small development team.

Ideas, thoughts, etc?

--Joe

Parents
  • Hi Joe,

     

    We don’t all exactly use memberships for this, but Memberships would work very well here.  We do have rolling memberships.  So we could simply run a membership expiration report to determine when donors are about to expire. 

     

    We do set up plans for every donor or prospect over $1,000 every year.  However, the development officers still have to go into each one and set a time frame for them to renew.  Although, we always have a huge push at the beginning of the season for donors to at least renew their pledge.

     

    The great thing about Tessitura, I think there are several great ways to manage when donors renew.

     

    Best,

    Tony

     

    Tony Exler
    Director of Data Standards
    Nashville Symphony
    Schermerhorn Symphony Center
    One Symphony Place
    Nashville, TN 37201-2031
    T 615.687.6535 F 615.687.6403
    texler@nashvillesymphony.org
    NashvilleSymphony.org

     

    From: Tessitura Development Forum [mailto:forums-development@tessituranetwork.com] On Behalf Of Lucie Spieler
    Sent: Friday, November 18, 2016 1:27 PM
    To: Tony Exler
    Subject: RE: [Tessitura Development Forum] Donor Renewals: Plans vs. Memberships

     

    Hi, Joe:

     

    I think that memberships are more designed for this process out of the box. Anyway, that’s what we use—although currently most of our memberships expire at the same time.

     

    Several years ago, we tried out rolling memberships, and sent out monthly letters based on people set to lapse in the following month. For us, rolling memberships didn’t really make sense, but it wasn’t too hard to manage.

     

    Lucie

     




    This message was sent automatically to you by www.tessituranetwork.com because you subscribed to the Tessitura Development Forum. You may reply to this message to post to the Development forum or visit the site to search, read and post to the forums. In the interest of keeping the forum posts from becoming cluttered, we encourage you to delete previous message text from your reply before sending. Thank you!

Reply
  • Hi Joe,

     

    We don’t all exactly use memberships for this, but Memberships would work very well here.  We do have rolling memberships.  So we could simply run a membership expiration report to determine when donors are about to expire. 

     

    We do set up plans for every donor or prospect over $1,000 every year.  However, the development officers still have to go into each one and set a time frame for them to renew.  Although, we always have a huge push at the beginning of the season for donors to at least renew their pledge.

     

    The great thing about Tessitura, I think there are several great ways to manage when donors renew.

     

    Best,

    Tony

     

    Tony Exler
    Director of Data Standards
    Nashville Symphony
    Schermerhorn Symphony Center
    One Symphony Place
    Nashville, TN 37201-2031
    T 615.687.6535 F 615.687.6403
    texler@nashvillesymphony.org
    NashvilleSymphony.org

     

    From: Tessitura Development Forum [mailto:forums-development@tessituranetwork.com] On Behalf Of Lucie Spieler
    Sent: Friday, November 18, 2016 1:27 PM
    To: Tony Exler
    Subject: RE: [Tessitura Development Forum] Donor Renewals: Plans vs. Memberships

     

    Hi, Joe:

     

    I think that memberships are more designed for this process out of the box. Anyway, that’s what we use—although currently most of our memberships expire at the same time.

     

    Several years ago, we tried out rolling memberships, and sent out monthly letters based on people set to lapse in the following month. For us, rolling memberships didn’t really make sense, but it wasn’t too hard to manage.

     

    Lucie

     




    This message was sent automatically to you by www.tessituranetwork.com because you subscribed to the Tessitura Development Forum. You may reply to this message to post to the Development forum or visit the site to search, read and post to the forums. In the interest of keeping the forum posts from becoming cluttered, we encourage you to delete previous message text from your reply before sending. Thank you!

Children
No Data