We are in the University/Performing Arts sector. Can someone give me a run-down of how you use Memberships if you are a University Performing Arts? I would love to pick someone's brain about it since this is something we haven't used before.
Amy,
We're in the Performing Arts (though not at a University) and we have a few membership groups but they're all related primarily to donations/contributions as opposed to ticketing.
Our Founders' Society represents our most avid supporters and membership begins at $3,500; there are no tickets involved but their membership gets them access to exclusive behind-the-scenes events throughout the year and the membership runs on a 12-month calendar based on when the initial membership payment happened.
Our Barre Society (because all ballet companies need that pun!) is our only membership that includes tickets; Principal membership has two season tickets for $1,000, Soloist has one season ticket for $300, and Corps de Ballet includes no tickets but has a ticket discount for $100. These memberships run on a seasonal basis, so we are recruiting members when our season begins in August and their membership ends as our season closes in May.
Donors to our Annual Fund aren't part of a membership group but, depending on their level of giving, they have certain benefits that they can take advantage of throughout the year (such as access to our patron lounge at intermission of performances or invitations to a behind-the-scenes preview with our Founders' Society as a peek into that membership group).
Not sure if this helps your thought process at all, but I'm happy to join the conversation here.
Thank you,
Brian
Thanks, Brian! We (oddly enough) aren't allowed to handle anything with donations. Our Development Department is the only one to handle it all, so unfortunately we are looking at a membership that potentially WOUDLN'T be donation-based.
Do you have any memberships based on what tickets they buy?
We actually don't have any memberships solely based on tickets purchased; we're also in a weird situation where our ticketing is essentially the only part of our company that doesn't run through Tessitura (our ticketing for the local PAC goes through ProVenue) so there's an unfortunate disconnect between our fundraising effort and our ticket sales in many ways. We're working on getting our ticket data imported into Tess but it'll always be a post-performance record and not real-time.
Like I said in my previous message, our Barre Society is as close as we get to membership tied in with ticketing. Membership costs get split between Development (contributions to the organization to help cover their membership benefits) and Box Office (the cost of their subscription tickets). Our Principal and Soloist membership tickets are located in the same section, however; the only difference is the number of subscription tickets received at each level.
I'm very interested in hearing what you all decide to implement for ticket-based memberships though!