Hello-
As recommended during implementation, I use membership records to track donor levels for the Annual Fund, though our organization does not call our donors "members." Our fiscal year runs from Aug 1 to July 31. There is an Annual Fund campaign for every fiscal year and when I set up the new campaigns, I select the Annual Fund Membership Organization be tied to the campaign. I have expiration set for 12 mos after initiation; renew 3 mos before expiration; lapse 3 mos after expiration and reinstate 12 mos after expiration.
The issue I am running into is donors giving a gift less than 12 mos after their last qualifying annual fund gift. For example, Donor A gave in Feb 2019(18/19 FY) and just gave again today (9/25/2019 - 19/20 Fiscal year). When I looked at their membership record, the level had been upgraded on their 18/19 membership, when I wanted to create a new membership record for this (19/20) fiscal year. I understand why it updated the last membership record bc it's been less than 12 mos but is there a way in membership org set-up to fix this? Do I need to just remember during gift processing to set all expiration dates to 7/31? Other methods that worked for people? Any help or advice on this will be greatly appreciated!
Thank you,
Lindsay
Hi Lindsay, How far in advance is your Membership Renew date? Would pushing that a bit earlier ease your pain? You could also manually add/adjust expiration date on the membership levels on their account but that's obvs labour intensive if you have a lot of them. Did you want to set your memberships to follow the fiscal year? You could set initiation to fixed year in that case.
Thank you! Yes, I would like the memberships to follow the fiscal year. Do I set initiation to fixed date in membership setup?
I think yes. But I would pop in a Help Ticket first for a major change like this just in case (You're the DBA at Portland Symph?).
Have a peek here ...
https://www.tessituranetwork.com/Help_System_v151/Content/Memberships/Membership%20Levels.htm
Select an Initiation option. This determines how the inception and begin dates of a new membership at this level are calculated. The options are:
...blah blah blah...
Fixed Date – The fixed date entered in the date field beside this option.
Note: If a Fixed Date is entered, this date must be manually changed at the beginning of the renewal period to the start date for the next membership cycle so that new membership records are created with the correct start date for the next membership cycle.
The first three options will result in a rolling membership cycle where constituents renew membership at different times. The Fixed Date option will result in a fixed membership cycle where all constituents renew memberships at the same time.
Note: If a Fixed Date in the future or the First of Next Month option is selected, memberships will have a status of Pending until the Membership Update utility is run for a date range that includes the membership start date.