Have posted on a few different discussions so to not miss anyone!
We are exploring Auto Membership Renewal and are looking for anyone in the community to share their experiences. We are looking for information around what the member journey/experience has been.
Examples of what we are looking for: What has been the uptake? How responsive they have been? How many opt out? Challenges with expiry or ways you mitigated this.
We do have Memberships as Products but aren't looking for the technical - interested in the experience for the Members as well as the experience for staff who directly interact with the members.
If you are willing to share we would love to connect with you!
Following in case you get a response. We are looking for a similar option for our members. We have learned that emails are typically ignored, voicemails go unnoticed and snail mail is simply too much work to renew. I would love to hear about the technical aspect. If people want to chime in on this.
I documented my experience with a stream app that auto renewed me. Instead of emails about renewing, the message was altered to say that my card would be charged so there would be no disruption. It was a pleasant passive way to remind me to be on the look out for a charge. Additionally, they start 90 days out to give me ample time to cancel if I wanted.
Hi Brenda,
We have been doing Auto Renewal at the High Museum ( Atlanta, GA) for a few years now. While the "Auto Renewal" option was automatic for members, it was very manual and time consuming for our team (Creating pledges, updating expired cards, etc.).
Last fall we partnered with Donate2 (an existing Tess partner) to automate everything, and we went live January 1, 2021. We've seen a nice uptick in signups since then, despite changing the Auto Renewal discount from a forever discount to an introductory offer. You can take a look here: https://high.org/autorenewal/
Happy to chat more if you are interested in learning more about what we're doing!
Nancy
Nancy CooperMembership Manager404-733-4532Nancy.cooper@high.orgHigh Museum of Art
Nancy, this looks amazing. We continue to try an reinvent our TNEW membership renewal and look for ways to incentive saving time and resources. Were the implementation costs very high when partnering with Donate2?
Bryan
Hi Bryan,
We pay $62 per month to use Donate2, though we will probably jump to a higher plan next FY since our volume has increased so much (so our Stripe fees will go down to 4%). There is a 5% fee for each Stripe transaction, but about half of users opt to "cover transaction costs" so it doesn't eat up 5% of our revenue. Overall the ease of use for patrons and features we didn't have before are well worth the fees! Happy to connect offline if you'd like to chat. My contact info is listed in the post above.
Hi Nancy,
I'm also interested in how this works technically. We're not doing membership renewals on as large a scale- we want to move our Women's Board memberships to auto renewal. It sounds like it's more work in Tessitura than it's worth. How does it work with the Donate2 integration?
Thanks for any info you can provide!
-Chelsea