Our membership structure begins at $50. We were advised by our onboarding team to create what the Tessitura documentation calls an "Out-of-Bounds" membership level to bridge the gap between $0 and $50, which allows cumulative gifts over the course of the year to result in the "Pre-member" upgrading to an actual member.
We also receive a lot of small gifts (add-ons to ticket orders, tickets donated back etc) creating a "Pre-member" membership with an expiration date 12 months later. Then if the constituent later gives a larger amount intending to become a member, the expiration date remains the same.
Someone might give us $5 in January and then $500 in June, but the membership would still expire in January. We can adjust it manually, of course, but it's still not ideal. I haven't found any guidance in documentation on how to address this issue.
I would welcome any advice/experiences with resolving this issue! I have come up with a solve, which I would also welcome feedback on (see below).
Thanks in advance!
Hi Allegra,
Yes, your solution sounds like it's on the right track. The out of bounds "level" isn't really a membership, so it only needs to be the minimum length. Ours is set up like this:
Level: NMB
Description: No Membership
Initiation: First of This Month
Expiration: Expire 1 Months After Initiation
Renew/Lapse/Reinstate: blank
Start Amt: $.01
End Amt: $47.99 (or whatever amount is just under your starting level)
Regards,
Emily
Allegra Thompson
At places I've worked we have set these non "membership" up with the same length as the regular annual memberships. And sometimes we would do a solicitation for the difference to see if we can get to full membership.
That said our approach has caused some problems as well with initiation dates for those "mid-year" upgraded for the Non-Membership Levels to full memberships. I'd imagine that one would provide a full year from the date of the second contribution. (This would not be automatic.)
So I like what Allegra Thompson is suggesting with the very short Non-Membership Levels.
This depends on what you consider a gift towards the membership level, but the funds associated with our round-up ticket purchase or donated tickets are not connected to the donor membership levels because they were messing up the donor's actual renewal dates, as you mentioned. That solved the problem for us and in the rare case that someone makes a membership level gift ($120+) through the round-up function, we add a membership manually.
Anna