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Best Practices for "Out of Bounds" membership level?

Allegra Thompson
$organization

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 are finding this to be problematic. We have a relatively short renewal window (90 days) so any gift given in the first 9 months of a membership results in an upgrade.

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).

The solution I have come up with is to set the expiration period for the "Out of Bounds" level to be much shorter--say, 2 or 3 month--with no renewal period at all. If an upgrade happens during the active status membership period, the expiration period sets to that of the upgraded level.

Thanks in advance!

Allegra
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  • $organization

    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

  • $organization in reply to Emily Allen

    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 is suggesting with the very short Non-Membership Levels.

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  • $organization in reply to Emily Allen

    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 is suggesting with the very short Non-Membership Levels.

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