As you work with membership records, you will want to easily access a snapshot of how your members are trending, search for members by specific type, status, or other criteria, and work with individual contacts and their membership details. CiviCRM provides a host of tools to do these things.
From the main navigation bar, do a quick review of the Membership menu:
- Dashboard: Provides a summary of current members by type and date range
- New Membership: Lets you create a new membership record quickly
- Find Members: Provides tools for searching through the member records
- Import Memberships: Allows you to take records created in your previous system or other source and import them into the system
We won't review each of these tools in depth, but will take some time to highlight key features and considerations.
The Dashboard is a great way to quickly achieve a system snapshot of members. Remember when we configured membership status rules and there was an option to flag a status as considered current? Well here is where that option plays out—the grid on the Dashboard page will display current members as defined by that option, broken out by current/renewals for the last two months and year to date.
Notice that much of that summary grid is hyperlinked. For example, you can click to quickly see members who renewed or joined in the previous or current month within a specific category or across all categories.
The New Membership menu item quickly creates a new membership record. Using this option, you enter the new member form and then search to select a contact (or create a new contact). Most of the time, you will first search for and view the contact record to ensure that it is the correct one before generating the membership from within it. However, this type of "alternate" workflow is common throughout CiviCRM.
Find Members provides tools for searching membership records. While using this tool, the lens through which you are looking at data is membership records, and not contact records. This means that it's possible to have a single contact duplicated, if the contact has multiple membership records meeting the selected criteria. As with the other search tools, you are given the option of taking action on the results, such as exporting or generating an e-mail to the contacts. Note that the export will include membership record details as well as any contribution details associated with the membership.
CiviCRM provides a membership record import tool (Import Memberships), which is similar to the contact import tool discussed earlier in this book. The primary difference with this tool is that the imported membership records must link to an existing contact record. You cannot import membership records and create the owner's contact record. The match to a contact record can be done using the default and strict duplicate matching rule defined for the contact type, or with the internal or external contact ID. For best results, use the internal or external contact ID field as it ensures a correct match without relying on the deduping rules.
When importing, you choose whether the membership records are new or should update existing records. Unlike the contact import, these are strict options if you choose to update, CiviCRM will require connection to an existing membership record (using the membership ID field); if no matching record is found, the import record will be rejected. It won't update the match if found, or create a new one if there is no match available; it will simply skip the record if no match is found.
In addition to fields that allow a match to existing contact records, the following fields are required when importing memberships:
- Membership start date (be sure to select the correct format in the first step of the import wizard)
- Membership type (must match the name of an existing type configured in your system)
Although searching, importing, and getting a sense of your overall membership picture is critical for your ongoing organization management, you also will want to get into individual contacts and work with their membership records.
While viewing a contact record, you see a Membership tab that displays a history of the contact's membership and buttons for creating new membership records.
Notice that the membership listing may be split into two sections: Active Memberships and Pending and Inactive Memberships. The latter will include expired, canceled, or pending membership records.
The button to Add Membership is present above the membership listing. If you have a credit card payment processor configured in your site, you will see a second button to create a membership and process the credit card payment (Submit Credit Card Membership).
After selecting the desired membership type, review the other fields and complete them as necessary. Note that you do not need to manually set the start and end date, unless they should be different from the defaults that would be calculated as described in the Membership Type configuration section.
The Status Override? flag is used for manually forcing a certain membership status on the record. This should be used carefully and sparingly. Once you indicate that a status is overridden, the periodic membership update script and any edits to the record will not calculate the status. This is typically only used for instances where you have a special contact in the system who should be handled within an existing membership category but is not charged the associated fee or required to renew. This option should also be used when marking a membership as canceled, in which case you are purposely removing it from the status rule structure. Take care when using this option as you lose the ability to manage your contacts through rule-based status types.
Tip
If you are using status override to mark a membership as permanently current because they are a lifetime member, consider setting up a lifetime membership type with duration set to one lifetime, as this may be a more appropriate way to manage such contacts.
Record Membership Fee provides fields for entering payment details connected to the membership. Completing the fields will result in the creation of an associated contribution record. It is important to make use of this option whenever possible, rather than handling the contribution record separately, as it creates a connection between the membership and contribution record that can be referenced later. It also streamlines the process significantly as you process the membership and payment in a single form.
As the label suggests, Send Confirmation and Receipt will generate an e-mail to the user with details about the membership and contribution records created.
Returning to the membership tab listing, let's understand how CiviCRM handles membership records and renewals. As outlined earlier, there are three dates associated with memberships: join date, start date, and end date. The Join Date is the date when the membership record is first created. The Start Date is the date the membership period begins. For fixed period membership types, that may actually precede the join date. For example, if a membership type runs for a fixed period of one year, starting January 1, a new membership created on February 12 will have a join date of February 12, but a start date of January 1. Rolling period membership types will typically have the same date for the join and start date fields. The End Date is calculated based on the membership type configuration and start date value.
The idea of renewing a membership record involves extending the end date by the membership period. A membership from January 1, 2009 through December 31, 2009 that is renewed for one year will simply have the end date changed to December 31, 2010.
Many organizations are used to thinking about membership history as a series of separate records. Using the preceding example, you would see a record for 2009, and a second record for 2010. If you are used to that structure, take some time to think through how this alternate format impacts your workflow. Rather than thinking of membership records as distinct periods, you must view them as an ongoing, linear record. After adjusting the way you think of membership to fit this model, you will find that the structure can be very powerful when seeking to conduct effective searches on member history.
CiviCRM facilitates the renewal process by including a Renew and Renew-Credit Card option in the More drop-down menu.
The renewal form only requests information about the renewal date, payment, and receipting. Since a renewal extends an existing record, all the other values are fixed or calculated based on existing data.
Note that the membership records that are inherited via relationships will not have options available to edit or renew the record, but instead will have a link to the primary or owner's membership record where those functions can take place.
Tip
One common area of confusion is with regard to membership renewals for expired memberships. If a certain record exists, but is expired, how should the record be handled if a renewal is triggered? CiviCRM processes these records by retaining the original join date, but re-setting the start and end dates to new values based on the date the renewal took place.
Depending on how you prefer to track membership history, this structure may not be ideal as you lose some of that older data. You may prefer, for example, to create a new membership record for expired members in order to retain the older historical data separate from the new record. Doing so allows you to note the membership lapse that took place between the old and new records.
At this point, we've covered the major functions involved in configuring and working with membership records through the administrative tools. Let's see how this translates to the frontend of your website.