Why Memberships?
Many non-profits find that membership instills a sense of pride and ownership in supporters, encourages repeat donations in the form of membership dues, and allows donors from all socio-economic levels to participate at a level that is comfortable and sustainable. For the full story, refer to my article on Memberships, written before the advent of Spark, the latest FundRaiser program to be offered and created especially for membership-based organizations that need more than Basic, but not all the power of Select or Professional.
Flexible Format
The options for the Membership module allow you to match FundRaiser to the way you operate, with defaults to help automate proper payment application for existing members and the correct expiration date determination for new and existing members. No matter how you run your membership periods, no matter how often dues are paid, no matter how many different types of memberships you have available, FundRaiser can help you manage payments, renewal letters, overdue letters, and Grouping members into specific segments as needed.
Suggestions rather than Demands
FundRaiser's membership defaults allow for the *most often* used settings, so that data and dues entries are quicker for the majority of your entries. None of the defaults are *written in stone*, however, so you can change and individual membership to fit the situation. You may have a majority of members who pay annually, but you can easily set up any membership to be paid quarterly, or monthly, or any other less-than-annual period. It may be that most of your memberships are family-based, with an occasional single person or organization gaining membership, and you can adjust for that easily as you enter the membership record.
Keep the Codes coming
If you've used FundRaiser for any length of time, you know there are many ways to code people and gifts, and the membership module gives you several ways to code members, separately from any non-member supporters you may have in your database. Three code fields on each member record facilitate grouping members, the these codes are: Member Type, Benefit, and Miscellaneous. The type code could be "Family", "Single", "Student", "Company", and so on, or something that makes more sense to you and your member base. The benefit code might reveal what benefits (newsletter, facility use, end of year dinner) the membership includes, and the miscellaneous code can be used for anything we may have missed. Remember that FundRaiser allows you to build Groupings based on any fields, and that includes Membership information, of course.
Check out what others have done with Memberships
Here are several case studies on our website that can show how some non-profits have benefited from the membership module.
Childcare Resources of Indian River; Indian River Land Trust; and Museum of Performance & Design
Check them out, and if you want more information, don't hesitate to contact us.