Contents
Introduction
Complimentary Membership is a NeonCRM feature that automatically assigns a membership to constituents who meet a set of conditions.
These conditions can be:
- Donate a specified amount over a specified period of time
- Spend a specified amount towards membership fees over a specified period of time
- The combined total of donations and membership fees collected over a specified period of time
In practice, it works like this:
- You build a condition that states (example): When somebody donates a total of at least $50 this year, give them the "Awesome Contributor" membership.
- Steve donated $20 earlier this year, and now donates $30, for a total of $50.
- NeonCRM automatically assigns the membership "Awesome Contributor" to Steve.
Why would I do this?
The most common usage of this feature is to automatically categorize donors into contributor levels. Since a NeonCRM Membership is a time period-specific status, you can use this information to run reports based on the levels assigned to each donor.
Assigning Rank
When using complimentary memberships, it is important to define a rank for all of your membership levels. In the case of a constituent who already has a membership, this tells NeonCRM whether to upgrade them to a new level, or keep them where they are.
Rank is a property of each membership level.To configure rank, navigate to: Global Settings cog > Global Settings > Memberships > Levels & Terms and click Edit next to a membership level.
Select the rank from the drop down menu and click Continue.
Setting Up Complimentary Membership
This feature must be enabled in the system settings. Navigate to:
Global Settings cog > Global Settings > Memberships > Settings.
This section is where you set up the rules that govern the assigning of memberships.
Membership level can be achieved with:
You can trigger memberships with either Donations, Membership Fees, or a combination of both types of transactions.
**While you can trigger Complimentary Memberships by Membership Fees alone, this is NOT recommended because it does not add any significant advantage over using memberships without triggers.
Select the conditions required to achieve this memberships:
- Totaled at least a certain amount in the past year(s), from the current date. (Example:). This looks at the past years' history as specified, from the current date.
- Totaled at least a certain amount this year,year to date. select Fiscal Year Start Month: January February March April May June July August September October November December (Example:). This looks only at the time from the beginning of the fiscal year to the current date. This is a fixed date range (current date - end of the current FY)
- Totaled at least a certain amount over the course of life time. This looks at a constituent's entire transaction history.
Neon checks every complimentary membership each night to see if the constituent still qualifies for the membership based on the conditions you've configured here. If using a fixed date range (Fiscal Year) the membership term end date will be the end of the current fiscal year. When this option is selected, the duration of a complimentary membership term will vary from constituent to constituent depending on the date they were assigned the complimentary membership relative to your Fiscal Year start.
Creating the Triggered Membership Levels
After setting up the rules that trigger memberships, you must configure which membership levels are triggered.
Navigate to: Global Settings cog > Global Settings > Memberships > Complimentary Memberships.
*This section is only visible if complimentary memberships are enabled.
From this page, you select which membership levels are triggered, and which amount triggers them.
Click Add to add more complimentary memberships.
Check the box next to a level and click Remove to delete memberships.
Click Submit to save your changes.
What happens next?
Neon runs a scan each night and auto-assigns Complimentary Memberships based on your conditions.
- New transactions will be able to trigger memberships immediately.
- Past transactions and imported transactions will be examined. Memberships will be assigned based on these existing transactions. This operation takes place on a nightly basis. You will see the changes updated every 24 hours.
- If you change the conditions, the nightly scheduled update will adjust all complimentary memberships to match the current set of conditions.
What if I mess it up?
Batch deleting all complimentary memberships
NeonCRM assigns these memberships on a nightly basis to all constituents who meet the conditions. It is conceivable that you could set the conditions in a way that you did not intend, which will still confer memberships. In the case that you need to reset all complimentary memberships, you can perform a purge (batch delete).
Navigate to: Global Settings cog > Global Settings > Memberships > Complimentary Memberships.
From this page, click the Purge All Complimentary Memberships link in the top-right corner of the page.
FAQ
Q: Can I set up different conditions for each membership level?
A: No, the conditions you set up apply to all levels.
Q: Will complimentary memberships trigger Membership Due or Overdue notifications?
A: They will not trigger Membership Due notifications. They will, however, trigger Membership Overdue emails and letters if you have those enabled.
Q: How do I turn complimentary membership off?
A: Un-check both the Donation and Membership Fees boxes in the section labeled "Membership level can be achieved with:". You will need to do this from Global Settings cog > Global Settings > Membership Settings, not from the Complimentary Memberships settings page.
Q: What happens if somebody already has a membership term (purchased or assigned, not triggered as a complimentary membership)?
A: NeonCRM will give them a second membership level. Both will show up on their account.
Q: If the complimentary membership level triggered is a group membership, will the member be able to add and manage sub-members?
A: No, complimentary memberships do not include the ability to add or manage sub-members.
Q: What happens if a member has an existing complimentary membership term and triggers a new one?
A: NeonCRM will stop the current complimentary membership term and begin the new one immediately. This only happens if the new membership level outranks the older level.
Q: If a member has two different memberships active at once, which membership level will show up in the columns in a report?
A: Whichever membership level has the highest rank. NeonCRM treats the highest ranking membership as the "primary" membership level. If no rank has been assigned to the membership levels, NeonCRM will assume the level with the highest cost is the "primary" membership.
Q: If a member has two different memberships active at once, which one does the report criteria look at?
A: For the purposes of search criteria filtering people in or out of a report, NeonCRM looks at all memberships.
Q: What if I create a membership level that costs $20 and is triggered by spending $20 on Membership Fees? Wouldn't that make buying the membership trigger itself?
A: In theory, it would create two identical memberships at the same time, but NeonCRM prevents that from happening. Only one membership is created.