Going from Family/Household Memberships to Individual Passes

Dana Decareaux

Hello all!


I am DBA at a zoo with about 12,000 memberships sold annually covering about 45,000 individuals. We are in the process of going from memberships that encompass multiple members (couples, couples and children, single parents and children, etc.) to indivudal passes for everyone, including children. I am working to figure out the best way to track these and preserve as much membership history as possible. So far, we have just converted our dual membership (two adults living in the same household) to individual, and I think that is going okay. We have been keeping the original membership number for the primary member and generating a new one for the second passholder. This way the primary contact maintains a record of their history.


My main dilemma is what to do with children when we go fully individual. Because we are a zoo, almost half of our members are children. I don't think it is feasible or wise to add every child as a constituent. The only thing I can think is to create an additional membership on the parent record for each child. I understand that if these children grow up and become adult members, that presents issues in tracking membership history, but I just can't see a way around it. 


Does anyone have any experience using the membership module to track individual memberships like this? Any ideas? I am also concerned about the amount of time this will add to data entry, and the training it will take to get our seasonal staff up to speed each year. But those are other bridges to cross later!


Any advice is much appreciated. I still have plenty of cleanup to do in our database (I've been here two years but we spent seven without anyone with any formal RE training using it) and I don't want to make matters worse.


Thanks in advance!

Elaine Tucker

When you are changing the memberships, are you creating NEW membership categories, or just changing the program/category "names"?  You CAN change the table to reflect the "new" Names.  


In our database, we have the membership on the primary member's record, and then on the "members & cards" we add joint memberships from the relationships tab.  All member spouses, significant others, etc have their own consitutent record, so their RE record will reflect that they have a membership, but all activity for the membership is done on the primary member's record. 


I would suggest doing the same thing for children, putting them on the relationship tab (you can keep them as relationships only), adding them as joint members on the primary record, making sure to update the "number of members field" to the correct # on THAT membership.  Then if the children ever become full fledged members, you can create a constituent record from the relationship record and at that time create a membership for them that is reflective of their long time involvement.


You can print/create passes for each joint member on the membership record. 


May I ask the reasoning behind going to individual passes? 

Dana Decareaux

Elaine Tucker:

When you are changing the memberships, are you creating NEW membership categories, or just changing the program/category "names"?  You CAN change the table to reflect the "new" Names.  


In our database, we have the membership on the primary member's record, and then on the "members & cards" we add joint memberships from the relationships tab.  All member spouses, significant others, etc have their own consitutent record, so their RE record will reflect that they have a membership, but all activity for the membership is done on the primary member's record. 


I would suggest doing the same thing for children, putting them on the relationship tab (you can keep them as relationships only), adding them as joint members on the primary record, making sure to update the "number of members field" to the correct # on THAT membership.  Then if the children ever become full fledged members, you can create a constituent record from the relationship record and at that time create a membership for them that is reflective of their long time involvement.


You can print/create passes for each joint member on the membership record. 


May I ask the reasoning behind going to individual passes? 

Hi Elaine,


Thanks for your reply! We have always had an individual membership, but soon that is all we will have. We have been doing our memberships the same way you described, with the joint members having relationships and being included under "members & cards." I think handling children that way makes a lot of sense, but I haven't found a way to give them unique member IDs that way (crucial to our current membership system).


The decision to go to annual passes was made by our guest services department (not mine), hence me scrambling to adjust! I think the idea is to be more like an attraction (for us, the comparison is always to Dollywood) where each person has a pass with their picture, and therefore their own membership ID and membership history. I have a meeting with our GS director next week so I can really dig into the specifcs of what this change means.


The real complication is that currently we use Galaxy to generate all of our passes and ID numbers, as well as to do sales throughout the zoo. The gift and membership information is entered into RE. No one is really happy with this dual database system but I haven't made much progress towards getting an inclusive one. But I will keep trying! We have discussed a patch allowing the two systems to connect, but our Galaxy data is about 10x more messy than RE so that makes me really nervous. It is also cost prohibitive for us. Right now I just keep trying to make the systems I inherited work, and this is one case where it is really problematic. It may be time to scrap the way we have been tracking memberships and start over with fresh eyes!

Elaine Tucker

Since Galaxy is generating the passes & ID numbers, can you take the ID number from galaxy and import it to the memberships record in RE. For the Children/relationships add an attribute called "Galaxy" ID, so then when they become full fledged members on their own, the galaxy ID is recorded from the get go, and you can just make their membership ID at that time the same as the Galaxy ID.