Printing membership cards

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Hi there,


What card printer does your organization use for
 printing membership cards? Any tips or procedures to easlily configure and print these cards directly from Raiser's Edge 7?

Does anyone know/recommend a brand or a model of printer that works with plastic cards or inexpensive and ecological alternative?


Your answers are most appreciated!


olfa -

Comments

  • Olfa Driss:
    Hi there,


    What card printer does your organization use for
     printing membership cards? Any tips or procedures to easlily configure and print these cards directly from Raiser's Edge 7?

    Does anyone know/recommend a brand or a model of printer that works with plastic cards or inexpensive and ecological alternative?


    Your answers are most appreciated!


    olfa -

    We print our membership cards on pre-printed label cut card stock on a regular printer then laminate them.

  • Hi - at my former organization, we printed cards for membership to our museum. We ran them by putting the acknowledgement query results (I think, rather than the gift batch query) into a Mail merge file created especially for this purpose. It was very dificult to do because a) the cards were plasic coated (only worked on a laser printer) and b) they were two to a page at the bottom of old letterhead. They have since run out of that letterhead and have been fiddling around with printing on cardstock, cutting, and laminating. What a waste of time! I'd point out two things (have done so, in fact, to a friend who has been tasked with this): switch to ordinary "business card" stock and either preprint whatever backgound or reverse side you want, or go to the trouble of including the logos and background you want in the RE/Word mail merge (which is kind of fiddly, but possible). I personally am a member of the Smithsonian, and their cards are printed on ordinary cardstock. I'd skip the lamination entirely. Most of the members at the museum referenced above don't show the card anyway - they just walk in and say "I'm a member", and staff can look them up in the POS system (which is another discussion entirely!). I would say make the card production process as easy, efficient, and low-cost as possible - I doubt anyone is going to refuse to give because your cards aren't laminated!


    Gracie Schild

    Bluebird Business Services

    Santa Fe NM 
  • Thank you so much Gracie!
  • Olfa Driss:
    Hi there,


    What card printer does your organization use for
     printing membership cards? Any tips or procedures to easlily configure and print these cards directly from Raiser's Edge 7?

    Does anyone know/recommend a brand or a model of printer that works with plastic cards or inexpensive and ecological alternative?


    Your answers are most appreciated!


    olfa -

    My recommendation is to have your marking or printing people develop an all-in-one welcome/renewal packet that uses a heavier paper, perhaps the kind with a plastic back. Make sure there's a section that is perforated, and use a Mail Merge design to print the relevant member information in the right spot. Don't bother with fancy printers or cards - they're expensive, not ecologically friendly, and your members will forget them or lose them half the time anyway!


    I can't tell you how much trouble we had with the $5,000 printer we got in 2012. It literally burst into flames a few months ago when trying to reconnect it after Irma came through (no, there was no damage, just several days of sitting unplugged and unused and it felt neglected or something), but before that we had to get special software to be able to print at all. We used Cardpresso, which was difficult to learn and very finicky, and the system required special typewriter-style spools that were also expensive...and then actually getting the plastic cards into the mail meant extra postage costs that I would have preferred to have used on the packaging/packet vs the cards. Replacing the dead printer was the last thing I wanted to do...except we still needed something to fill in the gaps while a redesign happened, and besides it's not my responsibility anymore. :D


    I really love the way my auto insurance just prints a couple insurance cards on the heavy paper with the plastic laminate strategically located in the card section. The cards are durable, not too bulky to fit in my wallet, and the whole thing can be easily reprinted if necessary. Another benefit of using this kind of card is that it should play more nicely with the Mail function in RE to keep track of whose card you have printed and when. Our system with plastic credit card style membership cards meant I could never use the Mail function except to create dummy sets, and that tended to be a lot of fiddly work on top of the other fiddly work.

  • For our really high-level members at a museum almost a decade ago, we used thick plastic cards (like credit cards, but no embossing) printed with a Zebra printer.  It used thermal printing ribbons and could be rather finicky...I seem to remember it would need to rest after a certain number of cards.  And at one point it developed an issue which meant that you had to keep either your hand or a paper weight on top of one part of the machine to keep a door closed while printing.  But overall it worked well and they looked nice.


    For our regular members at that same org, we printed on thicker paper that had pre-printed cards at the bottom of the page that could be pealed off.  That was trickier with lining everything up properly.  Since I left that org, I believe they went to plastic cards for everyone, where as a member you have to go in and request for them to be printed at the ticket kiosk instead of getting them in the mail.  But that change happened after they moved membership (other than the high levels) out of RE/Development and into the ticketing system.  (Which I won't get into here...let's just say that address changes, as in NCOA screening results, must be manually entered in the system, and lists of reservations for events don't come out in alphabetical order nor are they easily sortable...I still volunteer there, so I get the fun job of managing the mailing list for our group and when I get those reservation lists I retype the names into Excel.)
  • Hi Olfa,  We export a query and then use an Evolis Primacy Name Badge Printer.  It's quick and simple and can do about 600 cards before it needs to be cleaned :) They can be a bit pricey but if you are doing the cards on a regular basis it's worth it.  This is one of the few that we have found that works on both Mac and PC.  Most others that we've found have to run windows, so it's a process trying to set it up on a Mac.  Hope that is helpful. 
  • That is great! Thank you Aubrie!
  • We have A4 (similar to Letter) sized headed notepaper with the membership card at the bottom - the finished card is Business Card size and comes off a backing film, then folds in half to give a good thickness. They run through our multi-function printer-copier from the bypass tray just fine. And there's room above the card for content to welcome the new member.

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