Tracking a giving club using the membership module

Not familair with a giving club---how is that different from a membership? We use the module to track membership by linking gifts from individuals own giving, for gift memberships and link matching gifts to members total memebership.We do not use the scan function either.

I used it at a previous organization where we tracked a yearly giving society of $10K+, as well as a lifetime giving society a corporate giving society, and our estate planning society.



Once I got over a "rethink" of how to apply the membership and categories to our situation, it was easy.  The membership module is designed for use at a museum or zoo, so it took a little time for me to figure out how to set up our Program and Category.  If you want to use the upgrade / downgrade functions, you have to have different categories, or something along those lines.  So I played a lot with what should be the Program vs. the Category vs. the Subcategory.  We didn't use most of the related reports / other features (membership cards, auto renewals, and I forget what else) but did use it to drop the expired memberships for the annual giving society.



One nice feature is that you can have joint memberships.  Sort of like soft credits for gifts.  This is great because back when we stored everything in Attributes (which was an awful idea) people who had separate records had different coding or no coding.  It really streamlined membership coding and made it very clear who was "part" of what membership.  Spouses with separate records, for instance.  And corporations where we had headquarter and regional offices all contributing to the company's "membership". 



The built-in membership dashboards were surprisingly useful.  There were dashboards for renewals, current memberships, lapsed memberships, etc.  And I could create them by gift officer, so each one of our staff solicitors could see who had not yet renewed in their portfolio.



All I can suggest is to play with the setup a lot.  Test it like crazy in a sample version of your database if possible.  If that isn't possible, set up some dummy records in your database with "real" memberships, and then try to query and export things.  Put in historical data so that you get an idea of how it will look in a few years.  Try to query / export historical data.  Just try to create what you already can, and make sure you can get it easily.



I have a detailed document I could send to you separately, if you're interested.

Karen, I realize that this is an old topic string, but I am interested in your detailed document if you still have it. You insight is the best I've found yet on this topic. We use attributes to manage a donor benefit program, and it is cumbersome, so I am looking at better ways. thanks! Tracy