Membership type field name

What is this field for?

Name

The 'name' for each membership type is displayed throughout the system, on both public and back-end pages so it is important to spend some time thinking about a name that is appropriate to both audiences.

The name can be changed at a later date (though this may result in extra work elsewhere depending on the other settings you have updated).

Description

This is not required but you may wish to fill it in with a description of the membership, what type of contacts it is aimed at, etc.

Membership Organisation

Some organisations may want people to have two or more memberships of the same organisation that run concurrently.

A challenge to supporting this use case is that CiviPlus's Membership 'Up-Sell' feature expects a contact to have only one active membership with a single organisation at any given time.

A 'workaround' for this is to create 'dummy' organisations for each of the possible concurrent memberships.

Note that you don't have to expose the dummy organisation to your members on the website; it is for administrative purposes only.

Minimum Fee

If your memberships are free you should enter 0 (zero) in this field. Otherwise you should enter the minimum amount that must be paid for this membership type.

This is then the default fee that will be used for memberships created with this type. When members auto-renew they will renew to this fee.

Note that on price sets and webforms you can override this fee.

Financial type

The default financial type for a membership type.

When members auto-renew they will renew to this financial type.

Note the financial type will also dictate the tax treatment so you will need to align the financial type to the VAT rates you need.

Auto-renew option

In CiviCRM this dictates whether the option to autorenew is available on contribution pages.

In CiviPlus organisations mainly use webforms, GoCardless or offline auto-renewal payment processors which ignore this setting.

Set to optional if in doubt.

Membership type plan

A fundamental part of membership management is to determine whether memberships are fixed or rolling.

Rolling memberships start on the day the member signs up and renew 1 period later. i.e. I signup on 27/7/2023, and I renew on 26/7/2024.

Fixed memberships start on the day the member signs up, but will renew on a fixed date you specify. For example all members renew on the 1 Jan each year.

With fixed memberships you also need to set:

Membership Type Duration Unit *

Generally considered to be a standard period of membership.

In the Duration field you should enter the number of days, months or years that your membership lasts for each time someone signs up or renews.

This can be overridden on signup and renewal webforms using specific start and end dates.

Note: Unfortunately monthly memberships (i.e. a membership that renews monthly like a netflix subscription as apposed to an annual membership paid in monthly instalments is not fully supported at this time).

Membership type duration unit is automatically set to “1” unit for fixed memberships to simplify pro-rata calculations.

Fixed Period Start Day

Relevant to fixed memberships only

Fixed Period Rollover Day

Relevant to fixed memberships only

Annual Pro-rata Calculation

Unlike with a rolling membership, when you have fixed memberships, the first period of membership may be shorter than a full year. i.e. I signup on the 27th July 2024 but the “Fixed Period Start Day” is 1 Jan each year. In the first year I would have a short period from 27/7/2024 until 31/12/2024.

As such, most organisations would “prorate” the price.

With CiviPlus we offer 2 modes to manage this pro-rata calculation:

By days:

By Months:

Note:

Skip Pro-rata calculation until

Some organisations may not want to pro-rata the price of the membership for some or all of the year.

You can override the above calculation by setting this “Skip Pro-rata Calculation”

Enter a “to” date for the system to skip the pro-rata calculation. Until this date the membership will be charged at full price, no matter the pro-rata calculation method. Leave blank to always pro-rata the membership price.

Note:

This functionality does work with webforms so you can have a form which skips pro-rata for a period of time as well as per the membership type settings.

Relationship Type

Memberships can be inherited from one contact to another.

An example of this would be a professional trade organisation that signs up a company as the (primary) member and wants employees of the company receive the benefits of membership.

This setting determines which relationship types can inherit the membership (please note; this setting can't be changed once you have memberships of this type in the system, so it's important to think carefully about this when you first set up your system)

Visible

Choosing Public means that this membership type will be able to be selected for inclusion on online membership sign up forms. If certain membership types are only to be handled by an administrator manually (e.g., honorary and lifetime memberships) you should choose Admin here.

This can be overwritten on a specific webform.

Order

This determines where this membership type appears in a drop down options list of membership types, and on membership sign up pages (but can be overwritten on a specific webform).

Set membership colour

This sets the colour of the membership on the membership types list and also on the membership tab of the contact page.

Enable

If you have membership types that are no longer offered or not yet available you may wish to untick this box. This will remove these memberships from the user interface. It will not delete the membership data and the membership can be re-enabled at a later date.