Membership Overview

Memberships in ExceedFurther can be attached to a household or organization as a whole or they can be attached to an individual name or couple within a household or organization. Each membership has a unique membership number, a join and expiration date, and a member level. When you enter a gift that is of type Dues, the membership is automatically renewed and a new expiration date and possibly a new level are assigned.

A single membership can apply to multiple individuals. If you wish, you can select the individual names that a membership covers, for printing membership cards, for example. Specifying individual names is not required, however. If you do choose to add individual names, these can be names within the household that holds the membership or they can be names from another household. If you do not wish to add these names to ExceedFurther, you can simply type in the details for each name.

You can add membership details for a particular household or organization directly through their Bio tab, using the Membership sub tab. You can also use the Member Manager to add these details.

The Member Manager allows you to view all of your memberships and their details in one place. You can add new members, send renewal notices, add dues payments, print membership cards, and drop members, all from the Member Manager.

If you wish to allow people to join or renew online, you can set up membership pages through Online Administration. You can create a Join page where you can display membership levels and collect payments, and you can create Renew pages for current members. These online payments then appear under the Membership tab in the Online Transactions tab where you can review and update the membership data in Exceed Further.

When you send renewal reminders to current members, you can embed a link to the online membership renewal page in the reminder email or letter. This link can include the member number so the renewal is linked directly to the correct membership.

Getting started with memberships

To set up and maintain memberships, you need to do the following steps. Follow the links at each step for more information.

  1. Determine your membership levels and their associated dues and enter these in the codes list in Admin.
  2. Set the renewal rule in Client Defaults in Admin. This rule determines how an expiration date is calculated when dues are paid.
  3. Each membership needs a unique membership number. You can add these yourself or you can have ExceedFurther automatically generate membership numbers. Set this option in Client Defaults in Admin. If you have existing member numbers and you would like to continue with the same sequence, set the next membership number in Client Defaults in Admin.
  4. Create renewal reminder letters and other membership letter templates.
  5. If you expect to print membership cards from the Membership Manager, create your card layout from the Membership Card tab in Admin.
  6. Add your members. You can add members the same way you add other names and you can add members directly through the Member Manager.
  7. To add members and memberships without using the Member Manager, you do the following:
    1. Add the members:
    2. If a member is part of an organization or company, add them to the organization, or add the organization if it isn't in your data yet.
    3. If the member is not part of an organization, add them as a new household.
    4. Once a member name or names have been added, add the membership information.
    5. You can add memberships to names either by adding Dues payments or by adding membership details, like join and expire date and membership level, directly, without a Dues payment.
    6. To add a membership by adding a dues payment, use any of the options for adding gifts.
    7. When you add a dues payment for the first time, the join date for the membership is set to the date of the dues payment. If you are not adding the full history of dues payments, the original join date may be different. You can change the join date directly when you add the dues.
    8. To add a membership directly, without adding a dues payment, on the Bio Membership Tab, use the Join button to add the original join date and current member level and expiration date.
  8. You can accomplish all of the steps in adding members and memberships by using the Member Manager instead.
  9. Once you have your members and memberships added, use the Member Manager to send renewal notices, upgrade and downgrade membership levels, drop members who haven't paid their dues, and generally manage all of the tasks associated with members.