We're a small non-profit and don't have the money to buy the membership module.  the Help Desk suggested I use constituent attributes to track gift memberships.  Does anyone have any experience doing this?

Thanks!

Julie Davis

Organization for Tropical Studies

Durham, NC

We use attributes/Finders Codes  for our legacy society members.  They can be queeried this way. 

When tracking memberships you need to ba able to record the membership programme, the join and expiry dates. You might also want to record the membership status, i.e Active, Lapsed, Dropped, but this not essential.

If each attribute category is a membership programme, then the descripton field could be a date field which would equal the join date and the other date field would equal the expiry date.  The comments can be used to record the status - Active, Lapsed, Dropped, Upgraded, Deceased etc

You might want to think about a membership notepad type to record membership notes and even an action type of renewal to track the renewal process.  Also, action tracks could help to remind when the expiry date is nearing to make sure that you are ontop of sending out your letters.

I hope that helps.

I am not familiar with ther term "Finders Codes" is that just another word for attribute?