We have two membership programs, YMCA and Alumni.  When we run our renewal list each month to send renewal letters to those YMCA members who are about to expire, the query is pulling Alumni members as well, even though I specifically list "Current Program equals YMCA" in the criteria for the query.  I've even added the criteria "Current Program DOES NOT equal Alumni" and still we get Alumni members mixed-in with our YMCA members.  Any suggestions?  Jim

Hey Jim,

Try creating two queries and then merging them (BB513).

First, create a constituent query with the criteria Current Program = YMCA.

Then, create a constituent query with the criteria Current Program = Alumni

When you merge the queries, select the YMCA query as your primary, the Alumni program as your secondary, and use SUB as the operator.

Base your renewal letters on the resulting merge query.

Hope that helps!

Hi Jim,

 We currently only have one Membership Category and are about to add new ones.  Do you really have to merge queries to isolate the specific Category?

Thanks,  Cecily Knepprath

Cecily - Maybe I'm not understanding your question...but we have hundreds of membership categories (for each of our guilds) & you can query on Category = XXX. When you say "isolate" is that what you're referrring to, querying or reporting on one category?

 Hi Cecily,

 I do consulting on RE in the midwest and many clients of mine use the membership module.  Depending on the structure of your organization, often times the program and subcategory options in membership are not needed.  For example:

One client is a zoo, having 9 different categories for annual membership but additionally 3 different categories for animal adoptions.  We use membership for the adoptions for the sole purpose of effectively managing renewals on those adoptions.  Because this organization only cares about the 9 membership levels and three adoption levels we have set all of these as  categories and do not use the program or subcategory options at all.  Every membership report allows easy filtering on this one piece so they are able to get all summary and detail type reports on renewals oftentimes without using a query at all.

A second organization is a truck society which has seven different levels of membership, but they had the specific need for segmenting youth from adults.  Another way to put it was that of the seven levels, several were available for youth or adults.  Because they wanted ease with reporting on one overall group versus another we set up two programs - youth and adult - and then the seven levels as categories.  In config where you define the categories, we were able to determine what categories (if all weren't available) applied for which program.  This also helps with different renewal procedures the organization had for youth members.  Again subcategory was not used.

The final example goes another direction where this museum manages membership amongst 500+ different clubs.  Club members pay fee's directly to the club, which in turn then submits fees to the museum.  The museum prints all membership cards, does rosters for each club, and manages who is active, lapsed, etc.  Additionally there are quite a few individuals who are members with more than one club.  This organization has two main membership categories that club members could be a part of.  We set each club up as a membership subcategory (simply part of that table in config) and then correlated the club subcategories to the two categories that applied for membership.  Prior to working with this museum, they had never used subcategory and were having very difficult times linking gifts to the right membership - as well as easily determining from membership what club the member was part of - it all had to be based on gifts.

Now that subcategory is used, from the membership it's easy for them to properly link gifts to the correct membership for the member - since in the batch membership link you see both category/subcategory/program.  Also, subcategory which is also a filter in all membership reports (as well as program) enables this organization to avoid query when running summary/detail reports.

I don't want to confuse you, but Blackbaud does a very good job of confusing people with some optional modules (prospect and event immediately come to mind) where depending on what type of information you are wanting to track you often times don't need to use all of the fields - and in most cases I'll actually hide fields not being used (config\fields) which helps training staff easier.  Depending on how your organization is structured, and then what type of reporting you need accomplished, often dictates if program and subcategory are needed at all.  In my example above the zoo actually has the most memberships of all three organizations, but the easiest structure - so don't think that # of memberships either has influence on what you need to use.

Hope this is useful.

Additionally, I will point out and you could contact me or Blackbaud directly for additional help on this.  With the museum example above there were about 15,000 memberships that we needed to code the subcategory when it was determined that they needed that selection used.  Through a membership export and then import we were able to kick out the memebership information as well as linked gift information (which had the club name present) and then import that data back into the membership record.  Took a few hours, but definitely saved time in updating all info in RE.  Point being, and I tell all of my clients this, if it seems like there should be a better way to fix something - there likely is a better way and it's worth researching that to save time (and help keep data entry staff happy).  Good luck.

Sincerely,

Matt Haynes

Haynes Consulting Group, LLC

matt@haynesconsultinggroup.com