Membership Renewals in MatrixMaxx
Background
The process that changes a non-member organization or individual in MatrixMaxx to an active member is the creation of a membership record. For anyone who wants this membership process driven by an annual process of collecting dues (which is just about everyone), MatrixMaxx provides membership applications that allow members to apply, renew, pay, etc.
The Renewal Process
Renewal applications are generated each year for active members. How this generation is done depends on the implementation. There are 2 key methods, and each has a reason for using them:
1) Membership Applications are generated by Staff or Members as part of the renewal process.
This process is used by most of MatrixMaxx’s clients and is used in the following circumstances:
— The association does not want to paper-mail any invoices.
— The association wants members to do renewals as ‘self service’ themselves, by following a link to a renewal application online.
— The association has a small number of members (usually under 150-ish).
— The association has a non-programmable dues formula, so staff must generate each renewal by hand, one-by-one, as they verify relevant data with each member.
— The association has rolling renewals and needs an automated process that ‘runs itself’.
2) Membership Applications are generated by an annual script run by Matrix Group.
This process is used by about a quarter of MatrixMaxx’s clients and is used in the following circumstances:
— The association has a lot more than 150 members.
— The association has a programmable dues formula, but doesn’t have any interest in members renewing themselves via a self-service form, either because they don’t accept credit cards and/or they don’t ask any demographic questions each year.
— The association wants to paper-mail invoices, so they need the applications/invoices pre-generated so they can easily batch-print them.
Generating Renewals Manually
There are a variety of ‘paths’ to manually generate renewals.
1) If ‘activation’ is upon application/invoice creation (i.e., The expiration date moves forward upon application creation; the association is assuming that the ‘check is in the mail’) then the process flows like this …
STAFF IDENTIFY RECORDS TO CREATE RENEWALS
Members -> Search/Edit Membership Records,
— MemberStatus: Active (or you can grab the ‘inactives’ if you want to try to get people to re-renew).
— MemberType: All (or segment by type, if that makes it easier to manage).
— Expiration Date: Segment as you need based on your cycle, and who you want to renew at this point.
STAFF LINK TO CREATE RENEWALS
From the Member Record search results, you’ll be able to link directly to Create a Renewal application.
We recommend you open the renewal in a different tab, generate it, then close the tab and go to the next record on the list.
When you generate the renewal app for each member …
On page 1:
– Member type and year will auto-populate based on the existing member record and time of year.
– Source you can leave blank or set to N/A Staff (leaving blank will be fine as you’re pregenerating them all).
You can alter primary/billing contact at this point if necessary, but that will probably be rare.
On page 2/3:
– Select Dues and fill in any other data that may be on your applications
2) If your organization’s setup does does not have membership activation automatically occur at renewal creation, i.e., the expiration date doesn’t automatically jump forward when a renewal is created, then expiration date can’t be used to correctly identify the members who need renewals generated. In this case, doing an activity search of members is the best path.
STAFF IDENTIFY RECORDS TO CREATE RENEWALS
Reports -> Advanced Organization search ->
– Activity = Had no pending/approved application (year)[Add criteria, and pick appropriate year)
– MemberStatus: Active (or grab inactives, too, if you want to try to get people to re-renew)
– MemberType: All (or segment by type, if that makes it easier to manage)
STAFF LINK TO CREATE RENEWALS
– From search results, link to company view page, then under Membership Accordion, link to Create Renewal.
Generating Renewals via Script
The first time the script is created, a number of variables will need to be determined, like what to do about lapsed members, how to handle partially paid members, etc.
Then, each year when renewals time comes around, the association should reach out to Matrix, confirm if there are any dues changes, and Matrix will run the scripts.
Informing Members it is time to Renew
Whether you pregenerate renewals or not, it is important to tell members how/when to renew. Some associations, particularly professional societies on rolling dues schedule, make these renewal reminders automated; the MatrixMaxx implementation team can do these emails during setup. But for many groups these emails are done manually.
– The email informing members it’s time to renew is sent whether invoices are manually or script-generated.
– This email should go to a list of primary/billing contacts of active member companies.
– Be sure to check the ‘primary member’ checkbox in the membership section of the criteria if you have inheriting children companies in the mix.
– Also, to avoid sending to primaries/billing contacts of organizations who perhaps have already paid, you should layer on an Activity criteria of ‘Company Member Application Payment Status (Year)’, ‘No payments or partially paid’. In the future you can tweak this to include multiple years as you get into periods where someone might still need to pay the last quarter of the previous year as well as the first quarter of the new year.
– Provide direct link to My Account page,
yourassociationurl.org/users_only/IndividualFormPublic/myAccount
or configure and activate the My Account section of the WWW Personal Profile page (which you can do on the Admin setup area, /SettingsForm/clientSettings ) and send them through the WWW Personal Profile page, /users_only/IndividualFormPublic/view if you want to encourage them to see and use that page more frequently, or update other things at the same time.
– Advise them that they can use the ‘[Pay]’ link to pay online with a credit card, or they can print the invoice to send in with a check or wire transfer information,
Note: This page can be configured to only allow the contacts to *pay* the invoices or – If you want them to have a chance to edit the amount, based on higher/lower sales, you can change the settings to allow editing, in the admin area of your Maxx implementation.
Then, the MEMBER CONTACT will follow these links and ‘renew’ their membership, either by choosing to [pay] with CC or print invoice and send with check or wire transfer info.
If you have questions about your renewal process, please don’t hesitate to call the MatrixMaxx team! Renewals are an extremely important process, and we want to help you get this right!