What is CiviMember?

CiviMember allows you to track and manage membership for one or more organisations. You can define different membership types for each organisation.  CiviCRM provides tools to track contacts through the membership cycle, and handles membership renewals. A central aim of CiviMember (much like other CiviCRM components) is to automate membership administration as much as possible.

Real world scenarios

The Atlantis State Public Transit Association (ASPTA) is a useful case study to learn from when deciding how to manage membership. They have four membership categories:

• Regular Members: Public transit systems. There are three tiered dues levels within this category, based on the size of the system. Membership is organization-based, and all employees receive access to member benefits, such as discounted rates at Association events.
  
• Affiliate Members: Businesses providing goods and services to the transit industry, such as bus and rail car manufacturers, engineers and consultants, parts and component manufacturers, etc. Membership dues are a flat rate for all Affiliate Members. Membership is organization-based, and all employees receive access to member benefits, such as discounted rates at Association events.
  
• Associate Members: Students, government representatives, public interest groups, research institutions, and other interested parties. Membership dues are a flat rate for all Associate Members. Membership is individual-based.
  
• Honorary Members: Retired transit system executives and others who have made a notable contribution to the industry and Association. No membership dues; lifetime period. Membership is individual-based.
  

As the ASPTA CiviCRM administrator configures the membership types, she creates three separate types for the Regular Member category to account for the three dues levels. The duration is one year, beginning on January 1, with a rollover date of October 1. In this way she accounts for new members who join very late in the year and are not able to fully benefit from their membership during that calendar year: their memberships extend through December 31 the following year.

It is now time to see how CiviMember responds to the particular needs of a membership drive. ASPTA's membership committee begins a focused outreach to non-member public transit systems (Regular Member category) and non-member businesses working in the public transit industry (Affiliate Member category). They want their members to renew online and pay through a credit card.

To accomplish this, they create a membership signup/renewal page. CiviMember can maintain the information about how to join in one place and generate a signup page or renewal page from it as appropriate. The signup page will be available to all website visitors, whereas the renewal page will be visible only to contacts who are already members, after they login to the members-only section.