According to the way we’ve been operating:

1. A new member is someone who has never been a member before; WA is set up for that. WA generates an e-mail response welcoming new members.

2. A renewing member is someone who was a member in the previous calendar year (renewal due 12/15), but renews any time from 12/15 to 12/14 (e.g., 12/15/18 - 12/14/19). WA is set up for that. WA generates an e-mail response thanking a member for renewing.

3. A rejoining member is someone who last renewed outside the standard renewal period; in this example, before 12/15/17 (their membership will have expired 12/14/17). If such a person sends in a renewal after 12/14/18, they are considered a rejoiner and should get a message (e-mail) different from the one sent to a timely renewer. Such a person keeps their original membership number and date of first joining the Association (we make a note that they let their membership lapse for one or more years). I recently had someone rejoin who was last a member in the early 1980s (although that is an extreme example). In the case I mentioned (below) from 2015, I did enter their original membership date and original membership number from our old DB, but had to enter them as “new” because we did not carry our entire old DB into WA (too much dead wood there). WA does not seem to be set up for rejoiners (as we define them); certainly we would not want them getting a new member e-mail (that might cause confusion), but neither do I know how to work it so they get a different e-mail response from WA.

Right now, we have a number of people who were last members in 2017; we will be inviting them to rejoin soon, so we need to figure this out.