Membership renewal when registering for an event
Hi, we're just into our second year with wild apricot and our members are starting to renew their memberships and register for this season's events. We ran the memberships yearly expiring on Aug 31 2015, so all are expired now. Most people took the hint to renew their membership when registering for an event in 2016, but somehow some paid for just the new events but didn't renew their membership. I have the setting somewhere (can't find it now) that they can register for multiple events and then pay at the end. Is there a setting somewhere I'm missing to make them pay for the membership renewal at the same time they pay for the events? Or is that a feature that would be for the wishlist?
Thanks,
Greg
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Cindy Bruce commented
With so many people voting to have this, and with other organizations being able to do it with THEIR registrations, I don't understand why WA can't just accommodate this problem.
We are having problems with people doing only one or the other when it comes to renewing their membership or registering for our event. They are required to renew their membership for 2017 in order to register for our January event before their expiration date but no matter how clear I try to make it, with BOLD LETTERS and COLORED TEXT, they are missing that they have to fill out TWO separate forms and are only doing one or the other. PLEASE let us be able to allow them to renew their membership AND register for the event on ONE form. And please add a required field for that to the event registration form. We require our performers and presenters to pre-register earlier AND to renew their membership earlier then attendees as well, in order to make them commit to their obligation. We as an organization should be able to have control over this kind of thing when it comes to memberships.
Also, for over 30 years, our membership expiration date for everyone has always been the day before our event but this system only allows us to choose the 1st or the 15th. We should have control over our own expiration dates. This year, being our first year with WA, I have had to keep changing the date in order to coincide as close as possible with our annual event but it just doesn't work out.
Bottom line, I'm wasting so much valuable time, sending out personal emails and mass emails reminding everyone that they have to fill out TWO forms when we really shouldn't have to do that.
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Steven Rattendi commented
Yes! A lapsed member should also be prompted to renew their membership when registering for an event. This should happen regardless of whether or not they have logged into their account. Right now, a lapsed member gets a suggestion to login, but not a suggestion to renew and, correctly, non of the registration types requiring active membership are available to them.
When you enter your email address to register for an event the system should:
1) Let your register as appropriate because it acknowledges you are an active member,
2) Prompt you to renew because your membership is lapsed and then let you register for the event,
3) Prompt you to apply for membership because you are not in the contact list, and then let you register for the event.Right now, the system seems to do 1 and 3 BUT does not do 2.
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Ron Belisle commented
We have the same issue. Here's what I wrote Wild Apricot support yesterday.
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It seems that if someone becomes a member in our new Wild Apricot system, say in September of 2016 (a year long membership), and then in July of 2017 when registration for the 2017 conference opens (the conference is in mid October), that person could technically register for the 2017 conference at the lower member discounted rate. But we don’t want people to be able to register for a conference at a discounted rate when their membership has expired at the time of the conference.What can we do in such a case?
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jlvoss1 commented
Event registration form to update contact profile
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For our purposes in Wild Apricot, they are the same. Thank you for the details
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Crystal commented
There is a similar thread (https://forums.wildapricot.com/forums/308932-wishlist/suggestions/9949890-membership-renewal-when-registering-for-an-event) that I commented on, but I don't know that our suggestions are totally the same.
Right now, we are unable to integrate membership renewal and new membership into event registrations. We have tons of lapsed memberships this year seemingly due to the fact that we had separate membership renewal and event registration. People didn't renew before registering or were unable to find the membership form (which is no fault of WA). Anyways, it would be awesome if membership renewal could be integrated into an event registration form and membership could be updated automatically when someone registers for an event. We integrated membership into registration for our annual conference 2 years ago, but we had to manually update memberships based on what people paid for during registration. The current system is very inconvenient and not conducive to a good user experience (on either the admin or the member sides).
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Crystal commented
We had so many lapsed memberships this year due to the separation of membership renewal and event registration. In the past, we lumped both together, but we had to manually update memberships (such a hassle!). It would be soooo awesome if we could lump event registration with membership renewal/new membership so our members and event attendees could complete everything in one transaction and their membership would be updated automatically.
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Troy commented
The ability to charge for membership at events would be helpful for us. We hold a large symposium and often get new members through that event signup and many of our existing members renew their membership at the same time.
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Tracy, I have merged your suggestion to another existing and similar one. Currently, there is no way to force people to pay for membership during event registration - this is something they have to do themselves.
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Tracy Korb commented
Our major events require membership. Most of our attendees do not renew their membership until it is time to register for the first major event of the year. Rather than charge them a nonmember fee, or require them to register for membership and the event separately, I want them to have the option to register for both at the same time, but have two separate line items for record keeping and accounting purposes. Can a second “Base Price Box” (one for the membership and one for the event registration) be offered to create this kind of event registration type?
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Holly Young commented
In each event you have the option to allow only members to register for the event. It is a checkbox in the Registration Type page.
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Paul commented
Do you mean that people shouldn't be able to register for future events at the membership-dependent rate, if the membership will expire before the event itself? If so, I agree.
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Andrea Tomlinson commented
Our problem is similar. But my question is this. If someone is a member in 2014 for example (Jan 1, 2014-Dec 31, 2014). They decide not to be a member in 2015 because they decide to not attend our annual conference (which is the case with quite a few members) so they don´t renew for 2015. But our renewal notice for 2016 goes out in November and now they want to renew for 2016 so they pay for 2016 but at the end of 2015. WO applies this payment to 2015 instead of the year they want to have membership 2016. When a lapsed member renews, maybe WO could prompt them to ask which year they would like to renew. "This calendar year? Next calendar year?"
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Carissa commented
Are there any updates with this? If not, another vote for the option of membership/ membership renewal when registering for an event. Most of our membership/ membership renewal happens during our annual conference in March and though I understand that they can take the additional step to become members and then register, we don't want them to become frustrated with the process. Our site is not yet live, but I have an option for membership/ membership renewal as an event registration option and then intend on manually changing membership, which kind of defeats one of our reasons for switching to WA.
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Albert, for email validation - can you please open and vote here:
http://forums.wildapricot.com/forums/308932-wishlist/suggestions/8826559-validate-e-mail-addresses -
Anonymous commented
I propose when registering for an event that they become visitors of our community. Saving us time and resources. What we do is convert an event registrant to a visitor and ensure our auto emails tell them that so they can opt out. Our mandate is that anyone taking part of our events do become a community member.
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Anonymous commented
Dmitry,
It is awesome to see your vision grow!
These are great changes and if you can incorporate automatic registrations for event attendees that will close the gap! What we do is when someone registers we convert them to a visitor so your change to register only once is a plus!
Years ago we spoke of email validation, we continue to get bad emails so if you can implement a verify email that compares to first email many will save time and calls in attempts to fix the email. It should have a protective feature where you cannot copy or past or autofill the second email. The clients we work with work hard to manage an accurate data base and this consideration would be a welcome one by all.
Albert R. Renteria
Chairman and CEO
TheARRC.com
A Service Disabled Veteran Owned Business
Benevolent Organization supporting Veterans
Chief Warrant Officer-4, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired)
Southwest Veterans' Business Resource Center
Founder and CEO
www.WhereCommunitiesServeVeterans.org®
Service Never Ends for a Marine! -
Evgeny Zaritovskiy commented
It does work for new members, but there is nothing for existing one, to encourage them to renew their membership.
But I think that even what we have now is not the best approach to follow - it's too complicated for site visitors. We will have to rethink the overall approach to this problem as soon as we get to analysis here, so keep posting.
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Marlene Johnshoy commented
This would save a lot of time! We actually set the non-member price for the conference to be just a bit more than membership, to encourage membership! =) We include the price of membership in the cost of registration, but then I've always had to go back in and update the membership manually. If there is a way to make "join/renew" membership as an add-on to the event registration (that would auto-update the membership) that would be great!
I haven't seen the process that Evgeny mentions - that would help, I'll check to see if that works the way it sounds - that would be a step in the right direction. That way conf registrants would only have to pay once.
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Evgeny Zaritovskiy commented
Interesting... Actually, event registration process already encourage people to apply for membership. If an event has registration type that is available for members only, then when a user enters his email and presented with the list of available registration options, there will special blue box at the top saying "Note: some registration types are only available for members." and button [Apply for membership]. If the user clicks the button, he can apply for membership and in the end of it he will be suggested to proceed with event registration. If he does that, then in the end he will be able to pay together for membership and event invoices.
Why does not it work for you?