Contact Vs Member records

Overview

Everyone in your Wild Apricot database is a contact, whether that person is an actual member or not. Some contacts are 'pure' contacts (i.e. people you simply want to keep in touch with, past members or prospective donors or members) - while other contacts might also have active membership, linked event registrations and/or donations.
A contact can be one or more of the following:

• Member
  • A contact with membership assigned (i.e. belong to particular Membership level)
  • Get listed in Member directory and have access to restricted / secure pages, see also Membership management
  • In addition to Common fields members also have additional membership fields for storing member data.
• Event attendee
  • Anyone registered for at least one event, see Event registration records
  • In addition to Common fields you can also create additional event fields which are only visible within that event
• Donor
  • A contact who has made at least one donation, see Donations database
  • In addition to Common fields donors also have donation fields
• 'Pure' contact
  • Contacts with no membership, donations or events associated with them, see Contact List
  • Consists of Common fields only and no other additional fields

Contact database fields

• Each contact record is made up of Common fields as well as additional contact-specific fields (i.e. a member is made up of both Common fields and Membership fields)
• Common fields are automatically added to all forms (membership, event, and donation forms) so only fields that apply to everyone should be created as Common fields i.e. First name, Email etc.

Note that once a field name is used as a Common field, that same name can no longer be used to create a membership, donation or event field. You can however use the same field name as a donation, membership, and event field as long as you don't have it as a Common field.

How to turn a member into a contact

To remove membership and turn a member into an ordinary contact, just suspend the membership, see Suspending a membership. This contact is free to then re-apply using the online application form. 

How to turn a Membership Field into a Common Field

The system will not allow you create a common field with the same name as a membership field, event field or donation. A Membership field however can have the same name as a donation or event field (since these are mutually exclusive)

• There is currently no way to change the type of a field once it has been created.
• It is also not possible to convert a membership field into a Common field directly (or vice versa).

Here is a workaround you can use to achieve both of the above:

1. Export your entire contact list and save it - do not make any changes to the Excel file.
2. Now delete the membership field you want to move over.
3. Create a new Common field with the same name (and type) as the deleted membership field.
4. Re-import your saved Excel file.

To switch field types (e.g. from a radio button into a multiple choice), in step 3 above, just create the new field as the new type.

Import Considerations

Currently only 'pure' contacts and/or members can be imported from an Excel file, see Import Guide (for donors and event attendees, you can import them as contacts and then manually record their donations and event registrations, but in most cases this is probably too much manual work so most people simply import and leave them as contacts).

Any contact can however be exported, see exporting members and other contacts, event attendees and Donations database.