Membership Startup Guide

Introduction

• Wild Apricot software is tailored for associations, clubs, non-profits, and member-based organizations. One of its core modules is the Contact and Membership Management Database.
• This guide provides an overview of how Wild Apricot can be used to manage your members and other contacts like newsletter subscribers, donors, event attendees, and volunteers.
• We will describe the database structure (membership levels, database fields) and demonstrate the major member functions related to applications and renewals: updating records, searching, emailing, and reports.

See Getting Started with Wild Apricot to learn more about other capabilities.

Comparing Wild Apricot Online Database with Excel database

Wild Apricot's contact database is part of a new breed of software called "web apps" - software that is completely web-based. These types of applications have many advantages over traditional desktop software.

Let's compare and contrast Wild Apricot contact/member database to a very common way to store member and contact records - Microsoft Excel software:

Contacts vs. Members / Donors / Event registrants

A contact can be a member, an event attendee, donor, a newsletter subscriber or any one else who registers on your website. 
Each contact can have a membership (or not), one or more event registrations, one or more donations.

Just like in Excel, each contact record is made up of various database fields used to store data, and you are free to create as many of these fields as you want.

Wild Apricot database fields are divided into two types: Common fields (apply to all contacts) and additional fields which apply to some of the contacts. For example:

• A member record is made up of Common fields + member-specific fields
• A donor record is made of the same Common Fields + one or more donation records which store donation specific fields.

Types of database fields in Wild Apricot:

1. Common fields - Apply to all contacts and automatically appear on all Wild Apricot forms, See Customizing your contact database fields
2. Membership fields - Apply to members-only (non-members will not have these fields), see Customizing your member database
3. Donation fields - These fields apply to donation records, see Donation Form Customization
4. Event fields - Each event can have its own separate event fields that apply to event registrations for that particular event. For example, event registration record for Event A is made up of Common fields plus Event A fields only, while Event B record is made up of Common fields and Event B fields only. See Customize event registration form

Customizing database fields

The various database fields can be customized by the administrator:

How members differ from all other contacts

Members are a special type of contact:

• They are assigned to a specific Membership level 
• Each membership level defines:
  • Type of member (e.g. monthly or annual subscriber, board vs regular member, paying vs non-paying).
  • The automatic emails and actions that should take place after a member applies, renews or becomes overdue. For example, Premium members might renew annually and are given an extra 30 day grace period to renew, while Basic members renew every month and automatically lose their member privileges if they do not renew on time.
  • Website access level, such as a situation where Premium members might have more membership fields in their profile and get access to more content on the Website compared to Basic members.
• In addition to Common fields, members also have special membership-related fields such as renewal date, and member status.
• Although all contacts can login, only members can be given special access to Restricted / Member-only pages and events.
• They can be listed in a Member directory.
• Can be organized into Member Groups.

See also Contact vs Member records

Working with Contact and Member records

After logging in, the administrators will see an "admin view" made up of pages that allow you to view and change various parts of the site.

The Dashboard page gives you a quick overview of your entire account and shows your billing plan, summary of your contact database, upcoming events, recent donations, and more. From here you can also quickly jump to various parts of the site:

Contact List

From Contacts you can find everyone in your Wild Apricot database (members, event registrants, email subscribers, volunteers, donors), and each contact is represented with a unique ID (which is system generated) and a unique email address.  

From this list you can go to the contact you want to view, and edit that record if applicable, see View and edit contact details

Searching records

Wild Apricot offers a number of ways to look up records.

• Keyword search: Just start typing in the search box and all matching records will start to appear
• Filter: Using various predefined filters you can quickly bring up specific types of contacts (such as event attendees, donors, or non-members)
• Advanced search: For more complicated searches (e.g. members who last logged in 3 months ago, and/or made a specific donation amount) you can perform an advanced query, see Advanced search - Contacts

See also Searching and filtering contact and member records.

Email Communications

Rather than using an outside system for communicating with your members, you can email them right from Wild Apricot:

• Manual emails: You can compose and send out as many emails (or eNewsletters) as you want at any time, see Sending e-mail blasts
• Automatic emails: There are a number of emails that can be setup to go out automatically e.g. Application confirmation emails, Renewal Reminders and Invoices / Receipts

Member to member communications: With so much spam out there, your member email addresses can be kept private while still allowing them to be contacted via a form on their profile, see Member contact form.

Managing data records

Adding contact records into the system

There are 3 ways people can be added into your Wild Apricot database:

• Self service: Anyone who submits any of the online forms on the website (such as an application, event registration, donation or e-mail subscription form) is automatically added into the system. (See Online Forms)
• Manually one by one by administrators: The admin can add contact records one-by-one, see Adding a new contact
• Imported by administrators: If migrating from one database system to another, and you already have a list of member records (for instance, in an Access / Excel database) you can import these records in bulk, see Import Guide

Exporting up your records

• Contact / Member records - All or some of your contact records can be exported at any time, see Exporting members and other contacts
• Filtered contacts - Run any search you want and only the filtered records will be exported, see Searching and filtering contact and member records
• Event attendees - All the event registration info can be exported separately for each event, see Viewing and contacting event attendees
• Donation records - From the donations tab you can export all / some of the donation records, see Donations database

Archiving and Deleting records

Some records simply expire / become outdated (members who fall by the wayside or fail to renew). Rather than deleting these expired records entirely, Wild Apricot has the option to archive the records so they can be restored at a later date, see Archived vs. active records. These archived records are automatically excluded from receiving emails and do not count towards your database limit, and until restored they pretty much behave like deleted records.
Once archived, a record can be deleted anytime, see Deleting contact records

Hierarchical memberships and grouping membership records

Family / Corporate memberships

Aside from individual memberships, you can also have family or corporate memberships which pay/renew as a group.
In Wild Apricot these linked members are known as bundles, see Bundle Membership Level Overview
A single person in each bundle is designated as the bundle administrator and is responsible for paying and managing the rest of the bundle members,
Because these members are linked, they share the same renewal date, membership level, and access to the system , but each member has their own profile and can still log into the site separately.

Grouping Members

You can also group members who share similar interests or belong to particular committees.
For example you can have members that all belong to different membership levels and pay different fees. Some of them may like football, others tennis, and some both. In this case you would use the Member Groups feature of Wild Apricot, see Member Groups

Members can belong to multiple groups so you can add any member to any group(s).
You can also send emails to specific groups only, or create restricted pages that can only be seen by members of that group, see Website Pages with Restricted Access

Handling Member Applications

Wild Apricot comes with an online member application form, and the common fields and membership fields that you create are automatically added to this form, see Online member application form

The application process works a bit differently depending on the membership level selected by the user (Free or Paid) and the payment method used (Offline/Check vs. Online payment)

Here is a high level workflow:

Automated application confirmation emails can be customized separately for each membership level, and you have the option of automatically approving the applications, see Member applications workflow
For paid memberships you can also automatically send customized receipts and invoices, see Invoice and receipt settings
Both online and offline payments can be handled, see Payment settings

Handling Membership Renewals

It’s easy for members to forget when their current membership expires, so the organization has to somehow remind the members, who in turn have to send payment, have the admin/treasurer record this payment, and then extend the membership appropriately.

Wild Apricot simplifies this whole process by automatically sending the renewal reminders, see Automating membership renewals.

Members can then renew themselves online and the system will automatically extend their membership appropriately, see Member - renew or change level

You can also set up automatic recurring payments so members are automatically billed and renewed each billing cycle, see Recurring payments

The admin can manually record renewals (those who send renewal checks without going through the system), see Manual member renewal

Adding a Member Directory to your website

Unlike Excel, where you have to manually create and manage a list of members outside of your website and then copy that information into your website editor, Wild Apricot comes with an integrated member directory page that is automatically updated whenever any of the member info changes, see Member directory

You can also have multiple member directories, each customized to show different member lists and information. For example you could have a public directory to show less sensitive data (phone numbers), while a private directory (for members only) displays more member specific information.

However, each member retains the ability to hide their entire profile (so they are NOT shown in the directory) or choose to only hide parts of their profile, see Privacy settings
If you are not using Wild Apricot to host your main website (e.g, using Widgets) you can embed the directory into an existing page, see Widgets - integrating Wild Apricot into another website

Here's how an example of a membership directory in Wild Apricot:

Online Self Service Functions

One of the main advantages of using Wild Apricot is that it gives your members the ability to perform various tasks on their own - without bothering the administrators.

• Applications - People can sign up for membership via an online application form, pay and be automatically added to your member directory
• Renewals - Member can renew and pay online
• Member Upgrades - Members can switch their membership levels themselves and right away are granted the privileges of the new membership level
• Updating Profiles - Members can edit their own profiles (e.g. new email address) and the changes are automatically reflected everywhere on the site
• Financial history - Members and other contacts can view a full history of past invoices and payments and pay any outstanding invoices online

Example of a logged in member editing his/her own profile: