Member renewals automation

One of the most important (but dreaded and time consuming) tasks in any member-based organization is handling member renewals. Wild Apricot can help you make this task more organized and as automated as possible.

Renewal cycles

Most commonly, memberships are renewed annually or monthly.
Some organizations renew everyone on the same date - e.g. January 1st each year or 15th of each month.
Others renew on the rolling basis from the join date - so that a member who joined on March 7, 2007 will renew on March 7, 2008 for annual renewal or April 7, 2007 for monthly renewals.
You can set it up either way in Wild Apricot: renewing on a specific date or on the anniversary of the join date.
(By the way, renewals on the rolling basis are considered to be a best practice - in this way you can spread your renewals through the year instead of going through your whole database at one go and overloading your staff and volunteers)

Renewal period is defined for each Member level in the Renewal policy tab:

(Note: you can also store any other non-member contacts in your database and set Renewal = Never)

Once your Member levels are defined, each new member added with the appropriate level (whether you add a record by hand, import it or they register through your online application form) will have the renewal date set automatically. Administrators can change this date manually for each member record by hand if necessary:

Member self-service for renewals

As part of the Wild Apricot member self-service features, your members can login into their member profile to renew their membership online (or upgrade their membership level). See Member - renew or upgrade

You can also set up Automatic Recurring Payments for some membership levels.

Renewal Automation: Reminders and Actions

Renewals take a lot of time: reminding people to upgrade, tracking down individual procrastinators , updating member records. No wonder that most membership databases contain at least 20% out-of-date data.
Here is how Wild Apricot can help you automate the membership renewal process:
Go to Settings / Member levels / select the membership level from the list and select the Renewal policy tab:

Note: Every membership level in your system can be uniquely setup for Renewal reminders and actions

Here is what you can do on this screen:

Setup up to two email reminders to be sent in advance. For each reminder you can customize the email text, specify how many days in advance to send it - and whether to send it to the member, administrator or both.
Here is an example of personalized renewal email reminder setup:

Setup another notice to be sent right on the renewal date - with the same options.

Finally, if the membership is not renewed on time, you can send additional email notices as well have system automatically change member record as follows:

Change member status to Pending renewal or Lapsed;
Change membership level;
Set renewal date to Never;
Archive record

With these options, there are many ways you can deal with lapsed records, for example:

Change Member status to Lapsed, inform them about it but do not do anything else. (Lapsed member do not have access to Members-only private website section)
Change this record from a regular membership level to 'Other contacts' to leave it in your database. (And you can setup member-only pages and other online benefits to be available only to regular members but not to other contacts)
Archive lapsed record (Archived members do not count into your plan total and can not log in)

Renewal notifications

You can customize emails sent out to members and administrators who complete the membership renewal.
You can separately customize emails for renewal with online payments and renewal with offline (manually processed payments).