Gift memberships
A proposal for how a membership bought by one person for someone else would be recorded in Salesforce. Please read each section and leave feedback at the bottom of each section. There are two questions near the end that only ADK can answer.
1. The short version
A gift membership involves two people: the buyer, who pays, and the recipient, who becomes the member. The proposal is to keep those two roles separate in Salesforce:
Buyer
- Owns the payment (gift) record
- Gets the receipt and acknowledgement
- Gets credit for the payment in giving history
Recipient
- Gets a regular Membership record on their household
- Gets the membership card and benefits
- Counts as a member in every member report
Gift memberships can come in two ways: through the website's Gift Membership form, or entered by staff in Salesforce. Either way, the result is the same. The payment is linked to the recipient's membership, the same way a regular dues payment is linked to a membership today. The membership also shows the buyer's name, so anyone looking at it can tell it was a gift and who gave it.
2. Created online: the Gift Membership form
Most gift memberships would come in through the Gift Membership form on the website. The form exists but has never been switched on. I would connect it so that each submission automatically creates:
- the buyer, matched to an existing contact where possible, and their payment,
- the recipient and their household, matched the same way,
- the recipient's membership, linked to the payment, with the buyer recorded as the Gift Purchaser, and
- the buyer's optional message to the recipient and how the recipient should be told (email or mail).
While I'm in the form, I would also add the optional middle name and suffix fields for both people, to match the other forms.
3. Created by hand in Salesforce
Sometimes a gift membership will arrive by phone, mail, or check and need to be entered by staff. To make sure those records come out exactly the same as the online ones, I would add a New Gift Membership button in Salesforce. It asks for:
- the buyer and the recipient (search for each one, or add them if they're new),
- the membership level, amount, and payment method, and
- an optional message and how the recipient should be told.
Saving it creates the same records the online form does: the payment on the buyer, and the membership on the recipient's household with the buyer listed as Gift Purchaser. The payment then shows up in the gift batch like any other payment.
Without the button, staff would have to create the membership and the payment separately and link them by hand. That's easy to get wrong, which is why I'm suggesting the button.
4. Renewal
When the gift membership is about to run out, the renewal notice goes to the recipient, with the buyer copied. Once someone renews it, it becomes a regular membership and renews like any other. This works the same however the gift membership was created.
Whether the buyer should instead be asked to give it again is question A below.
5. What stays the same
The complimentary gift membership that ADK sometimes encloses with a donor's acknowledgement letter is a different thing. ADK gives it as a thank-you and no one buys it. It stays exactly as it is today.
No existing records need to change. Salesforce has almost no past gift memberships to convert.
Two questions for ADK
A. At the first renewal, who should be asked?
B. For the buyer, is a gift membership payment a donation or membership dues?
This decides which acknowledgement letter the buyer receives and how the payment counts in giving reports.
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