Dismayed by CiviCRM / CiviMember

[The Doctor]

I am a one-man show, running an non-profit charity with around 800 members, working only part time for low pay. I do everything (member management, web site, outreach, publications, etc.). I don't have time to screw around with faulty software. Somehow, I was convinced that CiviCRM would be well worth my while, so last year I switched over from Filemaker. That itself was a much bigger project than I imagined.

In Filemaker, I had accurate records and could create useful, trustworthy reports on my membership for the Board. Sure, there was some copy and pasting from Drupal and PayPal, but at least I knew where things stood. I figured CiviCRM could produce even better reports and would save me a lot of time. Not so.

Every day of using CiviCRM brings me one step closer to chucking the whole thing. The unpredictable behavior from this software has lead me to think that it is unreliable for keeping records of our membership. Two glaring examples:

1. When a member renews in a new category, sometimes that new category is recognized, in which case it overrides the previous year's membership record instead of creating a new one. Sometimes, the old category of membership is wrongly retained and it extends the membership. Sometimes it does create a new membership record and retains the old one, leaving it in a "grace" status, thus leaving the member with two active memberships. Sometimes it does this even if the category has not changed. It's all very unpredictable and destructive.

2. When members upgrade from a free 6-month trial membership with rolling dates, into a paid membership category with fixed dates, the free membership is overwritten by the new one (the category is changed), but the rolling end date is extended by a year. This creates a  membership that is not respecting the fixed dates and which has destroyed the record of the free membership.

In all of these cases, information is being destroyed and the only way to know what memberships people had in the past is to look at contributions. And never mind the "Member Since" dates. Those are also whimsical. All of this means that I have to edit and tweak every single record of membership to try to keep an accurate record. It's now twice as much work as Filemaker.

And let's not forget the complete inaccuracy of the Membership dashboard...

I could go on and on. CiviCRM, and especially CiviMember has become a drain on my organization because I have to spend so much time fixing its mistakes. This was supposed to save me time.

Listen, I appreciate the hard work that people put into this. I know it's not easy and I know you are trying your best with limited resources. Me too. But please, can't you create something that is reliable and predictable? It's no service to the community when the software makes the work harder and more costly.

[The Doctor]

No comments from the community? No help offered? No suggestions?

[Hershel]

Your original question was

But please, can't you create something that is reliable and predictable? 

for that, no, I don't have an answer. Your item #2 sounds like it's not a bug per se but rather that you would prefer the memberships to work differently than they do. Other users may like it as is, so it's hard to know what's best for the majority of users.

For your #1, it's not reasonable to suggest that anything happens at random. The code is of course just logic so it works the same each time. Why you see different behaviour in seemingly identical cases I don't know.

[Eileen]

WRT #2 - the way we work around that is to create another membership organisation for the ones we don't want upsell to apply to

[The Doctor]

Eillen, that is a good suggestion. Thank you.

Hershel, you are right about #1, I need to be more specific and careful in documenting this. There must be varying circumstances at work.

Thanks.

[siriusly]

Hi -- I am trying to find a workaround for a similar membership upgrade scenario.  We have two membership categories:  one is paid, one is free.  We offer free members an opportunity to upgrade to the paid membership, but then a year is added on to their membership term, essentially giving them an extra year of membership benefits. 

Could any of you possibly offer a little more explanation as to how the additional "membership organisation" works?   Is it like a third membership type, but with different date parameters?  Any direction or guidance here would be most appreciated!

Thank you!

[Eileen]

Your situation is standard Civi - ie. what you want is the way Civi does work - if you have a membership & you choose an upsell option your membership is extended as that type.

The other people are talking about when they don't want that to happen & I'm saying that if membership_organization is set to a different organisation for 2 types of membership then the membership won't be upsellable. This is the only useful function that I know of for membership_organisation in it's current form so I think it's fine to mis-use it in that way.

[siriusly]

Thanks, Eileen!  I'm getting closer to understanding this... first time through with multiple membership types. 

What is happening for us is that when a free member chooses to purchase the paid membership, the new one-year term — rather than starting at the date they purchase the paid membership — is  being added to the term of the free membership.  So, if someone has a new free membership, they end up with two years' paid membership having only paid for one year.

Is there something about how upsell works that I am missing here?  We are just having the member purchase paid membership.  (Maybe there are settings for upsell that I am missing?)

Thanks for indulging me a bit further... I'll get it eventually!

[joanne]

You need to create a "new" organisation for the paid memberships.

Eg If XYZ is the name of your organisation you create a new organisation contact record called for example XYZ-paid. (Can be called anything you like).

Currently the membership organisation for your both your free memberships and your paid memberships will be set to XYZ.

Keep your free membership as it is, but create a new paid membership choosing XYZ-paid as the membership organisation.

That way when people with a free membership 'upgrade' to a paid membership their paid membership will start on the day they pay and last for just the one year.

[siriusly]

Thanks so much!  That is starting to make sense...  Just a few more questions:
• So, if I'm understanding correctly, we will have three membership "types:" 
The first two -- one paid, and one free belong to organization XYZ, and a new member can join as either.
The third -- a paid membership belonging to (pseudo) organization XYZ-paid -- is used only when someone wishes to upgrade their free membership before it expires.

• What happens to the original free membership when a member "upgrades" to the XYZ-paid organization.

• Right now, if our paid membership expires, the member still remains a free member... how do I handle that with the pseudo "organization?"

• The documentation says this:  "If you are using CiviCRM to manage memberships for more than one organisations (sic), note that a contact's membership type cannot be changed or up-sold to a type from another membership organization."   How does this affect the method of membership upgrade -- from free to paid -- we are considering here (creating a second "organization?")

• Can I assume that this does not affect the contact records, other than that individuals become a member of either XYZ or XYZ-paid organizations?

• In a Wordpress install, will WP roles & membership type (XYZ or XYZ-paid) still work the same? (I'd like to use Civi Member Role Sync plugin (for WP) to manage this, along with Wordpress Access Manager on the CiviCRM side.

• Any other "unintended consequences" I should watch out for?

Again, many thanks!

[joanne]

You just need two membership types, the free one with membership  organisation  XYZ and the paid one with membership organisation XYZ-paid.  A new member can join as either.   
A free member can 'upgrade' to a paid membership and will get a12 month paid membership that starts on the date they pay and ends 12 months later which is what you have said should happen.


The original free membership stays in existence. It runs 'in parallel' with the paid membership.  This shouldn't be a problem with access to, say, member-only web pages, because presumably a paid member can see all that a free member can and more.  If you send out emails it shouldn't be a problem either.  Set up a smart group for each member type and when you send an email to free members just remember to exclude those belonging to the paid smart group.  If you post things out to free members as well as paid members then you will need to make sure you only send once to each person.


How long do you free memberships last for?  If it is ''forever' then those who were free members before they paid will still have that free membership.  For people who were paid members from the start, the simplest way would be to send them an email reminding them they can be free members if they want to be when their paid one lapses - maybe they won't want even that.

The documentation you quote doesn't apply to your situation.  When you upsell in Civi, the duration of the new membership type  is added to the end date of the old membership type.  You have said that is not what you want and that is why you need to create this psuedo "organisation'. 

Correct - no effect on contact records other than the memberships.

I know nothing about Wordpress, but the situation I am describing can be made to work with Drupal roles using Civi Member Role Sync,  so presumably it also works with WP.

As I know nothing about your site I can't comment on unintended consequences, you need to set it up and test it out for yourself. 

If this is not enough guidance then I think you should consider paying someone to help with you set up. 

[siriusly]

Thanks jchester!  That clarifies it a lot!  It was just a little convoluted understanding why we would have a second "organization."  (I've only been through the configuration with a single level membership before.) I think it will actually make the role sync easier, as there are a couple of oddities in the Wordpress CiviMember Role Sync plugin that will go away with this setup.

BTW, the site is here:  bit.ly/13FJ86A

I think the only remaining issue we will have is how to handle encouraging folks to upgrade memberships if we set the free membership term to "forever,"  but that can easily be handled on a periodic basis with scheduled emailings.  The primary motivation for the upgrade is to receive a discount on event registrations, so most of the time, the upgrade will occur then.

Also, BTW, I did attempt to hire an expert from the list, but they couldn't address it in our needed timeframe, so I struggled through it.

I'm hoping to be able to contribute to CiviCRM documentation at some point (I've written a number of software manuals), and perhaps this is a good place to start.  I can't imagine that there aren't other users out there facing the same situation.

Thanks again to all for the help!