Renewing Related Members

[mdatcher]

I have a growing problem with my membership base. We offer our members either an individual members or a family membership which is defined as two people at the same address. Renewals for individual memberships are going just fine. The problem is with the family memberships. In most cases, the family memberships are spouses. One spouse created the membership last year and is therefore associated with the primary membership. The problem is that it seems like the other spouse is renewing this year. So, the membership for the spouse that performs the renewal gets updated, but the spouse who has the primary membership is now listed as expired. Is there a way either in CiviCRM itself or in the SQL database itself to correct this situation?


Let me see if I can diagram the problem.

Spouse A joined in 2013. Spouse B is a related member.

Spouse B renews in 2014. Spouse A still shows as expired. Spouse B shows as current.


Let me know if I need to clarify my situation. Thanks.

[Michael McAndrew]

We ran into a similar problem with the Green Party of England and Wales. I'm not sure if we ever solved it beyond making it a requirement that the same person has to renew.

I'll ask them what the latest is.

Michael

[petednz]

Yep same - we have clients with this. Some ways to minimise chaos might include
- ensuring reminders only go to Partner A with a checksum, that way Partner B can open the email and rejoin 'as Partner A' but ...
- need to make it very clear that Partner B will see Partner A's details and must not overwrite them eg ....
- have a special REJOIN form where First, Last, Email etc are set to view only and ...
- a field on the form where Partner A or B can legitimately enter changes to those fields, which then have to be manually done by a civi administrator
OR
- have 2 buttons on email for 'Rejoin if you are John' and 'Rejoin if you are Spouse of John' with them going to different links, ie the latter has no checksum
OR
- work on a token so we can include a checksum for 'spouse of' so you can have a button for 'Rejoin if you are <insert name of inherited member'
OR
- combine forces with http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php/topic,34374.msg145891.html#msg145891 so we can provide an 'on behalf of another individual' which might be able to be warped to cover the scenario of Partner B rejoining when original membership belongs to Partner A

[petermcandrew]

As Michael said we have run into this problem with our membership database.  Unfortunately we haven't come up with a technical solution for this, however when it comes to renewals we'll make sure we target the primary member via email and letters we send.  I think Peter's suggestions above are useful and I'll be looking at these to see if we can improve the way handle renewals.

Sorry I can't add anything more useful.
Peter

[mdatcher]

So far, I've been manually updating the primary membership whenever a secondary member renews. The problem is that it's just another place where an error can occur. Too bad there isn't reciprocity of renewals whether the primary or secondary member renews.

Thanks for your thoughts,

     -Matthew

[Donald Lobo]

would your org/client be willing to sponsor improvements in this area? I suspect its a 50+ hour project at least (so 6K+ USD)

lobo

[mdatcher]

would your org/client be willing to sponsor improvements in this area? I suspect its a 50+ hour project at least (so 6K+ USD)

lobo

Lobo,

My organization doesn't have that kind of room in the budget. However, would this qualify as a Make-It-Happen? If it does, I will gladly contribute. Thanks.

[Donald Lobo]

if u want to initiate a MIH for this, here's a documentation with some tips and guidelines

http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRM/Make+it+Happen

lobo