Transferring a membership to another constituent

Jennifer Hamamoto

Is there a way to transfer a most recent membership transaction to another constiuent without transferring the entire membership record?

Elizabeth Perron

Moved this forum post from the Community Help Community to the Altru Community in hopes of getting more product specific eyes & replies...

Regina Holten

In my experience when you transfer a membership to another record, the whole thing goes over, not the latest transactions.  I'd love to be told I'm wrong b/c this would be a lovely thing to be able to choose to do...especially when I have given some of my members the option of transferring their current membership to another family that can use it...we reopened July 2 and some members say they'll not be able to return until the pandemic is over b/c of particular issues...

Taylor Nord

Do you mean you want to transfer the payment for the membership, but want to leave the membership with the current members that are already assigned?

Regina Holten

oops, good caveat - you can edit the delivery of the membership, and assign a different patron to the sale, correct?

Sometimes I do get someone, say someone that renewed a few months ago and actually is not going to use the membership anymore and wants it to go to an adult child...being able to move that transaction over would be nice...and I edit somewhat in saying it is possible, right?

J Kiku Langford McDonald

If you just want to move the one transaction over to a different membership, maybe you can refund the payment to "other" and then sell the membership to the correct member and use "other" as the payment method. I know that is what Blackbaud recommends you do if you need to transfer ticket payments to someone else or to a different program.

Regina Holten

I didn't realize you could refund it to a 'dummy' record? Is that what you mean?

J Kiku Langford McDonald

No, not a dummy record but more like a holding bin for that $$. It's like doing a refund for the first membership and taking the cash out of the drawer instead of actually putting it back on the credit card You hold onto the metaphorical cash (the "Other" payment method) and then use that pool of money to pay for the transaction onto the correct membership record. The money stays in your system, you're just moving around which membership it's being applied to.


Hope that makes sense!

Kelli Everett

Regina Holten‍  You could just use the "transfer membership" option on the "Other tasks" menu on their individual membership page. This action would only move the membership and not the payment information. I always give hard credit to the payor and use the "gift" membership feature to attach it to a different patron who is not the paying party. For example, if a community foundation sends a contribution on behalf of Jane Doe, the foundation is the payor and I "gift" the membership to the individual. I then go back and manually soft credit the member who asked the foundation to send the funds. In addition, we soft credit the spouse and issue a household credit to them as well. 

J Kiku Langford McDonald‍'s recommendation works great if you need to edit a payor and the "Change Constituent on Payment" option is not available, or if you have a credit card transaction you need to reapply without refunding the revenue. 


Good luck!

Regina Holten

This forum topic helped me just recently.  Yesterday at a member request, I transferred a new membership from one constituent to a brand new person.  Not a problem.  On another one, it was trickier.  A person came in and bought a gift membership for someone visiting with that person.  It wasn't recorded that way.  It was recorded that the person with them bought the membership and added the gift giver as a spouse.  So I made the membership a gift but the payment was still linked to the wrong record.  I had to transfer the patron delivery option to the gift giver, and of course take that person off as spouse so they stood alone.  But I wonder if there would have been a bigger problem if it was a person that had a history with us and I had to transfer one transaction...anyway it can get tricky.  THANKS for the feedback! Helps to hear the suggestions and workarounds.  As I sorta started a thread earlier - I'd love to hear about if anyone is doing membership suspensions...etc.