Organization/Library Membership process

Keshia Mejia

Does anyone have experience with offering a Library Membership or organization Membership? What was your process?  

 

Devendra Shrikhande

Hello Keisha


Great to hear you are exploring this option! I have had the opportunity to partner with a few orgs that have set up such collaborations. Some key elements:

1. This is basically an org-based membership.
2. Depending on the spread of this effort, the library membership can be a membership level within a larger business-based membership program or in a separate "Library Membership" program.
3. The library then has a set number of "cards" that patrons check out. The library maintains this check out process (similar to their other materials).
4. Library patrons display these cards at admission and the admission is recorded against the library as the member visiting - and triggers automatic discount.  By keeping count of patrons against the library's membership record, it helps document the number of visits/patrons visiting from the library. Useful data for both your org and the library for their role in the community!

Would welcome input from others!

Claudia Smith

Hi Devendra,


We are setting up such a program, too. Covid has presented interesting issues with contact tracing, so we are requiring our Library patrons to advance register via our website.


Have you found a way to link a library patron to the member library using a discount code on the registration webform?

Devendra Shrikhande

Hello Claudia


This is an interesting scenario.


Please do note that any context of setting up a mechanism of collecting contact information - will create individual constituent records in the Altru database for any visitor.


You could evaluate the option of setting up a pre-registered program dedicated for Library membership patrons. The reason for the pre-registered program is that you can then "force" the patron to enter names of all the people in their group for contact tracing of every person in the group. You can then also include a required field with a drop down option requiring the patron to select the library through which they are visiting.


If this will be creating too much noise in your database (too many one-off patrons/no guarantee of accurate information). You can set up a "regular" scheduled program to collect the name of the patron that is doing the online submission and include in the Web description a mention that they will be the primary person to distribute information in the context of a contact alert. Disadvantage is that you would not be able to include a question requesting them to select the name of the library membership.


Friendly reminder to balance the capacity allocated for each of these scheduled programs with the overall capacity of your organization for timed admission.


Hope this helps!