Membership structure within Altru

Alyssa Nickel

Hello! I am curious how everyone has their members/memberships set up in Altru.

We are a children's museum and evaluating how we run our memberships. Our Family level membership covers two named adults and all children within the same household. In Altru, we only put the adults on the membership. The children are added within the household, but not on the membership.

A big reason we did it this way was to prevent online sales from adding an endless amount of people onto a membership. However, I see many other museums having all members listed as members in Altru or selling memberships as “Covers up to 4 people”.

So I have a few questions:

• Do you sell memberships by the amount of people utilizing it, or by the structure? (I.e. "Family of 4" or Family [2 adults and all children])?
• Do you list children as members in Altru?
• Does anyone sell memberships to households instead of constituents?
  

If we were to make a change, we'd want to do it relatively soon as we typically have a few membership promotions this time of year.

I apologize if these have been asked before, I tried looking. But thank you to anyone who answers!

Debbie McKenzie

@Alyssa Nickel

Our family membership covers the 2 adults and all of their children under the age of 18 living in the same household. We put the names and birthdates of their children in notes, we do not enter the children as constituents, adding them as constituents, in my opinion, would clutter up our database.

Our contributing level memberships ($250 and up) allow for a 3rd named adult (nanny, grandparent…). The 3rd adult doesn't have to live in the household.

Regina Holten

@Alyssa Nickel

• Do you sell memberships by the amount of people utilizing it, or by the structure? (I.e. "Family of 4" or Family [2 adults and all children])?

We sell our General Memberships according the number of people one person might visit with - the cardholder plus x amount of people (adult OR child). We sell General Memberships in groups of 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10.

• Do you list children as members in Altru?

We do not list children as members. We only allow up to two adults on a general membership and member card - and that 2nd person can only be an adult spouse/domestic partner. This doesn't mean we don't have children in Altru. I try to gather whatever child is added as part of a registered program into a household if they are member - this can be tough and ongoing.

• Does anyone sell memberships to households instead of constituents?

In a way, our memberships ARE sold to households but we don't initiate the sale via Households in Altru, as we have a Primary Member (usually the primary household adult and most always the purchaser). I have only just begun to understand that our Primary General Member should also be the Primary Household Altru record Member. Never really noticed the difference but there is - especially when it comes to renewals.

Hope my answers help - I like the way our General Membership is constructed - it makes it pretty easy to manage. If a member has a babysitter bringing the member children to the museum, they must show the member's card and have a note. We do not list babysitters or caregivers.

General Membership for us is pretty basic and again easy to maintain in Altru as there aren't even any ‘add-ons'. General Membership allows free admission into our permanent exhibit galleries free of charge at all levels - the only thing that changes are the number of people permitted per level.

Lydia Baard

@Alyssa Nickel
I run the membership program for a large children's museum. To protect our revenue stream, ALL humans on the membership must be named. This includes adults, children, grandparents, nannies, etc. If you want to enter the museum as a member (i.e. free of charge), you must be named on a membership account.
We also offer a member guest fee for those one-off guests that you don't want to add to your membership as a named person, but they are here visiting with you for the day. That discount is half off of regular admission price. Members are able to enter with up to four guests at a time with this discount price.

Let me know if you have any questions!

Tamara Christensen

@Debbie McKenzie We do something similar for a babysitter or nanny - we have an addon called additional adult for $25 (our general memberships are $150).

Lisa Saneda

@Alyssa Nickel

At the New Children's Museum in San Diego: We have 3 membership levels: Duo (1 Adult, 1 Child); Grandparents (2 Grandparents and up to 4 grandchildren); Family (6 Named individuals and 1 must be a child)

Names and children ages are supposed to be listed on the membership. We use Cuseum so we try to update those when people check in.

We don't sell by the Household since they are constantly changing.

There are add-ons for any of the membership levels at an additional cost.