Membership Status

There are five basic status types with significant meaning and functionality:

Note: there are also the "Cancelled" and "Deceased" categories, which are outside of the normal membership flow.

Roughly, here is what happens:

1. A Member Application is received (or entered by staff) ... the status will be Awaiting Approval
2. The Board reviews the applications and approves them.  Approved memberships are manually updated to New status.
3. A set of rules are triggered in the background (immediately!) when the status is changed to New. These rules will create a web site account, assign the member role to the account.
4. The welcome packet is sent by staff (this is not automatic).
5. The status will remain New for one year** and then, assuming renewals, will toggle to and remain Current
6. Renewal Notices are keyed to the membership end date.  The timing and number of notices is not fixed, but the first is presently set 30 days before the end date (while the member is still Current).
7. Once the end date passes, the membership is now considered in Grace. Another reminder email is sent, with a final one sent approximately three weeks after the end date.
8. If a renewal is not received before the end date + 30 days ( the end of the Grace period), the membership will be Expired.
9. Upon expiration, additional rules are run.  At this time one rule removes member access privileges on the website, a second removes (if applicable) the member from the Examiners for Certification group.

NOTE:  Once a membership has expired, it should remain expired and NOT BE RENEWED.  Staff may react to exigencies (an ice storm, website outage, etc) and manually renew a membership, but the system will otherwise create a new membership.  It is perfectly OK for a contact to have multiple expired memberships in their record.

The ONLY times a membership status should be directly edited are

• When toggling to New
• When a member Cancels or needs to be marked Deceased

All of the other status rules will manage themselves quite nicely based upon end dates and should be left alone.

** the length of time a member is New is problematic.  The membership system isn't based on hard dates, yet member voting privileges are!  We may consider rolling all New members to Current members on Jan 1 of each year to indicate voting status.