From a high level, patrons purchase Memberships at different Membership Levels (e.g. Gold, Silver, etc.) in the same way they'd purchase a ticket to a performance. When they do, they'll receive a Member Benefit package that (generally) expires a year from the purchase date.

This Member Benefit automatically grants the patron the perks you define, primarily:

• Early access to events (presales)
• Discounts on tickets

Member Benefits vary by level, so Gold members can get earlier access and heavier discounts than Silver members. Benefits also track membership expiration and trigger badges to help you quickly identify current members, lapsed members, and members who are up for renewal.

PatronManager Memberships are most effective when paired with PatronPortal, an add-on feature that allows your patrons to log into your Public Ticketing Site (PTS). When they log in, the early access and discounts you defined via Member Benefits are automatically applied.

In short, they purchase a Membership just like they would a ticket to one of your performances. Memberships on the PTS have a dedicated page, which uses the language and images you define.

When your patrons purchase a Membership - either with your box office staff or online via your PTS - some magic happens behind the scenes:

• Your patron is granted the appropriate Benefit package (based on the Membership they purchased)
• Your patron receives a confirmation email (much like a ticket purchase)
• If you're using PatronPortal, they'll also be invited to log into your PTS with their new account

PatronManager Memberships also include some built in fields and badges that update nightly and can appear on your patron's Contact and Account record if you add them to the page layout:

• Latest Membership - A field displaying the best (based on Rank) current, or most recent expired, Benefit Level
• Latest Membership Expiration - A field that indicates the expiration date of the latest-expiring Benefit
• Member Status - A badge that lets you know the status of this patron's Membership at a glance
• Member Role - for Household Memberships, differentiates the buyer (Main Contact) from additional members in their Account (Associated Contacts)

You can count some or all of the membership purchase as a donation, if that's how your organization thinks of memberships! Just set a Fair Market Value on the Membership Price Level and the additional cost will be counted as a tax-deductible gift in rollups and various reports.

If you think of members as based on cumulative giving over time, consider using badges to track Donor Level instead. If you need donors at a certain level to receive perks like discounts and presales, you'll need to grant them access to PatronPortal and create the appropriate Benefits for them manually.

Primarily, you can offer:

• Presales / Early Access
  • You'll set up a Passcode, then add it - and the appropriate Benefit Level - to the Event Instances you're offering presales for
  • Here's how!
• Discounts
  • You'll set up a Discount Code, then attach that Discount Code to the appropriate Benefit Level
  • Here's how!

As long as you're using PatronPortal, members can use their Benefits by logging into your Public Ticketing Site. They'll automatically receive any early access and discounts you've defined on their Benefit Level.

If they have a bunch of discounts available, the system will automatically apply the best discount based on the tickets in their cart. In the example below, you can see Kermit is logged in and getting an automatic discount of 25% off:

If a member makes use of a limited discount you've attached to their member level, it'll also be tracked on their Contact and Benefit record via the Discount Code Usage Related List. This helps you track how many times your members have used their limited discounts and how those discounts match up to different Benefits.

You sure can! While these perks won't get automatically applied, you can track:

• What perk should be fulfilled
• When the perk was fulfilled
• Instructions on how to fulfill the perk

Run reports on your perk fulfillment to make sure your members are getting what they deserve!

If you offer household memberships that cover multiple people, you can indicate whether a Benefit should apply to an individual Contact or to an entire Account when you create the Benefit Level.

For household memberships, select "Household" as the Membership Type to have the Membership and its Benefits apply to every Contact within the Account.

As long as you're using PatronPortal, members can renew online. You can also run a report of patrons coming up for renewal and get in touch to remind them to renew.

In PatronTicket Settings, you can control:

1. Benefit Renewal Days: allows members to renew their Benefit early. Their renewed membership will expire one year after their original expiration date (not penalizing members who renew early).
2. Benefit Expiration Days: allows members to "renew"after their Benefit technically expires. They won't receive their Benefits in their gap period, but it can still be processed as a renewed membership.

You absolutely can, but the functionality is reduced. You'll create Memberships and Benefit Levels like normal, and you can sell those Memberships on your Public Ticketing Site.

You can use PatronManager Memberships right now - it's a built-in feature and free to use.

PatronPortal has additional costs associated with it, and scales with how many Members you have. Check out our All About PatronPortal article to learn more, or jump straight to our Add-On Project: PatronPortal article for pricing information.

When you're ready to start building your program - that is, configuring your Memberships and Benefit Levels - use this Help Tab article. It'll walk you through each step so you don't miss a single detail!