[Finance] [Fundraising] Dealing with 2017 Memberships purchased after November 1st
Bill Newman
bill.newman at plumdee.ca
Mon Dec 11 14:43:28 PST 2017
My previously dismissive comments notwithstanding, it seems
reasonable to defer membership income to the proper year. This also
complies with standard accounting practices (not to mention all the
other accounting standards we should attending to).
This puts the income in the right year but we also have a marketing
problem with our memberships. We sell memberships throughout the year
but for the calendar year, i.e we sell memberships "for the remainder of
the year". This gets awkward towards the end of the year. So at some
point, or for certain events, we want to say the membership is for the
next year. This is a marketing decision best left to the Membership
Committee from time to time.
To comply with the accounting requirement we need only say:
Membership fees, whenever paid, for a particular membership year
shall be deemed income for the membership year.
This is how I have handled recent membership payments. The website and
the concert tickets advertise 2018 memberships. Several other recent
memberships are obvious renewals (2nd payment this year) and have also
been deferred. As of Nov 30 our Deferred Income account has a balance
of $340. This amount will be transferred to the Membership Income
account in January. (Or if I get cash payments I may stick them in a
cookie jar and deposit them in January, it's all the same :-)
--Bill
On 2017-11-07 03:34, Bill Newman wrote:
> Of course we can't sell memberships in November that expire six
> weeks later. That goes without saying. It would be reasonable to
> have memberships expire 12 months after they're paid. That way we
> could solicit memberships all year long without having "half-year"
> memberships or make people wait till January for their benefits. But
> our membership record keeping doesn't lend itself to such nuances,
> although we are working on it (there are a couple of possibilities).
> So we have a Dec 31 expiry for all memberships.
> You say "recently" Liz. I assume you are referring to the Nov. 1
> in the subject. And I assume that refers to what we expect to receive
> at the concert in November. But for the last two years the concert
> was in October and the year before that it was in September. Those
> are probably better cut-off months for issuing next-year memberships.
> When issuing a next-year membership it would seem unnecessary make
> people wait for Jan for it to be effective. Why not make it an active
> membership with an expiry date of next Dec 31? Yeah, a 14-15 month
> membership, why not? If it's a renewal then they already have a
> membership and it's all the same. If not then they could use it for
> Christmas presents or whatever--just seems silly to sell them
> something they can't use right away. Next year?,...well it will be a
> renewal and they'll only get another 12 months.
>
> As for the deferred income idea; yes, that's an accounting maneuver we
> know how to do but I don't think we need to. For years now we have
> posted membership income on the date it was received. I can't see why
> in November of 2017 that should be changed.
> Over time membership fees come in at the rate of $20/yr and at
> various times during the year (see attached graph). I don't see how
> we can lock them each into an exact calendar year or which year it
> should be. As/if we move people to individual anniversary dates the
> idea of splitting the income across two fiscal years makes no sense.
> What we expect is $20/yr each and every year--when the dollars hit the
> bank account call it income and we're done.
> The actual reason for deferring income would be to put it into the
> same year in which expenses are incurred in support of that
> membership. But, whoops, we don't have any such expenses. (The
> perquisites are provided by outside companies and are on their books.
> We aren't even advised.)
> If we defer income then the last few months of the year will show
> zero membership income. We're currently in a promotional campaign,
> with prizes, to promote membership. It would be a little tricky to
> get the data to show how that is working.
>
> What to do? Nothing too complicated really.
>
> * Change the website Paypal buttons to say 2018. (The two buttons
> currently share the same codes. I'd like to change that so I know
> which button they pressed. No big deal.) And why do we have two
> buttons????
> * Produce new membership cards that expire 2018-12-31. Hopefully
> make them usable for Christmas.
> * Think about the (very few) people who renewed in Sept and Oct and
> maybe extend them into next year too.
> * Carry on raking in the cash.
>
> Seems like a lot of explanation for carrying on pretty much as usual,
> but that's how I see it.
> --Bill
>
> On 2017-11-04 16:18, Kaye Grant wrote:
>> I agree with doing this but I think this decision might need a motion-
>>
>> K
>> On Nov 4, 2017, at 5:17 PM, Denis <dadepape at mymts.net
>> <mailto:dadepape at mymts.net>> wrote:
>>
>> I like Liz’s suggestions.
>>
>> Denis
>>> On 4 Nov 2017, at 14:41, Liz Shearer <elizabethshearer at gmail.com
>>> <mailto:elizabethshearer at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>
>>> I support moving the recent purchased memberships to deferred income
>>> and updating the website accordingly. We could add a message that
>>> they are purchasing a 2018 membership and will receive a "card" in
>>> their email to make use of the perks jan-dec 2018.
>>>
>>> That way we also give ourselves some time to reformat/update the
>>> cards on mailchimp to reflect new 2018 memberships. These could be
>>> sent out early January and then ongoing as we sell new memberships?
>>> Charles manages this process.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Nov 4, 2017 11:57 AM, "Mark Cohoe" <mark.e.cohoe at gmail.com
>>> <mailto:mark.e.cohoe at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> We've actually had a couple of people purchase memberships
>>> online over the last couple of days., and I wanted to check back
>>> to see if we are agreed to just count these as 2018 memberships
>>> (and accounted for as deferred income). We're offering 2018
>>> memberships as an add-on for the fall fundraising concert, so a
>>> policy like this makes a fair bit of sense to me.
>>>
>>> If agreed, I'll also change the join now links so that we are
>>> not offering the 2017 memberships.
>>>
>>> Mark
>>>
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