Each organization has one or more membership types that define member benefits and responsibilities. These may include Company Membership Types and Individual Membership Types. Kavi Members tools for defining membership types include ways to advertise the benefits and criteria for membership as well as automating many of the business rules about how memberships are acquired.

To set up an organization's membership types, you need to know whether the organization offers company memberships, individual memberships or both. At a minimum, you need the following information about each membership type: its name, its duration and a short description. To take full advantage of the Kavi Members system for managing memberships, you should know who is allowed to become that type of member, the membership signup process, and the consequences to be applied to members who don't renew their membership at the end of their term.

You also have to understand how types and roles work to control access.

All the basic information about a membership type is printed on forms for prospective members to review. This information includes the membership type description, eligibility rules and benefits. If the membership costs money, its price will be displayed along with the membership type name and duration.

The duration of a membership can be defined in one of three ways: fixed duration, fixed dates or lifetime.

There are many options available to organizations to craft how membership types are presented and the process through which membership applicants are sent. Not all membership types must be available to the public. Some types of membership applications may be accepted only from existing members and some may be granted only by administrators. Other membership types may be offered only for a brief window of time each year.

Each membership may be sent to an administrator for review and moderation before it is granted to a member. This moderation may only be necessary for new members, while renewing members may be automatically approved, having already proved their eligibility in the past. Membership applicants may also be presented with a membership bill that must be paid before the membership can become current.

The decision to moderate a membership and how to bill a membership can be made individually for each membership type offered by an organization. When setting up new membership types, it's helpful to know the answers to these questions.

For more information about the membership signup and renewal process and how these choices are used in the system, see the chapters on Membership Signup and Membership Workflow.

When a membership expires, the member is expected to renew their membership in order to keep receiving member benefits. The way that Kavi Members handles expiration is highly configurable. The organization can specify a grace period and consequences.

Figure 20.1. Possible consequences for expired memberships

For each membership type, the organization can choose between one of three possible consequences, or delinquent actions, for members who do not renew.