If you have a Membership Category that requires renewal, it will have a ‘Grace Period’.
This article will explain what a Membership Grace Period is, who it applies to, and what happens once it ends.
For steps on how to configure the Grace Period for a Membership Category, consult this Knowledge Base article.
For steps on how to change the Grace Period for an individual member, consult this Knowledge Base article.
What is a Grace Period?
A ‘Grace Period’ is the stretch of days past a Membership Category’s Renewal Date during which its non-renewed Contacts are still treated like Active Members.
In other words, the Grace Period allows Contacts to renew late without losing their Membership.
What happens during the Grace Period?
Memberships are technically Lapsed during the Grace Period, but the Contact maintains all the access they had as an Active Member. They can still login to the Member Portal, register for Events, and enjoy any other privileges that came with their Active Membership, until the Grace Period runs out.
Contacts within the Grace Period are free to renew their Membership with no penalties.
Except if the applicable membership category is configured to include a late fee. Membership renewals have an optional setting to apply a late fee a certain number of days after the renewal date. A late fee will only be charged if a member does not renew by their renewal date, and will be applied in addition to your member’s regular renewal fee. The late fee will be applied to a Renewal during a member’s Grace Period.
What happens after the Grace Period?
If a Member fails to renew before their Grace Period ends, their Membership will become Archived. All associated privileges will be lost: the access rights of this Contacts will mirror your Non-Member access rights.
Archived Memberships cannot be renewed without Administrator intervention. If your membership settings have the ‘Re-Apply for Membership?’ toggle turned on, then Contacts can submit an entirely new Application to become Active. Read this Knowledge Base article to learn more about that toggle.
Our Support Staff can configure your system to prevent Memberships from Archiving after the Grace Period ends.
In this case, Memberships would simply become permanently Fully Lapsed if the Contact fails to renew within the Grace Period.
The main difference between a Lapsed Membership and an Archived Membership is that Lapsed Memberships can still be renewed.
Enable ‘Force renewal on login’ under your Membership Category’s Configuration Tab if you want to force Contacts to renew their Fully Lapsed Membership upon accessing the Member Portal.
Congratulations, you now know what a Membership Grace period is, and how to make it work for you!