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How To Make Extra Money With Corporate Memberships

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Many associations and chambers of commerce are making extra money by offering corporate memberships. Rather than just giving businesses a regular membership for a standard price, which only allows one person access, a corporate membership allows multiple staff members and secondary members access at different levels for an additional price. This way, the organisations can dictate the price of these corporate/group memberships based on the number of additional members they allow access to. Not only does this increase their membership revenue, but it also increases the number of members who can purchase tickets to events, buy merchandise, and generally spend money in association. 

Corporate or group memberships are a smart way to add extra value to your association's membership and bring in extra funds. They can work well for a wide range of clubs and associations, from hobby clubs and professional associations to chambers of commerce. Today, we will look at corporate/group memberships, what they are, and how they can help your club or association. 

What Are Group & Corporate Memberships? 

Group and corporate memberships (sometimes called family memberships) are a way to group members who share an association with one another. Essentially, you have one primary member responsible for one or more secondary members. 

Basically, run a professional association or chamber of commerce with businesses as members. You can set up group memberships for those businesses. This allows the boss of said business to choose and pay for the amount of secondary members they have in your association. They are responsible for keeping their secondary members' information up to date, renewing the membership for all of them and making changes if one of those secondary members leaves the business. 

This has several benefits for the person paying for the primary membership and your club or association. 

The primary member gets to include several of their employees in your association for a lower price than if they paid for them all individually; plus, crucially, if an employee leaves the business and they were a secondary member, the primary member can simply replace them. If this were to happen, but they weren't a secondary member. Instead, the boss had simply paid for a second normal membership. That membership wouldn't be able to be filled by a new employee and would become a waste of money. Essentially, group memberships save time and money for your members. 

Offering group memberships can be really beneficial for your association. It allows you to have more members in your club to market and sell, too. More people to buy your products, buy your merch, read your newsletters and spread the word about your association. It also means that the burden of ensuring all secondary members' information is accurate and up-to-date is on their primary members, not your administrators. Saving your admin team time and effort. 

Group memberships like this can also carry all the same benefits when used as joint memberships for families. Well, almost all of them; it seems unlikely a parent would fire their existing kid and hire a new one the way a boss might. However, group memberships are still super beneficial for your average club that wants to sell family memberships. 

How To Set Up Group / Corporate Memberships

If you are a Member Jungle customer, setting up group memberships for your club or association is simple. You can set everything up from the membership tab on the admin side of your website. 

Basically, you will need to set up a new member level in the backend of the system or edit an existing one. In this level, you will need to add a new member product. This product will be your new group/corporate membership product. For this new product, you will have the option to choose how many secondary members are available as part of the product, and you can also choose whether or not secondary members will receive a login to your member-only pages and app. You will also have the ability to edit the price of this member product. You can also choose what information you collect from the primary member and any of their secondary members. 

 

How To Set Up Group / Corporate Memberships

 

You can create multiple group memberships, all with different allowed numbers of secondary members and all for different prices. If used correctly, this can be another great little upsell you can use to make some extra money for your association. 

If you want to know more about setting up group memberships for your club and how to get the most out of them. Look at either of the following Help Articles: Setting Up Group Membership and Managing Group Memberships

Show Company In Member Lists

I recommend making it mandatory for both primary and secondary members to enter their company names. In “General Settings”, you can turn on the setting labelled “Show Company in Member Lists”. This will allow you to search your members by company and just generally see what companies they belong to in your standard member lists. 

 

Show Company In Member Lists

 

When activated, this will show a member's company name in membership lists and reports. The company name will also be shown in all payment reports, including the Site Payments Report. The company name will also be displayed in relevant Security module lists and Event reports. 

In the “General Settings”, you also have the option of assigning which “Group Relationships” are available as part of the member product in question. This allows you to set which types of secondary members a primary member can add. The types of secondary members available are as follows: 

  •  Child
  •  Co-Owner
  •  Dependant
  •  Employee
  •  Other
  •  Partner

How To Get The Most Out Of Corporate & Group Memberships 

If you decide to give your secondary members the ability to log in to your website, they will have the same access as primary members, with a few exceptions. Secondary members cannot view invoices between primary members and your club, and secondary members won't receive membership renewal notices. It will be the responsibility of the primary member to renew their membership and keep track of invoices.  

As an administrator, when you are looking through your membership, you have the option to filter by both primary and secondary, primary only and secondary only. This allows you greater control over whose information you see and who you are marketing to. 

Secondary members can purchase event tickets and club products, read your club emails and newsletters, download the club app, and participate in group chats with other members. 

These secondary members can be a significant source of extra income for your association that you would completely miss out on if you weren't using group memberships. They are extra people to market and sell to and are additional member numbers when pitching your association to potential sponsors. Sponsors are often more willing to pay more money in sponsorships the more members you have. Using group and corporate memberships instead of standard ones could mean a sizeable increase in member numbers and sponsor dollars. 

Long story short, if you have businesses as members of your organisation, using corporate memberships will save you time and energy and earn you extra money. There is no downside. 

Group Memberships are For Clubs Too

You don't need to be a national peak body or a chamber of commerce to benefit from group memberships. The vast majority of the benefits we have already discussed will apply to your standard hobby club. 

There are a variety of reasons and ways group memberships can be used for your standard club, including: 

  • Group memberships so parents can manage their child's membership in junior sports clubs
  • Family memberships where one adult can manage the membership for their partner and kids
  • Group memberships that make it easier for teams or sub-groups to be members of your club
  • Family memberships so adult children can manage the memberships for their elderly parents 

Those are just a few reasons why group memberships could work for your club. With a bit of consideration, I'm sure you could find even more ways to implement group membership that could work for your club. 

Corporate and Group Membership Tips & Tricks

The following are some really helpful little tips and tricks that you definitely need to know about group memberships, but they didn't fit into any of the above headings. So here they are. 

Switching Primary & Secondary Members 

Primary members and secondary members can be switched, allowing you to make one of the secondary members the new primary member if the original primary member leaves. This is great for businesses where the team leader changes roles or for friend groups where a new friend will be responsible for being a primary member for a while.

Digital Membership Cards For Secondary Members 

Secondary members will get a unique member number and a digital membership card. This will allow their cards to be scanned at events, checkout, or wherever you scan your members' cards. Their member card will also show who their primary member is. 

Primary Members' Control Over Secondary Members 

Primary members can view and manage their secondary members via the website or app. They can register their secondary members for events, and that event registry will show under the secondary's account. The secondary member's membership card will then be able to be used to scan in at the event that their primary member registered them to attend. 

This is great if the secondary members are kids whom you haven't given login access to. It allows their parents (assuming their parents are their primary members) to sign them up for events. This ensures that you know exactly how many people are attending your event, as secondary members can be registered. You will also be able to scan the secondary members' membership cards when they arrive at the event, making it much easier to ensure the right people are getting into the event. Plus, if those secondary members are kids, having to get their digital membership cards out on their phones to be scanned into the events will be the highlight of their tiny hyperactive day. 

How To Start Benefiting From Group & Corporate Memberships 

If you want to take advantage of all the benefits of using group memberships in your club or association, you can easily. It's super quick and easy to set up group memberships, and you can use them with your club before you know it. 

However, you should make sure that your members understand how this works and how to use a group membership. A great place to start there is this Help article Group Membership - As A Primary Member. Have a read of this yourself, then either share it or summarise it for your members to ensure that they understand how to use group memberships properly. 

If you found all that interesting and helpful, and I'm willing to bet you did if you made it this far, then I would recommend checking out TThe Best Ways To Use The Business Directory Module.

 

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