Members

 
Members are those companies or individuals who pay membership fees. They are the financial entities who support your organisation.
 
Each member will be at some stage along their membership journey, progressing from non-member to prospect to full member (with additional memberships) to resigned. 

Memberships

 
Most organisations have a variety of members. Corporate members, Gold members; annual members; lifetime members; sponsors; supporters; group members, individual members, ordinary members; black-belt members .. etc. 
 
These are all examples of types of Membership. 

Memberships often overlap. For example, a member may be a "full member" at the start of the year and become a "Taranaki Branch member" as well mid-year. The member now has two overlapping memberships, each with different subscription rates, start dates and membership terms. 
 
Each Member can have one or more Memberships.
 
Each Membership has a distinct ..

• subscription (fee),
• start date and
• term.

Member Counts

 
The Membership Dashboard provides an overview and a breakdown of member stats. The number of Total Members is the number of financial entities - both individuals and Companies who are financial (paying) members.
 
There are usually more memberships than members due to the overlaps. This can result in interesting conversations - "We have 200 Corporate members and 150 Gold members so why does the system say we have only 300 members in total?" - answer being, "We have 300 members with 200 Corporate memberships and 150 Gold memberships between them".