Tiers are the easiest decision to make badly, because adding one is a five-minute conversation at a committee meeting and keeping one is a permanent cost. Each tier is a price, a set of rights, a renewal pattern and a row in every report for as long as the body exists, including for the members who joined at a tier you retired years ago. This page is about how many tiers a body needs, what tiered membership costs to run, and the three tests worth applying before adding one.
Levels of membership: three tests before adding a tier
Does it serve a group that would otherwise not join, or would not pay the standard rate? Can the difference be stated in one sentence a member will understand at renewal? And is somebody willing to enforce the difference, at the door or in the ballot? A tier that fails the third test is a discount with a name, and it will be argued about every year by people who did not attend the meeting that created it.
What tiered membership costs to administer
Every tier multiplies the work: another price to change when dues rise, another renewal notice wording, another line in the accounts, another rule for the person on the door. Bodies with five tiers and one administrator usually have two tiers that hold most members and three that hold a handful and cost the same to maintain. The free worksheet on this site takes the number of tiers as an input for exactly this reason: it changes the field count and the hours.
What tier names should do
Membership tier names should say who the tier is for, not how good it is. Individual, Household, Student, Senior, Life and Corporate all describe the member; Gold, Platinum and Diamond describe a hierarchy nobody joined to be at the bottom of. Bodies that use precious metals end up with members who quietly resent their level, and with a renewal conversation about status rather than about the body.
Retiring a tier without losing the members in it
Closing a tier to new members while honouring it for existing ones is the standard move, and it needs a record that can hold a tier nobody can join. Bodies without that end up either forcing members onto a new rate at renewal, which loses some, or keeping the tier open forever. Levels of membership are easier to close than to open, but only if the record remembers who was there.
Three tiers, four hundred members, worked
Individual at the standard rate, two hundred and eighty members. Household at one and a half times the standard rate for two adults at one address, sixty households. Concession at half the standard rate for students and retired members, sixty members. Three prices, three renewal notices, three rules the door can apply, and a record where every member holds one of three tier values and a rate. Add a Corporate tier for the four local businesses that sponsor and want staff admitted, and it is four of each; retire the Founder tier that twelve members joined under in 1998 and it still has to be held for those twelve. The worksheet on this site takes the number of tiers as an input because each one is a column in every report the body will ever run.
Questions people ask about membership tiers
How many membership tiers should we have?
As few as the body can serve honestly. Two or three carries most bodies: a standard rate, a reduced rate for those who need it, and something for organizations if you have them.
What are good membership tier names?
Names that describe the member rather than a hierarchy: Individual, Household, Student, Senior, Life, Corporate. Metal names create status conversations at renewal.
Do membership tiers examples from other bodies help?
As a prompt, not a template. Tiers follow who your body needs to admit and at what price; another body's structure carries their history, not your members.
Can we change tiers mid-year?
You can if the record holds a per-member rate and renewal date, which is what lets an existing member keep the deal they joined under while new members join the new one.
Should life members appear in the renewal lists?
No, and the record has to know why. A life member has no renewal date and no dues, so a tracker that infers status from payment marks them lapsed every year. Hold life as a tier with no renewal, and the three lists skip them while the directory and the door still see them as current.
Do membership tiers names matter?
Less than the number of tiers, and more than most committees expect. A name has one job: a member should be able to tell from it which tier they are in and what it costs, without asking. Names that describe the body rather than the member are the ones that produce the emails.