Tendenci's Corporate Memberships Module gives your organization a way to offer group membership packages to organizations and corporations so that multiple people from the corporate member company can participate in your members-only benefits online and at your events. 

Corporate Memberships work best when you follow the steps below but after you've put some thought into the structure you want for your corporate memberships program(s). You can have multiple types of Corporate Memberships with different options and pricing and you'll want to figure out how many types, what you'll charge, and the other policies for your Corporate Memberships before you go into the Corporate Membership Module on Tendenci and start to configure it. 

Our team, the minds behind the software, is here to help and assist with your corporate membership packages! You can learn more about our support packages here. 

Before You Get Started

Be sure to check your corporate membership module Settings

Make sure you've defined what email address will receive notifications when members join. Read more in this help file.

Have a plan ready for your applications

Prior to software implementation, it's advisable to finalize your Corporate Memberships plan. Clients often retain their previous setup when transitioning to Tendenci from other platforms. For any workflow changes regarding corporate memberships, count on our support. Leveraging our nonprofit service expertise, we can effectively assist your membership management. Don't hesitate; to let our dedicated team help streamline your workflow setup. Please visit our online support packages to learn more. 

Before you get started with this process, you should have an idea of:

1. Corporate Membership levels and pricing for each - Typically these levels are differentiated by how many individuals can register underneath each type, what type of company the corporation is (i.e. NPOs get a discounted rate), or are tied to external sponsorship packages.
2. What information you'll need to know for each Corporation on their Corporate Membership Application
3. What information you'll need to know for each Individual on their Individual Membership Application under the Corporation

Tendenci Corporate Membership training videos 

Hello Tendenci Community! Just a quick comment: While our informative training videos may be outdated, the Tendenci software is continuously expanding its features and capabilities and our training guide on Corporate Memberships, however, does remain highly valuable. So, go ahead and watch it, learning alongside your Tendenci site. You'll be able to witness how much the software has grown, with improved UX and UI for ease of use. New training videos coming soon! 

Explore Corporate Memberships Training Videos

Steps to Setting up Tendenci Corporate Memberships

Step 1. Create Corporate Membership Type(s)

Find your Corporate Memberships Tab by navigating to Community, then clicking on "Corporate Members" from your Superuser Top Bar navigation menu. This will take you to your Corporate Memberships Module main page where you can search corporate members and all the tools you'll need to create, organize, and manage corporate memberships on your Tendenci website.  

Hovering over the "Corporate Memberships" Tab with your mouse will drop down the module's menu with links to corporate membership applications, corporate membership types, and other corporate membership applications: 

You will need to create a new corporate membership type. To do so, please click on "Corp. Membership Types," which will take you to the Corporate Membership Type Administration Page. Here, you can add new corporate membership types and manage existing ones.

You can also access your Corporate Membership Type in the admin backend or with the URL

https://www.YOURWEBSITE.com/admin/corporate_memberships/corporatemembershiptype/

Click on Corporate Membership Types

Click on the CTA "+ Add Corporate Membership Type". The image below displays an example of your Corporate Membership Type Administration Page. 

Step 2. Create Individual Membership Types specifically for Corporate Memberships

Tendenci's Corporate Memberships Module connects your Corporate Memberships with Individual Memberships of the people who are employed by your Corporate Members. This enables you to know who is an active member within your organization and what Company they are with. There are a number of benefits to knowing not just the big company or organization members, but also the people who are participating in your member's events and activities and Tendenci helps you track and communicate with the individual members.  

The extra capabilities built into the Tendenci software to provide a connection between Corporate Memberships and the individual members at those companies also come with a couple of extra steps for site superusers to set up and manage memberships.

The first step is to create Individual Membership Types that will be exclusively for the employees of your corporate members and you'll specify when you create these individual membership types that they are for Corporate Memberships so the software will be able to manage and organize members when they join underneath a corporate membership type. 

You can find the Individual Memberships types in the "Memberships" Tab drop-down menu:

When you create new individual membership types to connect with Corporate Memberships, you will want to be sure to make a note of that and select names that make it easy for you and your staff to differentiate from Individual Membership Types not designated for use with the Corporate Membership Module.

You can create and customize as many membership types as you would like for both Individual and Corporate Memberships, and it is important to create a standard system for labeling them so you can keep track as your organization grows over time.  

Once you create an individual membership type to be associated with a Corporate Memebrship, you can bind it to that Corporate Memebrship Type in the backend: 

YOURSITE/admin/corporate_memberships/corporatemembershiptype/CORP_TYPE_ID/change/

Step 3. Create Individual Membership Applications Specifically for Corporate Memberships

Now that you've created the membership types for individual corporate members, you will want to create the individual membership application(s) that employees of your corporate members will fill out on your website to obtain their own member ID, site login and password, and member profile and can then access your website's members-only content, events, and special pricing.  

Here is a video to watch showing you how to create an individual membership application: Membership Module Training Series Video - Membership Applications

There are two things you will want to do when you create the individual membership application so that it will connect the membership application with your corporate memberships:

1. Check the box next to "Use for Corporate Individuals"

2. Highlight (Select) the Membership Types you created specifically for Corporate memberships in the "Memberships Types" options box.

Make sure you save the membership application and then you will be able to add additional Fields and customize the application to request the information from your corporate members' individual employees that your organization wants to collect. 

Step 4. Create the Corporate Membership Application

You are now ready to create your Corporate Membership Application. This is the application that will be completed for the Corporation or Organization that is joining itself and represents the Company as a whole, rather than the individual employees that will be participating.  

When you create the corporate membership application, it will have a dropdown "Membership Application" list of the available Individual Membership applications that you have created on your Tendenci website. Make sure you select an application that you created specifically for Corporate Memberships. The list will include all of the individual membership applications and you want to be sure to just select the application specific to this corporate membership application.  

Old version

New Tendenci UI version

Step 5. Create a Page with Instructions and Membership Benefits

It is important to communicate with your new members what they will experience as they sign up to become a member of your organization. We recommend that you create a page on your website that explains the process of signing up and includes helpful links and an email or phone number to contact someone if an interested visitor has trouble applying as a member. 

If you have been using a different software application to manage and accept online memberships, then your current members may want some guidance on how to use the new software.  We want to help you communicate the steps involved in joining as a member or corporate member within the Tendenci software and help your members and your staff avoid any frustrations.  

You can get as creative as you would like and add images and videos to the page.  Then link the page where site visitors can easily find before they reach the membership application page.  

Here are some examples of how other Tendenci clients have added help text for memberships.  Visit their sites to see what else they've done to customize Tendenci to match their Brand and communicate their message.

Example 1

Example 2

Example 3

This video will show you how to add new pages, articles, and general content items in case you need help creating a new corporate membership information page: http://tendenci.com/videos/adding-content-tendenci/ 

Step 6. Link Your Membership Information Page and Your Corporate Membership Application to Your Navigation Menu

Now that you have a page that explains your membership programs and how to apply and membership applications, you will want to make it easy for your site visitors to find and apply for membership with your organization. To do that, we recommend adding links to your corporate membership application and other membership program details directly to your website's main navigation. This will place the links on every page of your site where visitors can quickly find and click to view them.  

NOTE: Assigning Corporate Representatives

If you would like user representatives to be able to login to the site and manage corproate membership dues, renewals, and any individual members tied to the corporate membership, you can assign user as Corporate Representatives.

Assign the member rep role to users who will be managing members tied to their organization, and dues rep role to users who will be managing finances (paying invoices, etc). The corproate representatives do not apply towards the member cap assigned to any corporate membership, nor will they have member benefits that regular individuals have, so this role is typically reserved for users who only perform adminstrative duties within their organization and do not need additional benefits that an individual membership might be assigned.

The representative you assign will need to be a user in the database prior to assigning them as a corporate representative, so the first step is to add their user profile, then navigate to the organization's membership application and/or profile to add them to the organization. Ex: YOURSITE/corporatememberships/profiles/profile_ID/

You can also access the corporate profiles from the backend: YOURSITE/admin/corporate_memberships/corpprofile/

Start typing in the user's name or username, and a list of names to select from will appear in the dropdown menu. Then select their roles as either a dues and/or member rep, and save.

Hosting Clients

Please contact us if you are a Tendenci hosting client and need assistance with your Corporate Membership setup! We are here to serve you and can get you started.

Did this answer your question? If not, please contact our support team for more information.