Membership changes for 2021

[davew]

At the January 2021 club night, on Tuesday, we discussed ways to recognise the current pandemic and the effect on our events, club activities and our members.

There were a few options discussed but it was eventually decided that, for membership renewals, we should extend the membership length from 1 year to 2 years for a limited period of time. It will be backdated to September 2020.

This serves both to give an "amnesty" for those that didn't renew as normal last year and an additional year for those that did.

So, if your renewal was due in April 2020 and has lapsed, renewing now will mean your new membership would run until April 2022. If you did renew last year then your next renewal would run until April 2023.
We will be working on a new facility to allow members to view their current membership status when they are logged into the club shop. This will also allow membership cards to be downloaded and printed. We will also look at providing an online membership card facility for use at other club's events.

We're hoping that the above will remove the need for the majority of printed membership cards, streamlining the membership process substantially. For club events we haven't used printed membership cards for members for a long time for those that book online as current membership status is included in the booking details we receive.

[davew]

This weekend some of the first changes were rolled out to the club web site to move us towards supporting a "paperless" membership process.

The first change is the addition of a new option/link on your shop/web site account page:
https://yorkshireoffroadclub.net/my-account/

Once you are logged in you should see a new option in the list - "Club Membership Details", click on that option and you will see a summary of your membership status and also a list of the membership cards that are available. If your membership is current you will also be able to download a copy of each of your membership cards.

The membership cards have been redesigned and updated to reflect the changes with the MSA and also to add a validation QR code that can be used to check the authenticity of the card. They no longer need the formal declarations of the old card as those are covered by the MSA Clubman SR license that everyone now needs.

The change to a paperless system also means that membership renewals can be processed faster because we no longer have to wait for a batch to print out membership cards. I'll be working on an additional process that notifies you when your renewal/application has been processed. I'll also be looking at removing the "paper" option for renewing at some point.

Until September, all renewals received will run for 2 years instead of 1 year to allow both an "amnesty" for those that didn't renew in 2020 due to covid and a recognition that we are unlikely to get a full year's worth of events in 2021.

So, if you membership expired in January 2020 and you renew now for £20 your new membership expiry will be January 2022. If you renewed in 2020 so your membership expires in 2021, your new membership will expire in 2023. This offer will be extended to September this year so that everyone has a chance to take advantage of it, whenever their renewal date might be. Existing renewals, received since September 2020 have already had an additional year added.

Membership applications do not get the additional year, this offer only applies to renewals.

[davew]

If you log into your shop account and see a message in "Club Membership Details" that says your membership account isn't linked, this is because the two systems have been unable to identify you as the same person and I will need to manually link them. The automated process uses a number of key identifiers to tie the accounts together and normally works well but occasionally it is unable to do this with enough confidence. The most common problem is due to a mis-typed email address.

If you see this and contact me I can check it and manually create the link.