You start a join, renewal, reinstatement, or membership change from your Membership Overview in the Portal. Rhythm checks which paths are available to you today and shows only those options, so you do not need to decide whether your next step is a renewal or a reinstatement.
Prerequisites
You need to be signed in to the Portal. If you do not have an account yet, create one or sign in to your existing account, then go directly to the new-member application instead of looking for another way in.
You need to be signed in to the Portal.
You need an account before you can reach a membership application. Creating a new account by itself has not been observed to prompt a purchase afterward.
To apply for your organization, you need a role at that organization that your association has allowed to do this. See Control Who Can Access and Act in Membership for what those roles can grant.
Your association's pricing must support the currency your order will use. If it does not, the application area can fail to load with a generic error instead of a pricing message.
Choose a Path and Start
- Open your Membership Overview.
- Under What would you like to do?, choose the link for what you want to do. Each link matches one path you are eligible for right now and uses the label your association set up.
- If more than one path applies to you, or you reached the application area without choosing a specific link, choose the path you want to start.
- Complete the application form Rhythm shows you, including any chapters, sections, or add-ons the path offers.
- Continue to checkout to complete your order.
Warning
You cannot change a section membership's quantity during this process, such as reducing seats or making one complimentary. Contact your association if you need that kind of change.
Result
Rhythm creates a draft application for the path you chose. The application is not submitted until you complete checkout.
Tip
If you can act for your organization, you see your organization’s paths alongside your personal paths. When you choose an organization path, you start the application for your organization, not for yourself.
Rhythm never shows a join path and a renew path for the same person or organization at the same time. When a renewal path is available, Rhythm already recognizes that the membership is ready for renewal; when it is not, you see a join path instead, if one applies. If your organization already has an active membership, the people associated with it see a renew option for that membership rather than a join option. The join process still exists for people who are not yet associated with that membership. If you are already a current member and choose Join or Renew from the Portal menu or your homepage, Rhythm still takes you into the application, but only for the add-ons, chapters, sections, or renewal options you are currently eligible for, not a new join.
Considering a New Join Instead of Reinstating
If your membership lapsed a long time ago, ask your association whether starting a new join application is better than reinstating the old one. Reinstating restarts from the dates of your earlier lapsed term, so it does not always give you the current enrollment period you expect from a fresh join.
Rhythm has no built-in way to connect a join or renewal order to a referral code or referring member. If your association wants to track where a new or renewing member came from, it needs another method outside checkout, such as a coupon code or a question on the application form.
Tip
If a path lets you save your progress and finish later, continue your existing draft instead of starting a new one for the same path. If you would rather start over, delete that draft first.
What a Renewal Draft Carries Over
If you already have a membership, a renewal or reinstatement draft starts with details from your current membership. That way, you do not have to re-enter information that has not changed:
- Package and type. If your current package names a specific package it renews into, your draft starts with that package instead. If your process lets you choose your own renewal package, your draft starts with no package selected, and you choose one yourself.
- Chapters and sections. Your current chapters and sections carry over only when your draft’s package still allows them. Anything the new package does not support is left off.
Warning
Completing a renewal or changing your chapters and sections can remove any section that staff added to your record and marked as hidden from the Portal. Only the sections you select in the flow are kept. If a hidden section disappears from your record after you renew or make a section change, contact your association so staff can re-add it.
- Membership-record custom fields. Values from custom fields on your current membership are copied to the matching fields on your application.
- Directory and auto-renewal preferences. Your current directory listing and automatic renewal preferences carry over as the draft’s starting choices. If you choose not to renew automatically and complete checkout that way, your membership stops auto-renewing and any card stored for it is removed, even if automatic renewal was selected earlier in the process.
Why an Add-On Might Not Be on Your Renewal Draft
If your organization’s current membership includes an add-on it purchased for extra seats, that add-on is deliberately not carried onto a renewal draft. Seats are counted fresh during renewal instead of carried over from the last term. Any other add-ons you had are unaffected.
If your organization is renewing or changing its membership, the draft can also start with the people who currently hold one of its seats, along with each person’s chapters, sections, and add-ons. People whose membership comes only from belonging to the organization, rather than from holding one of its seats directly, are not included this way.
Tip
If you cannot choose the membership type or package you expect while renewing, the cause is usually how that type or package is configured rather than something wrong with your account. Ask your association to review it.
If You Have No Eligible Path
If nothing applies to you right now, such as when your membership is not due for renewal and you are not eligible to join again, the Membership Overview may show a message your association wrote explaining why. If your association has not set up a message, you simply see no application links to choose from. A missing path usually comes down to one of the following:
- Your membership's origin. A membership assigned to you by an organization, rather than one you hold in your own right, may not offer a renewal path until your association changes its origin to show that you hold it directly.
- Your renewal window has not opened yet. Each renewal process opens a set number of days before your membership's expiration date. You can meet every other requirement and still see no renewal option until that window opens. Ask your association to widen the window if you need to renew earlier.
- Your membership is terminated or dropped. A terminated or dropped membership is not handled through the ordinary renewal path. Outside your renewal window, it does not offer renewal at all — only a join path, the same as for someone who was never a member.
- Your membership's expiration date is blank. With no expiration date on file, join and renewal processes are unavailable, and you see only a change-affiliation path, if your association offers one. Once your association fills in an expiration date, join and renewal become available again.
- Eligibility criteria on the process. A join or renewal process can be limited to certain organization types, or to contacts belonging to those types. It can also depend on whether you are currently active. An active member who has not dropped does not see a join path and typically sees a renewal path only once close enough to expiration.
- Your membership type does not match the process. If your current membership is attached to a type meant for a different kind of applicant, such as an organization type when you need an individual path, your association needs to change it to an active type with the matching customer type before the individual path appears.
If you are already included in an existing membership order and application that is still under review, that can also be why no other path is available to you right now. Once that existing order is canceled, the path you expect, including renewal processing, can become available again.
If your organization was created without an organization type, and your association's membership applications are restricted to specific organization types, no matching application will appear for you until an organization type is set.
If Starting an Application Fails
Your current membership is suspended. You cannot start a new application while your current membership is suspended. Contact your association to resolve the suspension first.
You chose a path meant for the other kind of applicant. A path set up only for organizations cannot be started as an individual, and a path set up only for individuals cannot be started as an organization. Choose a path meant for you.
Data on your profile is blocking the application, even though nothing on the membership application form itself looks wrong. Some renewal blocks come from information on your underlying contact or organization profile rather than from a field you can edit on the membership form. If you believe you should be eligible but still cannot start, contact your association. Staff may need to correct that profile data before you can proceed.
The application area does not load, or shows "Unable to initialize web form." This generic message can appear when Rhythm cannot price or describe the products the application needs, including when Rhythm cannot convert the order into your currency. Try again in a few minutes. If it keeps happening, contact your association.
Opening a renewal shows a web form error with no clear cause, especially from a network you don't normally use. This has been observed intermittently and has not been tied to one cause. Before contacting your association, try again from a different network or device, try another browser, disable browser extensions, and avoid using a VPN. Each of these has resolved the issue for some members.
The process fails the first time but works on a retry. Some checkout and application failures are intermittent. Refreshing the page and trying again can succeed even when the first attempt did not. If it keeps failing after a few tries, contact your association.
You see "Unable to determine the membership package." This is usually caused by inadequate order generation rules on the application process, or by a missing package-selection component on the membership application form. Contact your association so they can check the application process and form.
A renewal form fails to initialize. If this happens, try again without using a VPN; this has been reported to work around the error, though it is not a confirmed fix.