Answers.Body: <p>What distinguishes a member from a non-member?  Is it basically being on your mailing list?  If so, you might consider not using CiviMember at all.</p>
  
  <p>The paradigm of membership in CiviCRM is a dues-paying membership with a term.  While there are features to handle variations on that (free memberships and lifetime memberships, for example), there isn't much reason to go through the trouble of setting them up if they're both free and lifetime.</p>
  
  <p>Instead, consider setting up a group.  You can have a profile add people to the group, you can search for everyone in the group, and you can mail to the group.  There's even the history of <em>when</em> someone was added to the group, if that matters to you.</p>
  
  <p>The word "member" trips users up a lot, and it's common to see people think that CiviMember is the way to handle their free forever memberships in CiviCRM.  You can just turn it off by going to <strong>Administer > System Settings > Enable CiviCRM Components</strong>.</p>
  
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2015-12-18T20:20:58.910Z
Answers.LastActivityDate: 2015-12-18T20:20:58.910Z
Answers.UserDisplayName: Andie Hunt
Body: <p>We want members to sign up and either auto-renew (it's free) or be lifetime members so there is no expiration date.  Which is the best approach?</p>
  
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2015-12-18T18:07:35.313Z
Comments.Text: Is your membership free either way?  If it is, I'm not sure what the purpose would be of auto-renewing them.  (I also don't think you _can_ auto-renew without some kind of financial transaction.)  A lifetime membership might therefore be your best option.
Comments.UserDisplayName: Lesley Carter - BackOffice
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2015-12-19T04:20:42.570Z
Comments.Text: I think we just want lifetime no expiration until they tell us to remove them. Data export import of the expiration field does not work. How do we update everyone?
Comments.UserDisplayName: JDM
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2015-12-19T19:48:31.133Z
Comments.Text: how do you mean 'update'? what are they currently? one way may be to export all the Internal IDs for people concerned and then make a Membership Import and create the memberships that way (and i think your 'answer' should have been an edit to your OP, then I could have given this as an Answer ;-)
Comments.UserDisplayName: petednz - fuzion
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2015-12-20T04:47:27.737Z
Comments.Text: By update I mean we want ALL people in our database to be on our lifetime membership type which is the only active type currently accepting new members. Those new people do not have an expiration date field value but the others do...  Do we need to manually delete each persons expiration date field?  Must be a better way...
Comments.UserDisplayName: JDM
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2015-12-20T09:30:26.783Z
Comments.Text: not sure if i understand your workflow enough - but i wonder why you need a membership status for all contacts in the DB - how does it help you?
Comments.UserDisplayName: petednz - fuzion
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2015-12-20T15:02:01.500Z
Comments.Text: Bottom line is we want to make sure everyone is a lifetime member that does not need to be renewed. A previous membership type that people signed up with was for a yearly one and the current membership type is a lifetime one. The yearly one has a bunch of people with values for the expiration date while the ones who signed up with the newer membership type that is set to lifetime do not have a value for that field. I guess I'm trying to make sure the ones with expiration dates don't expire but are lifetime accounts like the others. If this is still sounding confusing I'm sorry.
Comments.UserDisplayName: JDM
Tags: <civimember>
Title: How to set up a lifetime membership?
ThreadText: # How to set up a lifetime membership?
  
  (Asked by: username_0 on 2015-12-18)
  
  We want members to sign up and either auto-renew (it's free) or be lifetime members so there is no expiration date. Which is the best approach?
  
  **Tags:** civimember
  
  > **Comments:**
  > **username_1**: Is your membership free either way?  If it is, I'm not sure what the purpose would be of auto-renewing them.  (I also don't think you _can_ auto-renew without some kind of financial transaction.)  A lifetime membership might therefore be your best option.  
  > **username_0**: I think we just want lifetime no expiration until they tell us to remove them. Data export import of the expiration field does not work. How do we update everyone?  
  > **username_2**: how do you mean 'update'? what are they currently? one way may be to export all the Internal IDs for people concerned and then make a Membership Import and create the memberships that way (and i think your 'answer' should have been an edit to your OP, then I could have given this as an Answer ;-)  
  > **username_0**: By update I mean we want ALL people in our database to be on our lifetime membership type which is the only active type currently accepting new members. Those new people do not have an expiration date field value but the others do...  Do we need to manually delete each persons expiration date field?  Must be a better way...  
  > **username_2**: not sure if i understand your workflow enough - but i wonder why you need a membership status for all contacts in the DB - how does it help you?  
  > **username_0**: Bottom line is we want to make sure everyone is a lifetime member that does not need to be renewed. A previous membership type that people signed up with was for a yearly one and the current membership type is a lifetime one. The yearly one has a bunch of people with values for the expiration date while the ones who signed up with the newer membership type that is set to lifetime do not have a value for that field. I guess I'm trying to make sure the ones with expiration dates don't expire but are lifetime accounts like the others. If this is still sounding confusing I'm sorry.  
  
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  ## 1 answers
  
  ### Answer by username_3 on 2015-12-18. Score: 1
  
  What distinguishes a member from a non-member? Is it basically being on your mailing list? If so, you might consider not using CiviMember at all.
  
  The paradigm of membership in CiviCRM is a dues-paying membership with a term. While there are features to handle variations on that (free memberships and lifetime memberships, for example), there isn't much reason to go through the trouble of setting them up if they're both free and lifetime.
  
  Instead, consider setting up a group. You can have a profile add people to the group, you can search for everyone in the group, and you can mail to the group. There's even the history of *when* someone was added to the group, if that matters to you.
  
  The word "member" trips users up a lot, and it's common to see people think that CiviMember is the way to handle their free forever memberships in CiviCRM. You can just turn it off by going to **Administer > System Settings > Enable CiviCRM Components**.
  
  
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