---
name: nonprofit-arts-membership-program
description: "Arts membership program design: member tier and benefit architecture (3-4 tiers, belonging-shaped benefits, not donor recognition), pricing anchored to single-ticket value, the subscriber→member→donor ladder, renewal campaigns and lapse winback, young-patron circles, benefit fulfillment, and the token-benefit substantiation rules membership drives (2026 thresholds verified). Use when a user says 'design our membership program,' 'members aren't renewing,' 'how should we price member tiers,' 'start a young patrons circle,' or 'what part of a membership is tax-deductible.' Not for season subscriptions, flex passes, or ticket pricing (use nonprofit-arts-box-office-subscriptions), the annual fund and general appeals (use nonprofit-annual-appeals), major gifts and gift societies (use nonprofit-major-gifts), galas and benefit events (use nonprofit-fundraising-events), corporate season sponsorship (use nonprofit-arts-season-sponsorship), or member-program outcomes measurement (use nonprofit-outcomes-measurement)."
license: MIT
supervision: review
supervision_note: "Member pricing and benefit commitments are public promises to members; a knowledgeable staff member must review any published tier, price, benefit list, or tax-deductibility statement before it goes live."
last_reviewed: 2026-09-13
---

# Arts Membership Programs

## When to Use This Skill

Use this skill when a nonprofit arts organization — theater, orchestra, dance or opera company, presenting organization, community arts center, gallery — is designing, pricing, running, or rescuing a **membership program**: the paid belonging product in which a household or individual pays annual dues for member benefits (discounts, early access, member events, a magazine), distinct from buying tickets and distinct from making a gift. The user is typically an executive or managing director, development or marketing director, membership manager, or a consultant to the org. Trigger tasks: "design our membership program from scratch," "our members aren't renewing — the renewal campaign isn't working," "how do we price member tiers," "should we launch a young patrons circle," "what's the difference between a subscriber and a member," "how much of a $150 membership is tax-deductible," "we want members to eventually become donors."

**Boundary:** Season subscription packages, flex passes, ticket bundles, dynamic pricing, and subscriber acquisition campaigns are **earned-income product decisions** — route them to `nonprofit-arts-box-office-subscriptions`; membership sits above them in the ladder but never re-solves the ticket product. The **annual fund and general appeals** (year-end campaigns, direct-mail acquisition, monthly giving) route to `nonprofit-annual-appeals`. **Major gifts and gift societies** (five- and six-figure patrons, named funds) route to `nonprofit-major-gifts`; membership is the ladder's middle rung, not a giving society. **Benefit and gala events** route to `nonprofit-fundraising-events`; if a member benefit is an event, this skill defines the benefit, that one runs the event. **Corporate packages** — season sponsorship, production underwriting, corporate benefit bundles — route to `nonprofit-arts-season-sponsorship` (and `nonprofit-corporate-sponsorships`); membership is the consumer analog. **Evaluating the program** (surveys, member outcomes, impact measurement) routes to `nonprofit-outcomes-measurement`. CRM configuration for member records routes to `nonprofit-donor-crm`; member-email cadence design routes to `nonprofit-email-newsletter`; volunteer-run member programs route to `nonprofit-volunteer-management`. Donor-level retention analytics beyond the membership file route to `nonprofit-donor-retention`.

## Part 0 — Where Membership Sits: the Engagement Ladder

Before designing tiers, fix the concept. An arts organization has three consumer revenue relationships that get constantly confused, and staff who conflate them build muddy programs:

| Rung | What it is | Economic character | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| **Subscriber** | A product purchase: a package of tickets to a defined season, at a package price | Earned revenue; pricing must cover per-unit cost | 6-play season package, flex-pass bundles |
| **Member** | Paid belonging: annual dues for privileged access to the organization and its community | Mostly contributed, partly earned; priced as a relationship, not a product | $75 household membership: discounts, previews, member magazine |
| **Donor** | A gift: money given to sustain the mission, with minimal or no quid pro quo | Contributed revenue | Annual-fund gifts, major gifts, planned gifts |

The ladder is the org's engagement architecture: **single-ticket buyer → subscriber → member → donor**, with each transition representing deeper commitment and (eventually) higher lifetime value. The two critical conceptual rules:

1. **A subscription is a product; a membership is belonging.** Subscribers buy the season; members join the institution. A subscriber who loves the org is your best membership prospect (they already attend — sell them identity and access, not more tickets); a member who loves the org is your best annual-fund prospect (they already give a little — move the gift up and strip the benefits). Design member benefits that a subscriber cannot get by buying more tickets: members-only receptions, behind-the-scenes access, artist meet-and-greets, the member newsletter with real insider content.
2. **Membership is deliberately ambiguous between purchase and gift — exploit that, don't apologize for it.** Most members join for the benefits and stay for the belonging (in the museum field, AAM's member-motivation survey work has found mission/belonging reasons dominate renewals, with practical benefits the join trigger). Program the first year for the benefits; the second year onward for the relationship.

## Part 1 — Design the Tiers and Benefits

### Architecture rules

1. **Keep the ladder shallow: 3-4 tiers.** Every additional tier adds a benefit-fulfillment obligation, a price decision, and a place for the buyer to stall. A 3-4 tier menu also makes pricing legible in one glance on a brochure or web page. Recommended shape for a mid-size org:
   - **Individual** (1 named adult) — the volume tier
   - **Household/Dual** (2 adults, kids under 18) — the modal tier; make it the default suggestion
   - **Patron/Supporter** (household + recognition + guest privileges) — the bridge to giving
   - Optionally **Young Patron / Next-Gen** (age-capped discount tier) — see Part 4
2. **Anchor the ladder to real member value, not to donation amounts.** The gaps between tiers should reflect real benefit cost differences, not the development committee's aspiration. If Household is $95, Patron should deliver visibly more (guest passes, event invitations) — not just a warmer thank-you.
3. **Avoid benefits that are really donor recognition.** Name-in-the-program credit, listing on the donor wall, and "leadership circle" invitations are donor benefits — if a member tier's core benefit is recognition, the tier is a gift society wearing a membership costume, and the substantiation math (Part 3) will confirm it. Give member tiers **access benefits** (things you can gate): early access, member prices, member events, member previews. Recognition may ride along at Patron level, but access should lead. If the user is tempted to make recognition the headline benefit, route the tier design to `nonprofit-major-gifts` gift societies instead and keep the membership program clean.
4. **Cap benefit costs as a share of dues.** Benefits cost money twice — cash cost (printing, postage, receptions) and staff time (fulfillment). Hold total direct benefit cost to a target share of dues (many membership programs target roughly 10-20% of dues revenue across the file; set the org's own target in the budget memo and review annually). Benefits that approach the dues value also erode the tax-deductible portion and can flip the tier from membership into a commercial bundle.

### Design checklist

Run this when creating or revamping tiers:

1. **Inventory gateable assets.** List what the org can genuinely offer members: member prices on tickets (the workhorse — check with `nonprofit-arts-box-office-subscriptions` so member prices and single-ticket pricing stay coherent), priority booking windows, invitations to dress rehearsals and exhibition previews, parking or coat-check privileges, concession/bar discounts, shop discounts, a printed or digital member magazine, members-only receptions with artists. **Completion: every proposed benefit is something the org can deliver without new hires.**
2. **Write the benefit-fulfillment sheet.** For each benefit: what it costs per member at full uptake, who fulfills it (box office, marketing, development), what system records it, and what happens at 3x expected uptake. Underpriced unlimited benefits (e.g., "unlimited free tickets to previews") are how membership programs bleed — cap everything countable ("two complimentary preview tickets per season").
3. **Distinguish recurring vs. one-time benefits.** Recurring (member price all year, priority booking, magazine) drives renewal; one-time (a join gift, a tote bag) drives acquisition only. Every tier needs at least two recurring benefits a member touches in the first 60 days — a member who exercises no benefit in the first 60 days is the most likely first-year lapse. This is the belonging-vs-transaction line: transaction members join, get the tote, and churn; belonging members use a benefit in month one, attend a member event by month three, and renew.
4. **Make the middle tier the offer.** Price and position the Household/Dual tier as the obvious choice for most buyers; the top tier exists partly to make the middle look reasonable and partly to catch the member→donor transition.
5. **Write the tier table and test it.** One page: tier, price, named benefits (with caps), member count assumption, direct benefit cost per member, fulfillment owner. Have someone outside the program read it and say back what $95 buys — if they can't, simplify.

### Common benefit-design failure modes

- **Discount-stacking wars.** Member prices that stack with promo codes and group rates collapse net revenue; require the box office to enforce "member price is exclusive of other offers."
- **Benefits the org can't scale.** A "backstage tour for all members" that the production department can host four times a year for 25 people each: cap the benefit by invitation, or make it a lottery.
- **The phantom magazine.** A quarterly member magazine absorbs most of Individual-tier dues in printing and postage; convert to a digital member newsletter (`nonprofit-email-newsletter`) for low tiers, print only for upper tiers.
- **Recognition creep.** Development adds "your name in the program" to every tier and the benefit-cost sheet shows recognition dominating; pull recognition back to the top tier only.

## Part 2 — Price It

Membership pricing is anchored, not costed. The member is not buying a bundle of benefits at face value; they are buying belonging at a price the market has taught them to expect.

1. **Anchor to single-ticket value first.** Compute the benefit value of the tier for a realistic member (a Household member attending 3 times a year with member prices on 4 tickets, plus 2 member events): the tier price should sit visibly **below** that arithmetic value — the "membership pays for itself" test — while staying above the marginal benefit cost. Membership managers present this as: "$95 membership, and if you attend just twice with member prices you've already saved more than the dues." If the arithmetic doesn't clear the dues, either the member discount is too thin (check `nonprofit-arts-box-office-subscriptions` pricing) or the tier is priced as a donation.
2. **Anchor to the local membership market second.** Survey the comparable set — every museum, theater, and public-media station in the market publishes its tiers. The mid-tier "obvious" price in most U.S. markets lands somewhere in the $75-$150 range; price the household tier within one step of the local norm unless the org's brand justifies a premium.
3. **Anchor to the annual-fund ask third.** The membership tiers should not collide with the annual fund's entry ask: the top member tier is typically the natural bridge — price it where the org's entry-level annual-fund ask begins, so the upgrade conversation ("you're a $150 Patron member — become a $250 Friend of the season") is a step, not a leap. If the ladder has a $300+ gap between the top membership tier and the annual fund's mid-level ask, that gap is where members go quiet; insert a bridge tier or re-anchor the annual fund (`nonprofit-annual-appeals`).
4. **Never raise prices on renewal alone.** When a price increase is needed (benefit costs rose), raise the new-member price one season ahead of the renewal file, grandfather returning members for one year, and pair the increase with one new benefit. Membership churn on price increases is immediate and rarely winnable back.
5. **Write the pricing memo.** One page per tier: arithmetic benefit value, market comparables, direct benefit cost, gross margin per member, and the deductible-portion calculation (Part 3) — the pricing memo is what the review-level supervisor signs before tiers publish. **Completion: pricing memo answers, for every tier, "why this number and not $25 lower?"**

## Part 3 — Substantiation: What Part of the Dues Is a Gift

Membership forces the org to state, in public-facing dollars, how much of a dues payment is a contribution. Get this wrong in print and it is a public promise about donors' tax returns. The mechanics (verify thresholds before each season — they are inflation-adjusted annually):

### The rules that govern member dues

1. **Quid pro quo disclosure — the $75 rule (§ 6115).** When a payment is **more than $75** and the member receives goods, services, or benefits in return, the org **must** provide a written disclosure statement that (a) informs the member that only the amount exceeding the fair market value of the benefits is deductible and (b) provides a good-faith estimate of that fair market value. Every arts membership tier above $75 with ticketable benefits triggers this — put the deductible-portion line in the join/renew receipt and the confirmation email, not just the website. (The $75 threshold is statutory and is **not** inflation-adjusted.)
2. **Deductibility floor (§ 170).** If the dues payment is **$75 or less**, and the member receives only token or insubstantial benefits, the member deducts the whole payment. Above that, the member deducts dues minus benefit value — so the org's published "this much is deductible" number must be the result of a real good-faith valuation.
3. **Disregarded membership benefits (Pub 526).** Both the org and the member may **disregard** these benefits, for annual dues of **$75 or less**: (a) any right or privilege the member can use **frequently** while a member — free or discounted admission to the org's facilities or events, free or discounted parking, preferred access to goods/services, and member discounts on purchases — and (b) admission, while a member, to **member-only events** where the org reasonably projects the per-person cost (excluding allocated overhead) at no more than the low-cost-article amount (Pub 526 currently states $13.60, the 2025 inflation-adjusted figure; the 2026 figure is $13.90 — verify the current year's number before printing). Read this carefully: it is why the classic museum-style membership (unlimited free admission + member prices + member events, at $75 or under) can be sold as fully deductible — but the moment the tier crosses $75 with those same benefits, the org must run the good-faith valuation anyway.
4. **Low-cost-exception mechanics (§ 513(h); Rev. Proc. 90-12 as amplified by 92-49 and 92-102, inflation-adjusted).** Token items bearing the org's name or logo (mugs, tote bags, bookmarks) distributed with a dues payment don't taint deductibility if within the IRS's insubstantial-benefit safe harbors. The load-bearing numbers, **inflation-adjusted annually — verify the current-year figures in the fall revenue procedure (published each October/November in the IRS Internal Revenue Bulletin) before any printed deductible-amount claim**:
   - **Low-cost articles (§ 513(h)(2)):** articles costing the org **$13.90 or less** for taxable years beginning in **2026** ($13.60 in 2025, $13.20 in 2024). Note the **aggregation rule**: multiple items distributed to the same member in a calendar year are treated as **one** article — a $6 mug at join plus an $8 ornament at renewal is a $14 aggregate and blows the exception.
   - **Token-item safe harbor (Pub 1771 / Rev. Proc. 90-12, as adjusted):** benefits are insubstantial where (a) the fair market value of all benefits is **the lesser of 2% of the payment or $139** (2026; the $50 base amount is indexed), or (b) the payment is **$69.50 or more** (2026; the $25 base is indexed) and the only benefits are token items (calendars, key chains, mugs, posters, t-shirts) bearing the org's name or logo, with aggregate **cost** within the low-cost-article limit ($13.90 in 2026). The guideline amounts move every year — the $5/$25/$50 bases were $13.90/$69.50/$139 for 2026, $13.60/$68/$136 for 2025.
   - **The requested-item trap (§ 513(h)(3)):** the low-cost-exception machinery is built for **unsolicited** articles — distributed not at the member's request and without their express consent, accompanied by a contribution ask and a statement that the member may keep the item regardless of giving. Logo merchandise a member actively chooses or orders (a "pick your welcome gift" page, an à-la-carte member shop) sits outside that shelter; treat member-selected merchandise as a real-value benefit in the valuation.
5. **Admission benefits above the disregard zone.** A membership tier above $75 whose core benefit is unlimited free admission (the museum model) carries a real fair-market-value estimate: the org must publish a defensible per-admission value (a reasonable cap — e.g., "value based on 2 adult visits per year" — keeps the estimate conservative and the deductible portion honest). The method matters more than the precision: write the valuation basis into the pricing memo.
6. **What this is not.** The **written acknowledgment** for any single contribution of **$250+** (a donor-side rule) and Form 990 reporting of dues and quid pro quo amounts are `nonprofit-form-990` territory — route deep substantiation, 990 Part VIII line-item questions, and audit-facing questions there. This skill's job is the front-of-house math and the printed disclosure; a tier whose deductible-portion calculation can't be stated in one line is too complicated to sell anyway.

### The substantiation checklist (run before publishing any tier)

1. **List every benefit with a cash or gateable value** — tickets, parking, shop discounts, event admissions, merchandise.
2. **Sort into disregard-eligible vs. real-value** using the Pub 526 rules above; the tier price determines whether the disregard zone applies ($75 or less) or not.
3. **Compute the good-faith deductible portion** per tier: dues minus real-value benefits (or publish "fully deductible" only if the tier is $75 or under with disregarded benefits only).
4. **Write the one-line disclosure** for receipts: "The fair market value of benefits received is $XX; $YY of your dues may be tax-deductible as a charitable contribution. Consult your tax advisor." Include it in the join confirmation, renewal receipt, and tier webpage.
5. **Check the aggregation rule** on any merchandise plan for the year (join gift + renewal gift = one article in IRS eyes).
6. **Date-stamp the thresholds** in the internal pricing memo ("figures verified for 2026 taxable years; re-verify each fall") and calendar the re-verification. **Completion: every tier's published deductible portion traces to the pricing memo's arithmetic, and the $13.90/$13.60-style figures carry a 'verify current year' note.**

## Part 4 — Young-Patron and Next-Gen Circles

The young-patron circle is the standard fix for the age problem: the core membership and subscriber file skews older every year, and the org's future donors must be recruited a decade before they have capacity.

1. **Price at the gap, not at a token discount.** A "35-and-under" tier priced modestly below the standard Individual tier works; free-to-join access memberships (the Signature Theatre Sig30/Access model: free membership that unlocks $30 tickets for 18-35s) work even better for access-mission orgs — the circle's purpose is relationship formation, and a $40 dues barrier defeats it. Decide which problem the circle solves: revenue (dues-priced) or audience pipeline (access-priced, possibly free).
2. **Age-cap explicitly and check ID lightly.** Cap by age (under 35/under 40) or student status; verify loosely — honor-system on join, sample-check at member events. A hard ID wall kills signup; a no-check circle drifts to the general population in three years.
3. **Program the circle for its members' actual constraints.** Weeknight events (young professionals won't do Saturday matinee receptions), post-show drinks with artists rather than pre-show lectures, short-format access (rehearsal snapshots, studio visits), and a visible social layer — the benefit being sold is a like-minded community of culturally engaged peers (the pitch every young-patron circle from the V&A's Young Patrons' Circle to the Springfield Museums' Young Patrons Circle uses), not a discount. Route the events themselves to `nonprofit-fundraising-events` for production.
4. **Give the circle a volunteer and pipeline job.** The circle is the org's best prospect-research feed: circle leaders become event committee members, then board members. Track circle members in the CRM as future annual-fund and major-gift prospects (`nonprofit-donor-pipeline`); set a target for circle→annual-fund conversion in the first five years.
5. **Watch the ladder seam.** When circle members age out, the handoff must be designed: a pre-aging-out email sequence offering the standard Individual tier at a bridge price, plus an invitation to the annual-fund file. A circle that dumps its members at 40 with no handoff trains a decade of people that the org's relationship with them expired.

## Part 5 — Renewal: The Campaign Sequence

Membership economics live or die on renewal. The renewal campaign is a fixed calendar, not an ad-hoc email when someone remembers.

### The pre-expiry sequence (start 60 days out)

1. **T-60: the soft reminder — the member-magazine/value touch.** Not "renew now" but "here's what your membership delivered this year and what's coming next": benefits used, events attended, the member's tenure ("your 5th season"). Members who used a benefit in the last 90 days renew; the touch's job is to make the value visible.
2. **T-30: the direct renewal ask** — email + mail, with the renew link and the tax-deductible line if the org publishes one (Part 3). Include an early-renewal incentive that costs the org little: a members-only event invitation, a name-in-program for the coming season at Patron tier.
3. **T-14 and T-1: the deadline touches.** Email only; short, benefit-forward ("your member prices end September 30"). Track response per notice — the membership file's response curve between notices is a standard management number (renewal-program practice treats per-notice performance as one of the five basic numbers to know).
4. **Expiry day: the grace touch.** Offer a 30-day grace window with benefits intact — a real grace window (benefits genuinely honored) recovers a meaningful share of expirations at full renewal rates, not winback rates.
5. **Post-expiry: the winback sequence (90 days).** A lapsed member is still the warmest prospect on the file. Run a 2-3 touch winback: (a) "we miss you" with a what's-new-this-season hook, (b) a winback offer — waived join fee, one extra month, or a members-only event invitation, (c) a final "your member number is retired" close. After 90 days, route the lapsed member into the single-ticket and annual-fund files rather than continuing to membership-touch them; stale lapsed members depress the file's measurable renewal rate.
6. **Know the two rates.** Track **first-year renewal** and **multi-year renewal** separately — first-year renewal is always materially lower, and the two need different fixes: first-year lapse is a benefits-activation failure (fix Part 1's 60-day activation), multi-year lapse is a price/value or life-event issue (fix pricing or the tier's relevance to empty-nesters and retirees). Overall renewal rates for healthy museum- and arts-membership programs cluster around 70%+ (the museum membership field's benchmarking — AAM's Pulse of Membership surveys and AMMC benchmark profiles — has long used roughly 70% as the healthy overall figure, with first-year rates materially below); set the org's targets per segment, not blended.

### Upgrade sequence (member → higher tier → donor)

1. **Annually, run a tier-upgrade campaign to members who max out their benefits.** Members who attend above the assumed utilization (bought member-price tickets above the cap, attend every member event) get a targeted Patron-tier pitch with a named benefit delta.
2. **At renewal, test a "member-plus" gift ask.** Add a checked opt-in line: "Add $50 to my renewal as a gift to the season — fully deductible." This is the standard on-ramp from membership to the annual fund; route the resulting names into the annual-fund file (`nonprofit-annual-appeals`) so they stop receiving pure membership treatment.
3. **Route the top tier to the donor pipeline.** The top member tier's file should be reviewed annually for major-gift potential and moved into qualification and cultivation (`nonprofit-major-gifts`, `nonprofit-donor-pipeline`). The membership program's highest strategic output is not dues revenue — it is a steady stream of qualified donor prospects who arrived with a multi-year relationship and a known attendance history.

## Standard Deliverables

1. **Tier architecture memo** — 3-4 tiers with prices, benefit lists (capped), per-member benefit cost, fulfillment owner, and the deductible-portion calculation per tier.
2. **Pricing memo** — benefit-value arithmetic, market comparables, annual-fund-ask alignment, and the substantiation math from Part 3.
3. **Renewal campaign calendar** — the T-60/T-30/T-14/T-1/grace/winback sequence with channel, offer, and response-tracking plan per touch.
4. **Young-patron circle brief** — pricing model (dues vs. free access), age cap, event format, and the circle→fund pipeline plan.
5. **Disclosure language sheet** — the one-line quid-pro-quo disclosure per tier, ready for receipts and the join page.

## Common Failure Modes

- **The membership-as-discount war.** A membership sold purely as a ticket discount becomes a bulk-ticket purchase — the org trains members to lapse whenever the season doesn't interest them, and the program's renewal rate tracks the season's popularity. Fix: every tier carries at least one non-ticket belonging benefit (member events, previews, insider content), and the renewal copy leads with belonging, not savings.
- **Tier sprawl.** Six and seven tier menus with $25 steps and micro-differentiated benefit lists; buyers stall, fulfillment churns, and the "which tier are you?" question eats box-office time. Fix: cut to 3-4 tiers; merge the two that differ only by recognition.
- **Recognition masquerading as membership.** A tier whose only delta over the annual fund is "your name listed" — it's a gift society; its economics are annual-fund economics, and its members get the wrong tax message. Fix: strip recognition out of all but the top tier and route gift societies to `nonprofit-major-gifts`.
- **Stale deductible-portion claims.** The website still says "$60 of your $95 membership is deductible" from three price structures ago — a public promise about members' taxes, wrong. Fix: the deductible line is regenerated from the pricing memo whenever a tier changes, and threshold figures are re-verified each fall.
- **Blowing the aggregation rule.** A $7 mug at join, a $6 poster at renewal — individually under the low-cost threshold, aggregated over the year they fail, and the org's "fully deductible" token claims collapse. Fix: calendar all logo merchandise per member per calendar year against the current threshold.
- **No 60-day activation.** New members never touch a benefit, never open the member email, and lapse at 80% in year one. Fix: automated first-60-day welcome sequence — benefit-use prompt (book with your member price now), member-event invitation, magazine/newsletter delivery — with a fallback call from the membership manager for non-openers.
- **Treating lapsed members as a shame file.** The lapsed file gets nothing for two years, then an angry "FINAL NOTICE" — and the warmest prospects on the file go cold. Fix: the 90-day winback (Part 5), then deliberate routing into ticket and annual-fund files.
- **The un-priced benefit.** "Unlimited free preview tickets for members" absorbs preview-house capacity, cannibalizes single tickets, and shows up as a cost the program never budgeted. Fix: cap every countable benefit at design time, and route the ticket-economics questions to `nonprofit-arts-box-office-subscriptions`.
- **Young-patron circle with no ladder seam.** The circle is launched with energy, ages out its founders, and dumps 40-year-olds with no handoff — the org trains a decade of future donors that membership expired. Fix: design the aging-out handoff at launch, not at the first cohort's 40th birthdays.
- **Blending member and donor accounting.** Member dues recorded as pure contributions (overstating deductible amounts) or as pure earned revenue (understating contributed income and misstating Form 990 lines). Fix: the substantiation math from Part 3 drives the CRM split, and any 990-facing question routes to `nonprofit-form-990`.

## Verify Before Acting

The IRS thresholds in this skill are inflation-adjusted **annually** in a fall revenue procedure (Rev. Proc. 2025-45, published November 2025, set the 2026 figures: low-cost articles $13.90, and the $5/$25/$50 insubstantial-benefit guideline amounts at $13.90/$69.50/$139; Pub 526's member-event disregard figure was $13.60 for 2025 taxable years). Before printing or publishing any deductible-portion or token-benefit claim: **re-verify the current year's figures in the current-year revenue procedure (search "insubstantial benefit limitations" + the year at irs.gov, and check Pub 1771 and Pub 526 for their current printed numbers)**, and date-stamp the verification in the pricing memo. The **$75 quid-pro-quo disclosure threshold and the $250 acknowledgment threshold are statutory and do not adjust**. For state charitable-solicitation registration implications of selling memberships, route to `nonprofit-charitable-registration`. Membership pricing and benefit commitments are public promises: no tier, price, benefit list, or tax-deductibility statement goes live without the review-level supervisor reading the final version — which is why this skill carries `supervision: review`.