Tag Archive for: member retention

Ed Rigsbee, top speaker on Membership Growth

Member Recruitment with an Eye on Assimilation (767 words)

in , /by

As I read comments on member-get-a-member ideas by association membership directors at a Linkedin Group discussion, I can’t help from wondering if they are even considering member retention. An important thought for association and society executives is; do you want the instant gratification of a membership spike or the satisfaction of sustainable organic growth?

Incentives for Member Recruitment

Giving current members an incentive for recruiting new members can be a great way to temporarily boost membership numbers but is a poor method for true organizational organic growth. This is similar to a sales person that is only interested in making the sale and not interested in developing long-term customers. Instant gratification is rarely the best course of action for sustainable organizational growth.

What’s the true long-term organizational value derived from an aggressively competitive member recruiting new members solely for his or her ego and need for the instant gratification of winning a contest? Can, or will, this aggressively competitive recruiter also aggressively help to assimilate the new recruits? I don’t think so, and without successful assimilation, there will be no retention.

The Recruitment Myth

Turnstile membership recruitment is a waste of valuable resources and ultimately damages an organization’s reputation. Rather than having advocates and evangelists in the marketplace, praising the benefits of membership; turnstile member recruitment fosters disgruntled ex-members that extol the perceived indifference that they experienced while holding membership. In this situation, your organization would have been better off not having them as a member in the first place.

New Member Assimilation

You know this, your new members receive huge value from attending your conventions and conferences—when they have a guide and mentor serving as their pathfinder. The challenge with the above mentioned aggressive recruiter is that said recruiter has no time to be a pathfinder for several freshman members.  Sometimes organizations are sophisticated enough to assign first time conference attendees a mentor, however this is only minimally effective because of no prior relationship.

The absolute best is for a member to get a member—only one per year—urge the new member to attend the organization’s upcoming conference and be their pathfinder and assimilator throughout the meeting. The new member feels included, benefits from educational and networking opportunities, and develops an emotional ownership in their membership of your organization. This is the crucial foundation for any long-term member.

What’s Missing?

The reason that so many member-get-a-member campaigns fail to deliver long-term members is because the foundation upon which the new members were sold their membership is one of sand rather than bedrock. What’s missing is a credible member recruitment tool that explains in real-dollar terms what the member gets in return for their investment into the new organization. Without this critical link, member recruiters can only arm-twist or offer hollow promises of the benefits of membership. Member recruiters must be able to prove in real-dollar terms that membership is a good business decision.

Changing Member Recruiters Motivation

To transform your members from aggressive recruiters that are motivated solely based on the instant gratification of wining a contest or filling their pockets with incentives; to advocates and hopefully, evangelists, does take smart planning and implementation. Your current members must truly understand and believe, to their core, that their association or society delivers an excellent return on their investment of both money and time. They must have a strong emotional ownership in the idea that membership is a good business decision. They must also completely understand how a larger and stronger organization will have the capability to deliver even more measurable value to every stakeholder. There is always the fear that if the organization grows too much the intimacy will disappear. The organization must also demonstrate through its long-term planning strategy that there are future programs being developed to sustain the valued intimacy.

Evangelists or Detractors, the Choice is Yours

How your organization approaches growth will largely determine results. If the instant gratification of an immediate membership spike is important to your organization, you will ultimately develop more detractors than evangelists. However, if your organization is willing to adopt an organic grassroots approach to growth, the benefit received by the organization and its members will be transformational. Take this path and your organization will enjoy in its ranks, legions of member recruitment evangelists. Your organization will also enjoy higher than normal member retention—evangelists stay, while detractors leave.

Do you really need to give your members a $25 Starbucks card to motivate them to tell a colleague or competitor why it is a good business decision to hold membership in your organization?

Ed Rigsbee, top speaker on Membership Growth

The Reluctant Board of Directors (1037 words)

in , /by

Membership organizations absolutely deliver ROI (return on investment) to their members. What are you afraid of, is the question I frequently find myself asking non-profit organization governing board members. I have observed, over the years, an alarming propensity of board members being remiss in their fiduciary responsibility to their organizations. Fiduciary encompasses more than simply financial good sense; also trust, loyalty, and prudence are crucial elements. I’ll get into this in a bit.

Do you really believe that your member value proposition is so low that you are afraid to measure it, is frequently my follow up query. I am truly amazed at the levels of fear board members exhibit in the area of articulating the value their organization delivers to its members. Many have such a deep-seated fear of revealing the ROI truth—that the number would be so low, thereby giving current membership justification to abandon ship. In my experience, reality is almost always the exact opposite. Organizations do deliver great ROI; they just have no clue as to how to measure it.

At the Core of Member Recruitment and Retention

I have been using my proprietary version of the active qualitative research method for over a decade to help associations and societies prove to their members and prospective members that membership is a good decision. I can categorically state that I have never worked with an organization that failed to deliver more real-dollar value than they charged for membership.

Unfortunately, out-dated and erroneous thinking obfuscates board members’ ability to engage in fulfilling their fiduciary responsibility to their organizations. What I mean by this is simply that board members of non-profit organizations are just as responsible to the members as they are to the organization. This means that some board members will find it uncomfortable (but it is absolutely necessary) to stretch their awareness and understanding of available organizational growth and management tools—like proving ROI.

At the core of any membership organization is the criticality of proving that membership is a good personal or business decision—based on the organization’s stated mission. Most membership organizations, especially trade associations and professional societies deliver far more real-dollar value than they realize—but unfortunately rely on the fictitious MasterCard commercial phrase, believing that membership is: PRICELESS. FYI; membership is not priceless, unless of course it is free. Priceless sold to the Baby Boomers, but does not sell to the GenY stakeholders in your industry. The GenY crowd only buys ROI.

Let’s Talk Real Measurement

I applaud organizations in which staff members have gone through the soft research process of comparing member benefits value to what might be available in the marketplace or by other organizations. However there is a problem with this process. It is a simple problem. People believe that which they help to create. If staff did it alone, the research numbers are generally a no-sale, or fail to pass the all-important “smell test.” Staff-driven is an excellent first step but it does fall short of being an effective member recruitment tool.

When a reasonable sampling of members are facilitated through the active qualitative research method for determining what they believe to be the yearly sustainable real-dollar ROI of membership, the organization and its members can tout—our members have told us…

As an example, after three years and six qualitative research sessions, the American Society for Quality can confidently state that their members have told them that for every dollar invested in membership, members get over $50 back in real-dollar value. Can your organization make such a claim?

Selling Membership—Whose Job is it?

Membership is everybody’s business, not just the members, not just the staff, but member recruitment must be a partnership among both. Each group inherently has several advantages and disadvantages in their quest to recruit new members. As an example, members can access colleague prospects far easier and faster than can staff, conversely staff generally has more dedicated resources and tends to me more consistent in selling membership. However, when there is a cooperative effort, a partnership, among staff, board of directors, and members, the machine is literally unstoppable. Neither group can successfully go it alone.

Fiduciary Responsibility to Help the Organization Grow

I cannot tell you how many times an executive director has called me after attending one of my member ROI workshops and stated that they could not get their board to agree to doing, or budgeting for, the ROI research project they desired to launch. Was it that the executive director was awful at selling the value of determining the real-dollar ROI that the organization delivers? Or, might it have been that the board members were so petrified that if they measured the member ROI they wouldn’t make the grade?

Either way, the board members individually, have a fiduciary responsibility to the organization they govern to seek out and engage the available cost-effective tools to help and allow their organization to grow and prosper, thereby serving the organization’s stated mission. It saddens me, inadvertently as may be, how many board members shirk this responsibility of loyalty to their organization.

Release the Fear; It Doesn’t Become You

I believe that every membership organization should go through the process of determining the yearly sustainable real-dollar value it delivers to members. The next natural step might be to explore possibilities, strategies, and tactics for increasing the real-dollar value of membership. Do this because it helps in the long-term growth effort, but do not overlook the important immediate step of creating new tools to support the efforts of staff and members in their endeavors to evangelize and recruit new members.

My recommended tool is a simple, single-sheet, tri-fold brochure that lists the real-dollar value and various benefits (not features) of membership to the different membership stakeholder categories (vendors, allied, related professions, customers). The propensity of information gained through an active qualitative research method will be the core of this brochure. You want a tool that will dazzle your prospects with brilliance rather than to baffle them with bulk—the pounds of paper you mail out that they will never read. I believe in this tool at such a high-level that I will give you my brochure template at no charge, just email your request to ed@rigsbee.com.