In
order for any trade association or professional society to best serve
its market and constituents, it must reach, maintain, and hopefully
surpass critical mass in its membership ranks. Today’s challenge for
organizational staff and volunteer leaders in doing this is in the
influencing of younger stakeholders in your industry or profession to
join in and support the cause. Here’s the rub; younger people tend not
to join the cause, just because they should as did their predecessors,
the Baby Boomers—bummer!
There
are three basic ways to recruit members:
Direct
Sales where you have commissioned sales persons on the street or
working the telephones.
Pull
Marketing where you use expensive traditional or electronic
marketing campaigns.
Member-Get-a-Member
Encouraging
Member Evangelists is the number one method for both successful member
recruitment and assimilation. Remember, recruitment without assimilation
is about as silly as spitting into the wind. Member retention leads to
member evangelism. The crucial question is, “How does one convert
happily retained members into member recruitment evangelists?”
1.Remind your
happily retained members about the value they continue to receive,
yearly, from their membership through proving the return on investment (ROI)
they enjoy.
2.Show your
happily retained members a vision of what might be possible for them if
the organization grew. Everyone is interested in the, what’s in it for
me. When members both intellectually and emotionally realize what
additional benefits might be possible for them through a much larger
organization, they will find a new motivation to spread the good news
about your organization.
3.Give your
member evangelists the correct tools for effective evangelism. In order
to influence the younger generations into holding membership, your
evangelists can no longer stand on the generationally dead pulpit of
supporting one’s industry, but rather must prove that it is a good
business decision to join. Most of the organizational member recruitment
paraphernalia in the marketplace today, tries to “baffle with bulk”
rather than to “dazzle with brilliance.” Shorter is better and there
is no replacement for proving your ROI.
4.Recognize the
efforts and successes of your evangelists. In the majority of cases,
that is really all you need to do to motivate evangelists. Recognition
is a powerful tool, one which many leaders frequently overlook. Skip the
contests and handout acknowledgements rather than prizes.
5.Member-get-a-member
campaigns are fabulous is long as a contest prize is not the motivation
for participation. Do it now! Throw out your prize-driven contests. They
just motivate members to be competitive and want to win something. To be
more successful in member recruitment and retention, you only want each
member to enroll a member, or two, each year, as that is all they can
realistically help to assimilate into your organization. There is
absolutely no long-term value in recruiting a bunch of members into your
organization—through a contest or telethon—that you cannot properly
assimilate, knowing they will leave in a year, and then badmouthing
about their lousy experience to all in the marketplace that will listen.
6.Accountability
on the part of your board of directors and membership committee is the
key. These volunteer leaders must remain accountable, to paid staff, for
membership growth and the methods employed to reach stated goals. They
must also be held accountable, by paid staff, to assimilate, engage, and
retain members once recruited.
7.Adopt the system
for your road map to success. Working with non-profit organizations for
over two decades, I have found that the implementation of a system is
necessary to keep everyone on track. The system is circular rather than
linier; Recruitment à
Assimilation à
Engagement à
Retention à
Evangelism à
Recruitment, again and again and again.
For
a template that will help you to develop a simple tri-fold member
recruitment brochure that will dazzle with brilliance rather than baffle
with bulk, email your request to ed@rigsbee.com.
Ed
Rigsbee, CSP is Chief Member
Evangelist at Rigsbee Enterprises, Inc., an organization that helps
non-profits grow their membership through proving a sizable return on
investment of membership. He has authored three books on business
relationships and one on soccer. He is regularly published globally with
over 2,000 print and electronic articles to his credit. Ed also is the
founder and executive director of a non-profit public charity. Get the
resources you need to grow your non-profit or for-profit organization at
www.rigsbee.com.
