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Ways to boost your membership
Members are the core of community groups. They provide the financial and human resources needed to perform the work.
A healthy membership leads to a vital organisation, yet even strong groups need to pay close attention to boosting their membership numbers. Some of the ways your group can do this are:
- Be relevant to their concerns. If members have joined your group because of its work, its stance on an issue or the cause it supports, then stay true to them and through that stay true to members.
- Have a structure that makes sense. Make sure you have a constitution, an organisational chart and an office culture that allocates responsibility and emphasises teamwork.
- Consult with members. Where you can, ask members what they want. Surveys and mail-outs can be handy for this, as can a few random phone calls each month.
- Appoint a membership coordinator. Choose someone who can not only look after existing members, but knows the networks well enough to attract new ones.
- Put memberships on the agenda. Include membership growth as an agenda item at your group's Committee of Management meetings every quarter.
- Set, revise and review targets. Targets for memberships should be set each year, reviewed regularly and revised if needed.
- Set a membership "season". Set aside a period of time where your group and its volunteers work extra hard to attract memberships.
- Use your community. Think about the criteria for membership of your organisation, and then where you would find these people so you can attract them as new members.
- Lobby for your cause. Lobbying for your cause shows you to be an active and vocal group, means people will be more attracted to become members.
- Use public relations to build your profile. Building your group's profile by being in the public eye will increase your chances of membership growth.
- No joining fees. Don't discourage potential new members by charging them a joining fee over and above normal membership fees. In fact, think about giving them a discount.
- Keep existing members before recruiting new ones. Be sure that you know your retention rate from year to year. If it's less than 90%, investigate.
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