The future of membership

We were founded as a member-based organisation 35 years ago. At the start members were core to our organisation’s activities but over the years we’ve lost touch with them. Last year we launched a new scheme which was an attempt to engage people into our organisation at large as opposed to having them align with one programme.

We now attract potential members with our mission but pull them in with our money-saving benefits. The membership numbers are rising and so are our volunteer inquiries.

Offering money-saving benefits is not useless. It is one of many tangible benefits to membership. But more than that we need to retain members. This steps into the need to promote a sense of community and even exclusivity. You join and you receive access – to like-minded people, to programmes, to staff and trustees. Building and maintaining that community, I believe, is the greatest resource challenge for staff.

This is timely, connecting as it does with the new public benefit reporting requirements for charities being proposed by the Charity Commission.

This is an interesting issue for the National Trust. We owe so much of our success to having a membership model – off the top of my head I think it probably drives c. 40% of our income directly, and probably significantly contributes to another c. 20 to 30% which arises from members visiting National Trust properties (i.e. spending on guide books, catering, in shops etc.).

The “transactional” versus the “charitable” relationship is a challenge we’ve discussed in the Trust and for us we’ve found that is not simply an either/or. Indeed we’ve begun to think and use the language much more in terms of a “supporter journey” i.e. how do we shape the relationship to maximise mutual benefit. This is because members for us are both:
1) A means to our charitable ends – members provide a major source of income without which we would not be able to do our job our “looking after special places, forever, for every one”. They are also a significant route into volunteering, and increasingly have a role in fostering the changes we believe are needed to undertake and achieve our conservation and access charitable goals (e.g. in decisions they make as consumers which impact upon environment and heritage).
2) An end in themselves – membership is a way for people to engage in, enjoy and show support for what we do.

And to make it all the more complex, some of our most ardent supporters aren’t “members” in a fully paid-up sense (this includes c. 30% of our volunteers; and not all of fundraising income comes from members).

Getting that balance right between harnessing members in pursuit of the goals of the organisation, and ensuring that members find ways to enjoy and value their membership is a huge challenge. It’s likely to get even more complex I think due to the kinds of factors (in particular the social networking phenomenon) you’ve already highlighted but also in questions around:
1) What will be the impact of Consumerism 2.0? – values / ethical driven consumerism is likely to cloud the role and relationships in some areas/sectors as this seems to be an area where some people are finding “agency” i.e. seeing a direct influence from their actions. Why be a “member” of a cause when you can express your values through the way you spend your money? Why be a “member” of a cause when a company offers you a way to “solve” a social need or participate in a “campaign” to change things for the better? Will membership organisations which connect well with the commercial sector thus be seen as more positive and effective, or conversely will this be perceived as “selling out” and driving supporters away?

Similarly what will be the impact of Social Enterprises? With hybrid “for profit, for benefit” organisations supposedly being a growth area, will this shift people’s views about the need for charity membership (i.e. does this continue to strengthen a transactional approach as people find social enterprises as a way to “do good” without a bigger commitment)?

2) Are we going to see a continued inflation of expectations? Some survey data I recall suggested that many people have as high expectations for service from the voluntary sector as from the commercial sector. Do these high expectations force the third sector into increasingly commodified forms of membership to meet these higher expectations for service delivery?

3) Which way will globalisation take us? – there are questions around the geographical levels at which people will be involved in various (but not all) kinds of “cause”. Some “causes” and the ways in which they are delivered are intrinsically local. But I wonder whether membership will become more complex in terms of being a member of local charity, as part of a national charity, within a global federation of like-minded causes/entities? And I imagine that the choices for people to express membership at a local, national or international level will increase (we’ve had the local/national aspect to this for a long time, but the global aspect for some citizens is only just growing). Conversely many people are terrified by the rate and extent of globalisation, so will this generate a bounce back in favour of localised membership of more locally focussed causes?

Lots (for me) to think about!

Clearly social networking has usurped some of the traditional roles of membership organisations (at least, for some people). This is in a way a continuation of what the web has been doing since its inception: information provision, networking with like-minded individuals, proclaiming one’s affiliations and points of view, accessing those in authority, have all been made easier, faster, cheaper and more accessible.

This surely begs a re-examination of why people join (rather than for what). One fundamental reason is to align oneself with others under the umbrella of an organisation that represents and amplifies how we feel about a particular issue. So the more active an organisation is in campaigning around its core issues, the more they will be seen as a pole of attraction, and the more it will seem ‘necessary’ to be a part of that organisation.

I suspect that it will be those organisations who best engage their members in active campaigning – and provide them with the means and the space to self-organise – that will most successfully re-engineer the nature of membership.

Creating the desire to belong will then become the way in which to draw in members; as Amy put it, promoting “a sense of community and even exclusivity” is the challenge to address.

It’s great to see a good discussion going here! There’s also a lot of discussion on the RSA Networks site here that you may like to join. We had an excellent meeting last week with David Wilcox, Simon Berry and colleagues from the RSA and the project really has some momentum behind it now – I’ll keep you posted!

I mentioned yesterday the Conservatives new campaign and their drive to get people to sign up to be their Friend on a variety of social networks …

There’s more in a David Cameron article from yesterday’s Times explaining more …. and linking the idea of the Radioheard experiment, which Karl has written about so well here

I guess with webCameron et al, it was no surprise that the Conservatives have beaten Lab & Lib Dems to this way of thinking …or are the parties doing similar things under the radar??