Is Your Association Delivering on the #1 Membership Benefit?
These last two years, it’s become really obvious to me how much people value connection and community as a membership benefit. Despite Zoom fatigue, when members can talk shop with peers, they jump at the chance. ASAE’s Membership Mondays are a good example. After Amy Hemphill, Senior Director of Member Relations at ASAE, announced them in a couple of Collaborate communities, 250 members expressed interest, 195 registered, and 104 showed up for the first meetup.
Your association can also take advantage of this pent-up demand for conversations by helping your members build relationships and feel like part of a community.
The Need for Connection Is Still Strong—and Growing
Our world has opened back up—for now—so we have more opportunities to socialize. Last week, I saw a few business acquaintances at an event, which felt great, but I’d love to connect with more people who do the same work I do. I’m sure your members feel the same way.
Even if you love working from home like I do, you’ve got to admit, it can be isolating. And like us, many of your members miss the camaraderie and random exposure to people and ideas they used to get back in the office. In this Great Resignation or Reshuffle, so many people are changing jobs, industries, and professions. They’d appreciate opportunities to find peers and potential mentors, and to build and expand their network.
Why Connections and Community Are Such Valuable Membership Benefits
A sense of belonging is incredibly valuable in a society where many of us no longer belong to civic or religious organizations, or don’t hang out with or even know our neighbors. The desire to belong to a community is deep within us. We want to feel like we’re part of something bigger—a professional community with a mission we can believe in, where we can contribute our talents, and where we can make a difference.
Members want to find peers with similar interests, challenges, and career pathways. They’d love to make friends with people who don’t tire of their work stories like their spouse or friends do—I’m sure you know what I mean. A network of peers serves as a sounding board, supports each other during tough times, and cheers each other on during good times.
Members want to be informed and educated, sure, but they also want to have a good time. They’d love more opportunities to meet acquaintances and make new friends, maybe even friends for life or their future spouse, I’ve seen it happen!
Who’s in Charge of Your Association’s #1 Membership Benefit?
According to Marketing General Inc.’s 2021 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report, 63% of members join associations for “networking with others in the field.” Other top benefits pale in comparison: #2 with 37% is “continuing education/professional certification” and #3 with 32% is “accessing specialized and/or current information.”
Members can easily find education and information elsewhere. Sadly, these benefits are commodities in many industries. But it’s really hard to find a group of friends outside work who do what you do, cultivate a professional network, and feel like part of a community. An association can make that happen for members. Do it well enough and the word gets out to the professionals who aren’t willing to pay for information but will gladly pay to be around other people like them.
But you can’t just throw members together into a virtual chat box or crowded in-person reception. You must understand what members need from you to make connecting and belonging easier. You need a strategy and a person or team who takes ownership of this essential membership benefit.
The problem is most associations don’t dedicate anyone on staff to networking. They assume networking will happen on its own in the online community or at events. It does for a small percentage of savvy members, but you need to do a better job of sharing this #1 benefit with all your members.
How to Help Members Connect
Networking is the primary reason people join associations, but no one is in charge of delivering that benefit. That’s pretty messed up, but not impossible to fix.
Fill the calendar. Schedule regular opportunities for different membership segments to meet separately and together, virtually and in-person. Don’t neglect virtual. Many members don’t have the budget, schedule, ability, or desire to travel to in-person events. On the other hand, if you do host in-person events, don’t forget how engagement is impacted by safety. A sense of safety, or lack thereof, shapes attendees’ behavior. People who feel safe and comfortable will obviously be more willing to come, stay, interact, and connect.
Coach. Remind members where to find conversations—session tables, meals, shuttle buses, and lounges. Point out what not to do when networking. Sadly, many of my industry partner peers need help with this one. #stopthespiel
Structured networking. Don’t just throw people together in a room. Announce a few conversation starters. Train volunteer moderators for online events.
Educational events. Make presenters build interaction into the design of their sessions, such as table conversations and breakout rooms.
Schedule pre-event social hours with breakout rooms where small groups of people can discuss hot topics.
Let attendees in early to online sessions so they have time to talk with each other in the chat box. Dedicate discussion lounges to specific topics during the conference.
Online courses. Always include discussion forums in the design of online courses.
Online discussion roundtables. Schedule a variety of roundtables or book clubs appealing to different niches and interests, such as career stage, job type, business size or specialty, or geographic location.
Online community. Provide forums for off-topic conversations, like hobbies. Members who share personal and professional interests are more likely to become friends.
Peer accountability groups. Masterminds and other peer groups give small groups of members the chance to support each other’s growth.
Mentoring. Encourage individual and group mentoring sessions.
Collaboration. Schedule opportunities for members to learn from and collaborate with each other, such as lunch and learns, solution rooms, ideation sessions, and hackathons.
Social time. Encourage members to host coffee chats, lunch breaks, and happy hours.
When planning, remember that what your board or committees think is a bad idea might be exactly what another member segment is craving, and vice versa.
Survey members to find out what they would put in their calendar. Send out polls via different channels. Host focus groups—another terrific way for members to meet each other.
Some of these ideas might work, some might fail miserably. Experiment with formats, times, days, marketing messages, and targeted audiences. Just don’t underestimate the interest in connections and community. Since networking is the #1 benefit by far, you need to find out how your members want to connect with each other.
If you’d like to see how association management software can help you streamline processes and integrate siloed data to help you free up time to connect with members and focus on networking programs, request a demo with our team.