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engagement

Jan 30

Revitalizing the membership model through new approaches

By Feature

Local nonprofit leaders, survey respondents share opportunities and challenges facing membership-based nonprofits

by Shari Finnell, editor/writer, Not-for-profit News

No matter the nonprofit entity, numbers are traditionally used as a measure of success. How many people showed up at an event? How many email subscribers are on our list? How many donors have contributed to our cause? How many people are we serving?

In the case of some nonprofits, another critical measure of overall viability is the number of people they can count as members. These membership organizations operate by focusing on providing value to their membership community as well as supporting the causes they serve.  

The landscape has significantly changed since many membership organizations were founded decades ago, according to several local leaders, challenging them to find new ways to engage people who may not be familiar with organizations like the Rotary Club, and Kappa Delta Pi, and numerous foundations, fraternities, sororities, churches, and professional, charitable, and veterans’ associations. 

“There’s been a 20-year trend of associations and membership organizations trying to ensure they’re remaining relevant,” said Tonja Eagan, CEO of Kappa Delta Pi (KDP), an international honor society for educators that was founded in 1911. The organization’s headquarters are in Indianapolis.

Eagan said people who fall in the Millennials category have represented the most significant generational shift in attitudes about membership organizations. Before then, boomers and other previous generations had a deeper connection with membership organizations. “They have these long-standing traditions,” Eagan said. 

“Millennials, mainly because of the use of technology and different ways of communicating and socializing, did not find many of these long-standing traditions as relevant,” she added. “Now, people might say, ‘Why do I need to come to this association meeting when I can just set up a Facebook group?’”

However, Eagan said, new research is providing insights on how associations and membership organizations can effectively recruit and engage younger generations. 

As part of one of those studies, researchers with the 2022 Global Membership Health Study surveyed members, board of directors, and staff of 275 associations in 59 countries. The study revealed a significant gap in how board members and members perceived how their organizations provided value and opportunities for engagement. 

According to the study’s findings, “Associations are seeking to understand the concept of value, especially in this era of constant and evolving change. The study suggests that it’s the lack of value, more than anything else, which is driving members away. Despite the knowledge this gap exists, the data also indicates associations have been unable to successfully bridge the gap.”

For example, while 49 percent of board members and staff who participated in the study strongly agreed with the statement “Membership provides a strong return on investment,” only 35 percent of members agreed with that statement.

Generational gap

Jenny Dexter, president of the Rotary Club of Indianapolis, said the value proposition of joining the organization has changed since the 1990s and early 2000s when the club’s membership levels often ranged from 600 to 650. 

“That was during a time when a lot of businesses had headquarters in downtown Indianapolis,” Dexter recalled. “If you wanted to get connected in the community, you joined an organization. The Rotary made a lot of sense because it is a community service-oriented club and it allowed for networking around service.”

However, with changes in communication, that model may no longer be relevant to many people.

“The business landscape has changed over time,” she added. “Being super involved in your community is important but it looks different.”

As a result, Dexter said, traditional service-model membership clubs started seeing a decline in membership. 

Brand perception about some traditional membership clubs also can be a challenge, Dexter said. “We have to deal with our history. Women weren’t even allowed in many of these clubs,” she noted. The Rotary Club Council, for example, did not vote to admit women members until 1989.

Currently, the Rotary Club of Indianapolis — one of several chapters in the Indianapolis area — has 169 members, which is higher than it has been in previous years, Dexter said. 

The organization has grown its membership by focusing on building a brand experience that resonates with new members, according to Exter. “We’ve asked questions like, ‘What is it like when someone walks in our door?’,” she said.  ‘What are the things that we’re saying about ourselves?’ ‘What are we doing in our community?’ ‘What are our actions that prove we are a modern service membership club?’”

Dexter said she believes the upward trend in the Rotary Club’s membership has the potential to continue as networking and relationship building once again become increasingly important, especially post-pandemic. “It’s another important component to building one’s business,” she said. “You still need to know others on a deeper level to gain trust and prove that you are worth investing in.”

The American Legion, which is headquartered in Indianapolis, also has relied on a membership model since it was founded in 1919. Throughout its history, it has regularly held campaigns to increase membership and membership engagement.

“The Wall Street Journal predicted our demise in 1971,” said John Raughter, deputy director of media relations for the American Legion. “People sometimes point out membership numbers to say ‘They’re dying’ or that ‘This post is closing.’ Yet, there are still twice as many legion posts as there are Walmarts across the United States. We’re still here.”

Raughter said that veterans’ associations may naturally face a decline in membership because of its association with the military, which has declined in numbers over the decades. Membership is open to any U.S. military veteran who served at least one day of active military duty, and was honorably discharged or is currently serving. 

“The military is a lot smaller than it used to be,” Raughter said.

The most important measure of the American Legion’s impact is its ability to be effective in carrying out its mission to influence policy on behalf of veterans, he said.

Engaging a new generation

When seeking to engage new members, Eagan said, membership organizations need to be mindful of generational differences.

Membership organizations can no longer rely on career development, learning a new competency, and networking to attract new members, she said. “We need to ask, ‘How do you make it more relational and more meaningful?’ If associations can’t figure that out, then they’ll continue on this path of declining membership.”

Members are seeking a deep sense of belonging and ownership of the group, Eagan said, nothing the findings of the membership study. “In the old days, pre-pandemic, the way we would do that is to sign them up for a committee right away. We would engage people through volunteerism or a service day.”

However, the appeal of volunteering is not as attractive as it was before the pandemic, she said. “Plenty of research has revealed an incredible decrease in volunteerism since the pandemic,” she said. “People have decided they want to spend their time differently. Or they may be having health issues, or they’ve decided to spend more time with family or their hobbies.”

With those changes, membership organizations, as well as other nonprofits, need to focus on rethinking how they provide value to current and new members. 

Eagan said organizations need to consider a more personalized approach — honing on the individual needs of individual members. “People are just burned out on webinars and being force fed information,” she said. “So, we started new teacher chats — an informal Zoom meet that gave members who are typically first-year and second-year teachers an opportunity to talk to our director of new teacher engagement and a guest, like a school principal who was a former teacher.”

As part of the chat session, people have the opportunity to share what’s going on in their day-to-day lives, including positive or negative moments, their top concerns, and how they’re feeling, Eagan said. “It’s not a formal agenda,” she added. “They just come and chat for about an hour or hour and a half.”

One of the members attending a recent chat followed up with an email expressing her gratitude for the support she received as a new teacher. In the email she said, “I definitely felt welcomed and comfortable to ask you questions, which I probably wouldn’t have been able to ask other staff members at my school.”

Eagan said that type of connection is key to a successful membership experience.

“For many of us coming out of the pandemic, and for Gen Z and Millennials, it’s important to feel that you can have a safe authentic experience and relationships,” she said. “Unfortunately, social media may not provide that authentic experience. And we may not always feel safe sharing our feelings in the workplace.”

With a more personalized approach to meeting the needs of members and demonstrating a clear return on investment from membership dues, traditional membership organizations can be sustainable, Eagan predicted.  

For instance KDP, has partnered with a for-profit organization to provide professional development services to its members, Eagan said. The organization also is seeking ways to support the mental health needs of educators and the students they serve.

“Associations can survive and thrive if they listen intently to the members,” she said. “Members want to be sure they’re investing their time and money wisely.”

Mar 14

Achieve better board engagement through training

By Sponsor Insight

by Jodi Snell, senior consultant, Hedges

The most common pain point we’re hearing about from the nonprofit community is how to increase board engagement. Despite good intentions, some board members are struggling to make in-person meetings work with their back-to-the office schedules, others turn off their video and multi-task during board meetings, and yet others have a hard time following-through with assigned tasks. In a world where there is never enough time, and we all have competing priorities, the need to focus on what is essential has never seemed more important.

So, the question isn’t just how do we engage our board, but how do we engage our board in its most essential functions? At Hedges, we have found the key to engaging board members in the ways they’re needed most comes through effective training and setting clear expectations. If board members don’t know their responsibilities or how to execute those responsibilities, then successfully engaging as a board member will be quite the challenge.

When we onboard new staff, we are mindful of making sure that expectations are clearly communicated and that staff are adequately trained to meet those expectations. The same should be true for board members of our organizations. Based on our experience in educating board members through our work with nonprofit organizations and in our Lead with Purpose Board Training Series, we find the following three items to be at the core of successful nonprofit board education:

  1. Prioritize board training and onboarding. Prioritizing board training and onboarding is as important as prioritizing the training and onboarding of your staff members. This prioritization can happen in different ways. The first way to prioritize board training is to instill a culture of learning for the organization, including the board. This culture gives board members permission to seek information, not have all the answers, and know they will have access to the information necessary for them to engage in their key responsibilities. The second way is to allocate appropriate financial resources to provide initial and ongoing education opportunities for board members. Whether those resources are used for individual members to attend different workshops in the community or to bring in a third-party to provide training to the full board, prioritizing financial resources will be important to ensuring access to the best practice knowledge they need. The third way to prioritize board training is to allow realistic time for members to be trained and onboarded. Often board onboarding is done over one short meeting or even a document provided electronically via email. Whether it’s setting aside a full day, a couple of hours, or part of a board meeting, providing time for board members to receive training is key to successfully educating the board.
  2. Create a partnership between the Board and the Executive Director. The misconception that the board should be managing the Executive Director creates a tenacious power dynamic. When the board is trained and onboarded in a way that helps them to understand their valuable and distinct role as a board member, it is much easier to build a productive partnership between the Executive Director and board. This partnership can be built on shared leadership and learning where the Executive Director and the board lead together and learn from each other. In this shared leadership and learning, meaningful conversations and trust build making it easier to operationalize board governance best practices. Additionally, a board that is trained and that doesn’t have to be managed empowers the Executive Director to focus on their unique role in leading the organization to success rather than spending time “managing up.”
  3. Continually assess the board to understand their strengths and needs. Just like professional development for our staff members is ongoing process, learning for our board members should be continuous. Board training is not just a one-time event, but an ongoing component of healthy governance. As a start, it is good practice to train new board members during board orientation as they join your organization. In addition, it is good to provide the opportunity for board members to assess themselves and identify areas for continued learning. This can happen through a formal board self-assessment, a simple board survey, or a conversation between the Executive Director and board members to understand:
  • How well do they think they are executing their responsibilities as individual board members and as a full board?
  • What needs or questions do they have about their role as a board member?
  • Do they feel they have received enough training to engage in an effective way?
  • Do they find this experience to be meaningful to them and what could make it more meaningful?

By understanding these things, continual education can be provided to the board in the topics where they need the most support. Fundamentally, board members should receive consistent training and “refreshers” on general information about the organization, like your vision and goals; the basic responsibilities of board membership; how to best engage in fundraising; how to recruit, onboard, and offboard members; and the purpose of committees, and what it means to keep committees active and effective. However, having the board assess itself regularly creates time for reflection and gives board members an opportunity to identify where they might need to focus individually and as a board to maximize their efforts for the organization.

In our 20 years of experience in nonprofit advising, our team at Hedges has learned that board engagement is critical to an organization’s success. An engaged board is a trained board, and board training is a constant, ongoing process. If you’re spinning your wheels wondering: “Why is my board struggling to engage in its essential functions?” consider implementing the three steps we’ve outlined above.

Want additional support? Encourage your Board members to join our next Lead with Purpose Series, offered from August through November 2022. For more information visit: https://www.hellohedges.com/training/.

Jodi Snell is Senior Consultant at Hedges and a BoardSource Certified Consultant who loves to empower board members on how to be most effective in their roles. With a passion for educating and training, Jodi works closely with organizations to lend her expertise related to board governance, fundraising, and strategic planning.

May 17

Achieving racial inclusion in the workplace

By Sponsor Insight

by Jeremy York, author, Synergy, adapted from the Society for Human Resource Management

Ensuring people from underrepresented communities are recruited and advanced is far more beneficial for an organization than recruiting or advancing any one individual. Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) attempts to level the playing field to allow the best ideas to flourish, connect talented individuals from underrepresented backgrounds with opportunities that those in the majority often have unfair access to, and empower the best organizations to thrive. Done right, creating diverse, equitable, inclusive organizations yield greater profitability, innovation, and smarter teams.

When employees who are different from their colleagues are allowed to flourish, the company benefits from their ideas, skills and engagement. The retention rate of those workers also rises. Here are five practical strategies for creating an inclusive environment.

  1. Educate your leaders. Your organization’s executives and managers will be instrumental to your DEI efforts. Leaders — especially middle managers — must be held accountable for results. Leaders should be expected to demonstrate a commitment to inclusivity and, more importantly, to be responsible for the environment in their respective departments. Ongoing feedback from their own managers will help to hold them accountable, as does tying the goal to their performance evaluations.
  2. Form an inclusion council. Consider forming a council comprised of a dedicated group of eight to 12 influential leaders who are one or two levels below the CEO. Carefully select them for their passion and commitment to inclusion. They need to be “a channel for communication” between the rank and file and the C-suite, and that includes advocating for inclusiveness in discussions with top executives when necessary. Ideally, councils should be involved in goal-setting around hiring, retaining and advancing a diverse workforce and in addressing any employee engagement problems among underrepresented employee groups.
  3. Celebrate employee differences. One of the most important ways to show employees that you respect their backgrounds and traditions is to invite them to share those in the workplace. It’s well-known that diversity in teams leads to better decision-making, greater innovation and, ultimately, higher returns. Inclusion is what connects people to the business, and we believe it’s one of the core reasons that diverse employees stay with organizations that recognize and celebrate diversity.
  4. Listen to employees. Conduct a comprehensive assessment of your organization’s demographics and people processes to develop specific strategies to promote inclusiveness. Think about the culture you want and how you can create one that is authentic to your brand while meeting the needs of your employees.
  5. Communicate goals and measure progress. Establish and clearly communicate specific, measurable and time-bound goals as you would with any other strategic aim. Every company should first benchmark their culture before they begin investing in it. Here are some actions to follow:

    Conduct a full audit of your people processes — from recruiting and hiring to developing and retaining employees. Couple the data with engagement and other workforce survey data to gain a full measure of your climate.
  • Identify any shortcomings and measurable discrepancies around inclusiveness in your organization.
  • Instill rigor into inclusion strategies with data-driven plans, and measure the results.
  • Establish a clear business case for how the company will benefit by having a more inclusive culture by asking:
  1. What are our inclusion goals?
  2. What are the reasons for those goals?
  3. How do we quantify inclusion?
  4. How will inclusion impact our mission, brand or bottom line?

When you can answer these questions, you’re speaking the language of your stakeholders, legitimizing the business of inclusion and making inclusion a ‘verb’ versus an ideal.

Instead of trying to change some people to fit the organization, we must focus on transforming our organizations to fit all people. To get workplace diversity and inclusion right, you need to build a culture where everyone feels valued and heard.

To hear the full interview with Jeremy York of Synergy, click below.