Acronym

How do you know what your members value?

A lot of the membership discussion has centered around this elusive idea. The general thinking is, dues-paying membership as a model isn’t broken, it’s just evolving. The secret sauce for associations is finding and delivering what people value, for which they will be happy to fork over their dues payment.

Which leaves me with the question, how do you know what your members value? Maybe some research – both quantitative and qualitative – can provide some answers. Certainly what people actually purchase is indicative. But this retort in the membership debate smells like people justifying status quo to me, and perhaps even something more dangerous. One association trap is that an organization will realize that a number of people would value “x,” so they add “x” to their list of member benefits, but nothing is taken off. X becomes Y becomes Z and then back around to the top of the alphabet, and all of a sudden, you’re servicing 5 or 10 or 20 niche markets under the umbrella of membership. This is not a sustainable model.

Here is where I agree with the argument: if you are going to expect to receive dues, you are going to have to deliver something that people value. But I augment that with two things: first, you need to be narrow and focused in the definition of what your organization does. I think this has a lot of implications for associations, namely smaller staffs and decentralized control. The chase for ever-growing membership rolls gives way to the chase for ever-deeper engagement with the members attracted to your narrow focus.

Second, if peer networking, information, collective action, or affiliation are significant parts of your value proposition, then you need to take a critical analysis of your situation; it is quite possible the social web is changing people’s expectations and values in these areas.