Does charging for membership hurt diversity and inclusion?
Time for another wrinkle in the debate over the sustainability of the membership model. Associations Now has featured two associations in the past few months that have moved to a freemium membership model:
- American Dental Education Association: "No Dues, More Members," by Susan Krug, CAE, and Abigail Gorman, December 2010
- Alliance for Women in Media: "Goodbye, Dues: The Transition From Paid Membership to Free," by Erin M. Fuller, CAE, March 2011
In both of these articles, the word "open" comes up in significant ways. For ADEA, the marketing campaign for the new model was titled "Open Wide," and internally they call the model "open membership." For AWM, Fuller makes a strong conclusion: "We believe this change makes us as open and inclusive as possible ... ."
In each case, an increase in perspectives, ideas, and knowledge sharing was a major goal the association sought to achieve by lowering the barrier to access to its community. By becoming more open, they've aimed to become more inclusive.
The underlying statement here is that the opposite—maintaining barriers to access—hurts an organization's level of diversity and inclusion, which suggests that the answer to the question in the title of this post would be "yes."
For whatever reason, I don't often see membership models and diversity and inclusion discussed at the same time, even though they're clearly intertwined in real life. We tend to have discussions about them in separate buckets. With membership models, we focus on hard results, namely revenue. With diversity and inclusion, we talk about soft results such as engagement, community, and leadership development.
Of course, generating revenue and increasing diversity are both positive goals with positive results, but the traditional behavior of associations would put them at odds: Preserving membership revenue hampers inclusion by limiting access; advancing inclusion by expanding access puts membership revenue at risk. That's a genuine dilemma, one that requires creative solutions.
The two associations highlighted above may have found a way to solve this problem, but a freemium model likely isn't feasible for every association. I'm curious about other potential solutions. Associations couldn't succeed if revenue and D&I were mutually exclusive, could they?
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Comments
Creating community (which is what is meant by inclusion) is NOT in conflict with charging for services.
The "freemium" model is a strategic decision - offer something for free with the expectation that you'll sell more later.
It's about how to get more members and more money. It's not a touchy-feely notion of being more inclusive.
If people value goods and services, they'll pay for them. If you have to give stuff away for free to get more members, all that means is you're giving stuff away for free. It doesn't mean you are more inclusive.
And, if you give stuff a way for free, who is going to pay the costs (like salaries) for the creation and delivery of this stuff?
Posted by: David M. Patt, CAE | March 28, 2011 2:52 PM
Thanks David. I think it's important to note the last word of your first sentence there: "services". Charging for services isn't in conflict with inclusion, but charging for membership might be.
Indeed, both of the associations in these case studies saw expanding their pool of members as a way to widen their market of potential customers for all of their programs, events, products, and services that they sell. They acknowledge that in those case studies, but I left it out on purpose in order to focus on the inclusion angle. What's interesting is that the benefit of wider inclusion has the compounding effect of creating better knowledge exchange and idea generation for those very programs and products that the freemium association aims to build its revenue on. So you're right, the inclusion angle isn't just the touchy-feely notion; it's a way to increase your potential to make revenue.
Traditionally, though, revenue has come from membership dues in associations, and I wanted to call to attention to the idea that the traditional thinking may, in fact, also be having a negative effect on inclusion and the diversity of an association's membership, both of which are often a stated goal of even the most traditionally minded associations.
Jamie Notter posted today at the Common Thread blog on a similar topic after it was discussed during today's association chat on Twitter (#assnchat). You point out that freemium is about "selling later," which is a good way to put it. I missed the chat, but it sounds like there's a lot of angst over what associations might sell later to replace membership revenue. That's something every association may have to figure out on its own, but both of these case studies offer some interesting possibilities.
Posted by: Joe Rominiecki | March 29, 2011 5:35 PM