To
paraphrase the late and misquoted Baroness Thatcher, there’ll soon be no such
thing as societies anymore. There’s a growing phenomenon across the westernised
world that’s afflicting organisations as diverse as churches, the boy scouts,
political parties, professional institutes, trades unions, and voluntary
associations. Membership rates are falling and more and more people just do not
want to belong to organisations any more.
The
latest OECD report shows that on average New Zealanders spend 13 minutes a day
in volunteering activities - twice the average in other developed countries but
that doesn’t seem to translate into joining an organisation. The Salvation Army
and Rotary are just two organisations suffering from falling numbers. It seems
that although online membership of sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn are
booming, formally belonging just doesn’t appeal like it used to.
It’s
a common problem, in the last six weeks more than half a dozen times I’ve been
asked to speak to organisations about how they can solve it and boost their
membership numbers. Each time I’ve had to stand up and tell them it is a branding
and perception issue, which has built up over time. Ultimately, it all boils
down to `what’s in it for me?’
Unlike
business and industry, New Zealand organisations have failed to understand the
need to develop a brand identity to communicate the benefits of belonging.
Whereas
many marketing directors get how important it is to cultivate a brand that
people want to be associated with, many union officials, national presidents, directors
and board members just haven’t grasped that they need to be able to offer their
members something distinctive; something that sets them apart from non-members.
That
something has to be more than a plastic card or a title. We all understand an
MBE or a PhD after someone’s name on a business card but what does an APR or an
MPRiNZ mean? Such strings of initials on your business card at best foster
confusion and at worst the sort of outright mistrust associated with degrees
from mid-west US colleges.
Not
one of my clients has ever asked me about the APR or MPRiNZ or MJA, which are
associated with organisations that I have been involved with. There are
literally hundreds of such post nominal letters available in New Zealand but there
are now many more talented professionals who decline to use such distinguishers
than do, because there is no real benefit in doing so. You don’t get paid any
more and it won’t get you a table in a good restaurant.
Back
in 2009 a US researcher at New York University predicted that in the USA alone
100,000 non-profit membership organisations would soon fall by the wayside
because they failed to respond to the needs of their members.
Coverage
at the time cited a number of reasons why these associations were failing;
these were losing their mission focus, straying into the wrong business, taking
their members for granted, over-pricing their services, giving potential
members a free ride, ignoring the competition, resisting change, merging for
the sake of it and accepting their irrelevance. But the most important failing
is not communicating the benefits of membership.
Yet
while trade unions and political parties may continue to struggle to find new
recruits there may be hope for some professional organisations among the next
generation of executives. According to “Professional Associations and Members’
Benefits: What’s in It for Me?”, published this month in the journal Non-profit
Management and Leadership, a recent study found that younger
professionals are less concerned with the value of benefits in determining
their membership satisfaction than older professionals.
The researchers
believe that younger people may put aside the need for a tangible return on their
investment in membership if they believe that the symbolic benefits that
professional associations offer will help advance their careers and define who
they are to both themselves and their employers. Older, more established
members are more likely to insist on tangible benefits to justify the
membership dues.
It has
been pointed out this suggests that when trying to recruit new members
organisations should differentiate between the triggers of younger professionals
who may want a recognition of their professional identity, and older members
who really only want to know what is in it for them in terms of tangible
benefits.
Even
so, the study does support my case that there is an incontrovertible l link
between ‘what’s in it for me’ and the decision to join. At the end of the day
it’s all about the mighty dollar.
