How to Attract New Members to Your Organisation

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Attracting new members to your organisation is essential for your continued growth and sustainability. However, it can be challenging to reach new audiences for the first time and get them interested in joining your organisation.

So what can you do about this? Well, we’ve got 6 top tips on how you can go about attracting new members:

1. Define your Value Proposition

This one is something you should do before you start reaching out to your prospective members. Your value proposition is what sets your organisation apart from others and makes it attractive. Clearly define what you offer and how it benefits those who sign up. This can include networking opportunities, access to resources or expertise, professional development opportunities, or advocacy efforts.

Make sure you don’t forget any of the amazing benefits or services you offer (and maybe you’ll come up with new ideas!) and share them with all your team so everyone understands what it is you deliver. Once done, ensure that your value proposition is communicated consistently across all marketing channels to your audience.

2. Utilise Social Media

Social media platforms are powerful tools for reaching new audiences and attracting potential members. Utilise platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and maybe even TikTok, to share your organisation's mission, activities, and events.

Create engaging content that showcases the value of your membership, and encourage your current members to share their positive experiences or your content with their social networks. Ideas such as dedicated campaigns (such as an awareness day of a relevant topic to your organisation) or even just adding social media share buttons can really help grow your social media presence!

3. Host Events

Hosting events is an effective way to showcase your organisation and attract new members. Consider hosting events such as, networking events, speaker events on a relevant topic, or workshops that align with your organisation's mission and values. Encourage your current members to invite their colleagues, friends, and family members who may be interested in joining your organisation.

As part of these efforts, you’ll want to keep track of any events being run and give prospective members a way to register their interest, and to be able to follow up and engage with them afterwards. This is where having a centralised digital events and contact management system will pay dividends.

4. Offer Free Resources

Offering free resources such as webinars, whitepapers, or e-books can help attract potential members interested in your organisation's mission and activities. Ensure that the resources align with your organisation's values and provide value to potential members. Include a call-to-action in the resources that encourages readers to learn more about your organisation and become a member.

If you’re unsure of what content you can create then think about the sort of resources you would look for or simply survey your existing members! Remember that you are experts in your sector and there will be people interested in what you are going to say.

5. Partner with Other Organisations

Partnering with other organisations can help expand your reach and attract new members who may be interested in your organisation's mission and activities. Look for opportunities to collaborate on events, share resources, or co-sponsor initiatives that align with your organisation's values.

Creating synergies is very important here. Perhaps you’re a trade association that might benefit from partnering with a venue for certain events. Your attendees might consider the venue in the future and you might get a reduced rate. Or perhaps you run a local cycling association and can partner up with a bike shop. Think carefully about what services you provide and how another organisation might complement that and help you grow your reach.

6. Provide Excellent Member Service

An obvious one to end on, but still something not to overlook!

Providing excellent member service is essential for attracting and retaining members. Ensure that your organisation is responsive to inquiries, provides timely updates, and offers exceptional support to members. Offer personalised experiences and build relationships with members to create a sense of community and belonging.

If you already have members who are excited about being part of your organisation then they’ll spread the word themselves to others who also might be interested. When your members become advocates for you it means they’ll do a lot of the hard work of finding new members for you, so long as you keep up your high quality of service.

Conclusion

Attracting new members is a constant challenge and there are certainly other methods to doing it than the ones we’ve listed here. The key advice is to make sure your membership offer is as attractive as possible with the benefits being clearly advertised and visible.

This is made much easier when you underpin your membership offering with a strong digital foundation. With a way to communicate with members via attractive emails, an events management platform, and a fully featured membership portal, CiviPlus lets you do all of that and so much more. If you’d like to find out more about how CiviPlus can help you attract new members, you can get in touch with us here.

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Howdy y’all,

We are delighted to announce a new integration of CiviCRM with Open Social, a community engagement platform.

CiviCRM is the number one open source CRM for not-for profits, used by more than 11,000 organisations worldwide, and Open Social is a leading community engagement platform, used by over 1000 organisations in a range of different industries from Charities to member organisations and companies also.

It’s exciting news for organisations using CiviCRM, who will now be able to combine the power of CiviCRM with the collaboration and community building that the Open Social platform provides.
If you’ve not heard of community platforms before, a community platform is a tool that allows your organisation to create your own branded and tailored social network. Users of the platform (normally your members or supporters) can interact, join groups to share knowledge and exchange ideas, publish and promote events and collaborate within a safe online curated space. With a community platform you can expand your digital offer and strengthen your relationship with your supporters.

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Open Social is open source (much like CiviCRM) and as such has no user licences fees. This means it can be deployed affordably to scale to even the largest of communities. It’s also flexible with a huge range of different add-on modules that can be integrated to enhance the platform.

Our new two-way integration between Open Social and CiviCRM syncs data between the two platforms allowing information about the groups and committees that members have joined to be seamlessly synced to CiviCRM. You can even create Open Social groups and manage their membership directly from within CiviCRM, which would be useful for managing private groups in the case of committees or working groups.

By combining the data of a community platform with that in your CiviCRM your organisation can obtain deep insights into your members' interests and behaviours. You can see which groups are popular and engage with your members on topical issues, automating communications and tailoring their experience.

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A great example is a recent implementation for the UN’s PRI (Principles of Responsible Investment). Their user community includes over 2,900 organisations with over 40,000 individuals spread across 6 continents. Their Community Platform now supports discussions between 24,000 users with over 750 online collaboration spaces. The data is seamlessly synced to their CRM allowing for deep insight guiding their policy engagements.

As Open Social partners, we would be delighted to help you start your journey with Open Social and help you build your online community. We can help you through both the implementation and the CiviCRM integration (or other CRM integration such as Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM).

Please contact us through our website https://www.compuco.io/ or by email at hello@compucorp.co.uk.

Further information about Open Social can be found at their website: https://www.getopensocial.com/

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Alex Walmsley

April 26, 2023