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There are certain management words that have become so broad over time that they either have lost their meaning or carry so many valid meanings that it is difficult to know which one a given speaker intends. The term "membership" is one of the latter words. It has been stretched and pulled to fit so many circumstances that it is easy to lose sight of what it really means. To complicate things, different types of members have different types of needs, so any nonprofit claiming members in any way needs to be sure that they match their efforts with members' expectations.
For our purposes, there are three common types of nonprofits that use memberships as a significant revenue stream: advocacy organizations, cultural associations, and trade associations. The first two below are based on individual members, and the third is based on corporate members. Leave aside professional societies in view of their more narrow focus.
Which one best describes your organization? Depending on your model, the streetsmart membership manager will need to do different things. We'll describe each membership model and then suggest the unique management responsibilities that the model requires.
* Advocacy
* Cultural
* Trade associations
ADVOCACY MEMBERSHIP
Advocacy members are individuals who belong to a nonprofit largely to help fight for a cause. For both the organization and the member, there are many implied dimensions to the membership transaction. Here are five of them:
* First, there is an overarching cause, such as with civil rights organizations or groups dedicated to the eradication of a specific illness.
* Second, there is at least the implied possibility that some day members will be called upon to do something, such as lobby their legislators or show up for a demonstration.
* Third, advocacy members expect their membership dollars to go toward unspecified steps intended to advance the cause.
* Fourth, members expect the group itself to have an established brand name.
* Fifth, advocacy associations will tend to have to change more quickly because elements as diverse as new technology, new laws, and abrupt cultural shifts can change the strategic environment.
Perhaps the key aspect of the advocacy nonprofit is that members implicitly give their advocacy association a great deal of latitude due to the obviously imprecise nature of advocacy. In fact, for many advocacy groups the fact of their existence seems nearly as important as any outcomes they may achieve. Partly this is a tacit recognition that in some cases the primary advocacy task is defensive ("hold onto our gains"), while another benefit is just the knowledge that someone is minding the advocacy store.
MANAGEMENT TASK PROFILE
Advocacy associations have a uniquely complex task because of their model, which can be described as a business-to-consumer model. Their smallest "unit" of membership is the individual, which means that a l0,000-person association has to engage in tens of thousands of transactions with individuals each year. With each member they must begin or renew the membership, answer questions related to this and possibly advocacy matters, and send several communications to each member about things such as updates and invitations to conferences and trainings and the like.
This approach is like running a store in which you earn your money via one small transaction at a time. Moving some of this contact onto the Web helps with the cost, but it doesn't change the underlying model.
Because the advocacy association has to build a more or less cohesive force out of tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of individual contacts and transactions, the total membership has real value in many senses of the word. Of course, since there is no intermediary level between the individual and the association, the interaction will sometimes get a little raw.
Association managers need to build in good conflict resolution mechanisms for this reason. Ironically, this is also one of the reasons why governments not only tolerate trade associations but actually benefit from them. They don't have to mediate private disputes via public policy. Inherent in this is a keen sense of accountability to the cause. In the short-term, membership dollars come without strings attached, which helps management flexibility. But association management has to be seen as making valiant efforts to support the cause, and this leads naturally to a robust and ongoing program of member communication centered by shared goals.
Frequent communication is an art form in these groups. A recent survey of several associations revealed an even split between those using mail vs. email for mass communications. It is reasonable to assume that the trend toward email will only accelerate in the next few years, but whatever method is used, advocacy associations must be equipped to reach members easily and often. In turn, this means that association staff must be very accomplished at creating content for members.
CULTURAL MEMBERSHIP
The next form of membership is called cultural because it is mostly about creating a shared identification among members. Public radio stations are a good example of cultural memberships. Unlike the advocacy membership, the cultural member seeks little in return beyond a feeling of belonging. The cultural membership must still offer connection with a brand, but the advocacy member's call to arms would be out of place in a cultural group. Rather, the nonprofit must be able to offer a sense of kinship in support for the brand.
The cultural membership is also a consumer-based model, though usually with fewer transactions than the advocacy group. There is nothing to accomplish here, beyond the validation of association with a prestigious or at least important entity. In reality, the cultural membership model is understood by both member and entity to be little more than a donation. Whatever the member receives in return for his or her membership, if anything, is likely to be something on the order of a logo coffee cup.
CULTURAL MANAGEMENT TASK PROFILE
Again, a strong brand is a pre-requisite for a satisfying cultural membership. Since the primary function of the membership is understood by both parties to be fundraising, the management task is virtually identical to generic fundraising requirements.
The exception is that cultural members can be a bit more demanding than donors of a similar amount, if only because of the enthusiasm they bring to the relationship. This is why cultural memberships sometimes involve special events (for a separate admission, of course). College alumni clubs are essentially cultural memberships, since food and entertainment are usually sold at or above cost. In fact, cultural memberships are often very successful when they occur in a larger context.
TRADE ASSOCIATION MEMBERSHIP
Trade association members are mostly corporations. The trade association model is one of the most avowedly commercial in the nonprofit sector. Corporations join a trade association for explicit business purposes, such as an enhanced ability to lobby as an industry or to influence public perceptions of the members' industry.
The fact that it is difficult to link the effectiveness of the association on any given issue with any of its actions doesn't diminish the usefulness of trade associations. The biggest difference between an advocacy membership and a trade association membership is that trade associations form for the purpose of benefiting their member corporations by influencing external parties such as governments. Advocacy associations, on the other hand, usually have an implied intent to influence external parties on behalf of a broadly defined class of individuals.
TRADE ASSOCIATION MANAGEMENT TASK PROFILE
Trade association membership usually costs significantly more than advocacy or cultural memberships because it is a business-to-business model. In any given industry there are likely to be fewer companies interested in trade association membership than there are individuals amenable to an advocacy membership. This makes the member management task simpler, at least to the extent that it requires fewer transactions per member. Also, the individuals designated to handle the membership on both sides tend to share a minimum level of sophistication, which makes the transactions flow more smoothly.
In trade associations, member dues are the third rail. As with taxes, no one wants to see their dues payments increase, particularly if the people in the company who are active in the trade association don't have full authority to pay for it. So trade associations must either be in a booming industry where all parties are growing rapidly or they must find substantial other revenue streams.
This is why trade associations frequently get into activities like conferences, training, and publishing. Even if these activities lose money, they usually cover their share of overhead costs and support a good portion of the staff. At the same time there is always member churn as companies enter or exit the industry, so the association has to have at least a minimal marketing capability just to replace members. The ancillary activities and the constant marketing are essentially mechanisms for buffering against inevitable swings in memberships so as to provide the association with some level of stability.
Organizations offering memberships must have a clear idea of their membership model. Different models require different things of the sponsoring organization. Membership revenue may be unrestricted but it isn't free.
Thomas A. McLaughlin is a national nonprofit management consultant with Grant Thornton LLP in Boston. He is the author of the book Nonprofit Strategic Positioning (John Wiley and Sons, 2006). His email address is thomas.mclaughlin@gt.com
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