Have you reached that moment in time when the traditional membership model no longer works for your association? The number of new members is dropping significantly and old members are cancelling their membership one by one. You must have asked yourself what’s the reason for this change and, fortunately, the answer has already been given by Sheri Jacobs in her article ‘Magnetic Membership: Create a Stronger Draw For Your Association’.

According to Sheri, in order to stop the drastic drop in the number of your members, you need to initiate a change – one that will help retain the old members and draw new ones to your association. Such a change is not a simple process and will require you to completely rethink and restructure your membership model, but it appears that is the only way not to end up ‘memberless’ in the long run.

When trying to improve your membership model, there are a few points you need to consider. First of all, you will have to reassess the value of your membership packs and consider adding new options for the various members. According to Sheri Jacobs, offering a membership pack based on the similarities between two people can be quite risky as being a part of the same generation and doing the same job doesn’t mean they will be interesting in the same resources, materials, events and opportunities (check out the Steve and Greg example in her article). Therefore, it is good to have a number of different packs available – thus your members can choose the one that matches their needs and won’t have to pay extra for benefits they are not going to take advantage of.

Speaking of benefits, you will need to divide the ones your association provides in four categories: available to members and non-members; available to members only; free for members; available to members at a discounted prices. This categorisation will help you do two things: firstly, determine to what extent a certain benefit can serve as a driver of membership; and secondly, how it contributes to the value of the whole pack.

As for the first point above, you will need to find out why people actually become members of your association – what drove them to that decision. You can use different ways to get this answer, one of which is to simply ask for feedback. Once you shortlist the benefits that members are most interested in, you will be able to group them more appropriately into packs and thus deliver higher membership value at a lower price.

As for the total cost of your membership packs, you need to regularly research the market to find out if you are the best choice for your prospective members. You cannot expect them to become members of your association if they can get the same benefits value (or maybe a slightly lower value), at a significantly lower price.

To sum up, reading this useful article by Sheri Jacobs will help you see the membership model at your association in a completely new light. If you want to stay on top in terms of benefits value for your members, question every benefit, the practices associated with the model and the pricing. Keeping pace with change is only possible if internal change takes place, so start renovating your association right now!