Membership strategy

How to create a membership strategy

Step 1. Review your membership audit 

• What opportunities have you identified in the SWOT analysis?
• For example, is there a particular target group you want to reach?
• How active are your members?
• Perhaps you want to focus on improving your membership retention, or increasing average member spend before thinking about investing time in recruiting new members? Maybe your membership offer isn’t very clear and members don’t feel like they are getting value.

Step 2. Set membership objectives

Use the findings of your membership audit to set three or four SMART objectives. They must be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timebound. Here are some examples:

• Increase average member value by 10% by the end of the financial year.
• Recruit 100 new members by March.
• Increase the number of members standing in board elections and attending meetings by 25% by the end of the next financial year.
• Retain 75% of your members each year.

Step 3. Create a membership plan

• Work out what actions will help achieve your objectives.
• Split these into small, achievable tasks.
• Set a date for when the task will be completed and who is responsible for it

Step 4. Measuring success

• Make sure you have systems in place to monitor and track progress against your objectives.
• Set Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which will help you monitor progress, for example how many new members join each month, how many members leave, average spend, member attendance at meetings etc

Step 5. Review and update your membership strategy and plan

• Review your plan regularly to make sure you are on track.
• A simple red, amber, green colour code can help you quickly see which tasks are complete, on track, at risk or delayed.
•  Adjust and adapt your plan based on what’s going on inside and outside of your co-op business.
• Feed this into your strategy, and repeat steps 1-5.