Increasing Member Engagement - An Association Management Company

February 2019 – Rick Szilagyi, Principal

In the January edition of our newsletter, two articles touched on the increasing challenges nonprofits are facing relative to securing volunteers. Perhaps the same forces impacting volunteerism are also affecting membership in membership organizations. Attracting members is an issue, and keeping them is, as well.

There is no shortage of articles on specific things to do to develop the level of engagement of a member. I’ll list a few at the end of this brief summary. But, I want to touch on a presentation by Ben Bisbee of RhinocornConsulting.com, in which he outlines, in great detail, different levels of psychological engagement, on his “engagement spectrum.” Moving from a passive level to the “most engaged” level, the spectrum looks like this:

The descriptions and examples of the levels become more detailed as we move through the spectrum, and an organization shouldn’t expect that all members are interested in the higher levels. Two of my takeaways are this: First, certainly, increasing the level of engagement creates a stronger bond; and, second, I believe that our board members may be sourced from those members interested in engaging at the highest level. Most importantly, efforts to hold current membership – and efforts to increase the contributions of current volunteers HAS TO BE of increased importance in a time when it is hard to get people “in the door” in the first place.