September 14, 2007
The Growth Thing Keeps Growing
Posted by Kevin | Print This Article
Not to belabor any further this discussion, but reading through my last post and Tony Rossell’s comments I’m afraid I may have given the impression that I am somehow anti-marketing, which could not be further from the truth. One problem with blogging is that its format lends itself to oversimplification. So here is a more direct statement — a “clarification” if you will, that I’ve tried to scrub of my usual flippancy:
The purpose of an association is NOT to grow its membership. The purpose of an association is to serve its membership. If it serves its membership well, and markets its efforts correctly, the association will grow, within the boundaries of whatever industry segment or membership it serves.
That’s it. Really. (How’s that for oversimplification?)
But of course I have to keep talking:
Associations that have “room for growth” often view membership growth as a measurement of how well the association is serving its members. Unfortunately, some associations lose sight of what those numbers really mean, and instead become blinded by the formula “Growth = Success.” They forget that it is only one measurement among many designed to help the association understand if it is meeting its goals — probably because in many cases it is the only metric they have bothered to track, since it is the easiest of any possible measurement other than P&L.
These are the organizations that become Membership Obsessed. They stop selling membership and start selling discounts. Meeting artificial number goals becomes more important than serving their existing customer base. They offer cut-rate or even free membership dues with no thought as to what impact it might have down the road, because that is something to worry about later. (For those who think associations have little in common with public corporations, there is a striking similarity between Membership Obsession and Quarterly Numbers Obsession.)
Ironically, volunteer leaders are far more likely to be Membership Obsessed than professional staff. I say ironically because metrics that cover such things as customer satisfaction and, yes, even “engagement”, sound as though they would matter more to volunteer leaders who are, of course, already customers, and should benefit from such a focus. Yet most staff afflicted with Membership Obsession find themselves in their predicament ultimately because of pressure, somehow or some way, from volunteer leadership.
The question is, why do so many association leaders focus so intensely on membership growth? Again, I think it may be because membership is usually the only measurement we give them other than financials. Especially in business organizations, leaders tend to be a little more comfortable talking about tangible things like numbers than intangible things, and since it’s considered somehow unseemly to stand up in front of an association meeting and talk about black ink, the focus turns to membership.
The solution is for the organization to provide other metrics in addition to membership numbers that are meaningful and useful. This of course leads back to Scott Briscoe’s original post on this topic; the only disagreement I have with Scott is that I believe membership growth and retention figures are not “of tertiary interest”, they are of primary interest, but should be viewed in context. To put it in personal terms, the organization I work for has grown very significantly over the last few years. That’s a fact we’re very proud of. It is not of tertiary interest — but it’s not necessarily the most interesting thing we’ve accomplished.
What should the “other metrics” be? That’s where the rubber meets the road. In his very first post on this topic back in January, Scott had some specific ideas. Ultimately I think that many of these metrics, if they are to be truly meaningful, will have to be unique to individual associations and depend on their commitment and capabilities for necessary data collection, tracking, and analysis.
(As to Ben’s thoughts on want vs. need, that’s something I’ve thought a lot about over the last few years, and will be hopefully writing about soon in a post tentatively titled “The View from the Ivory Tower.”)
Kevin — I thought that your response to my comment did a great job explaining your perspective, but thanks for the follow up post. As you know, there are people who are simply anti-marketing and I do not think that this serves the association community. Tony