In January, the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) began offering free admission and membership. Visitors can enroll as a DMA Friend, the museum’s new “platform for engaged participation.” In a paper presented at the Museum and the Web conference in April, DMA Deputy Director Robert Stein and Bruce Wyman of USD Design/Mach Consulting said:

“One of the underlying goals of the program is to create long-term relationships with visitors while offering them value and benefits tailored to their experience and engagement with the museum. This long-term connection and repeat participation is seen as key to establishing the hoped for relevance of the museum in the lives of visitors.”

Instead of a transactional business (and membership) model based on the exchange of money for services, DMA built a new model based on relationships. Since any membership priced less than $100 was a net loss for the museum, they’re now focusing on member participation, believing revenue will come from members’ deeper engagement with the museum.

Like associations, museums have long had a traditional and predictable membership structure. But in the past few years, museums like the Whitney and the DMA, have tried new approaches to maintain, grow and, hopefully, deepen connections with their audience. DMA still offers higher-priced membership levels, but the Friends program is a way for them to connect with entry-level members. Could your association offer something similar to those who aren’t currently interested in paying for traditional association membership benefits?

Points, perks and badges

By scanning their membership card at checkpoints throughout the museum or texting an activity code upon entering a gallery, DMA Friends earn points and digital badges for activities such as asking staff a question, visiting a specific gallery, taking a tour or attending an event.

Points can be redeemed for perks like free parking, admission to ticketed exhibitions, shopping and dining discounts and behind-the-scenes tours. They can even be used like cash to pay for higher levels of membership. Most of these perks cost nothing extra for the museum to provide.

In April, DMA director Maxwell Anderson said they were signing up an average of 84 new members a day — more than 90 percent of whom were new contacts in their database. Based on activities and point redemption history, DMA can now send these members targeted communications about exhibits and events that may appeal to them.

Data delivers insight and member delight

To measure audience or member engagement, museums, like associations, have traditionally relied on qualitative surveys requiring considerable staff or financial resources. In addition, “such qualitative analysis is frequently designed with specific questions in mind, making the discovery of new patterns of participation slow and cumbersome.”

The new Friends program allows DMA to collect not only demographic data on its visitors/members but also data about their interests and habits – where they’re swiping their card, how frequently and which perks they redeem. Because of this actionable, and often real-time, data, the museum can create opportunities to interact with members. For example, if they notice that a large number of Friends have swiped their card in a specific gallery, staff will send a text to them offering a guided tour.

Make the human connection

Stein and Wyman believe: 

“…the heart of any successful engagement is the individual human connection that can happen in the museum. In large museums, this individual attention can be difficult; therefore, this project sets its focus on building an institutional infrastructure that can support many kinds of participation without getting in the way of a great museum experience.”

Associations have the same challenge. A “one-size-fits-all” approach works administratively but does it work for members? How can you offer a more meaningful, valuable and personal membership experience given limited resources?

Like DMA, associations can leverage technology to collect and act upon member, attendee and website visitor data. By seeing what data reveals about behaviors and preferences, you can offer your members and audiences the level of programs, services and products that aligns with their needs, interests and habits while deepening their engagement with the association.

A free membership level, like DMA’s Friends, is a way to connect with non-members who aren’t willing or able to purchase a traditional membership. In exchange for basic benefits, you can learn more about them while becoming part of their life. Who knows where the relationship might lead!

Deirdre Reid, CAE is a freelance writer who is a bit obsessed with the museum world.

Becoming a digital association is not for the weak of heart, but, the prognosis for your association is gloomy if you don’t.

At the digitalNOW conference, I learned about an association that is in the midst of making that transition – the American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP). Stephen J. Welch, Senior Vice President, Communications at ACCP, walked us through their journey so far. He said, “The heavy lifting is yet to be done” and it’s going to be more expensive than they initially projected, but their board is still “on board.”

The online world is changing everyone’s habits and expectations, and doctors have been quick to adjust. In late 2011, ACCP conducted a readership survey and found that 65 percent of their members had, or were planning to have, an iPhone and 59 percent  had, or were planning to have, an iPad by the end of 2012.

The Amazon model – the knowing portal — has also set new expectations for online experiences. We’re used to seeing targeted and personalized communication, advertisements and search results, even though the platforms don’t always get it right – I’m talking about you, Facebook.

ACCP saw other changes in their industry. Healthcare professionals had more demands on their time, and their pay was decreasing due to cuts in reimbursements. Members were moving to a continuous educational update model, instead of taking a test every ten years. It was time for ACCP to make some big changes.

ACCP’s goal: Develop an integrated and personalized online experience across all platforms to inform, engage and empower their customers and bring them a one-stop knowledge portal.

They set out to make these changes to:

• Make it easy for members and customers to find the right information.
• Provide value that meets their needs in a changing educational environment.
• Cut through the noise to provide “must-have” engagement opportunities.
• Create a one-stop shop for education, maintenance of certification, content, research and other relevant information that’s accessible anytime, anywhere via digital delivery.

At the outset, they underwent an IT audit and identified areas of weakness that needed to be addressed through a technology strategy. Then, they created a plan to completely overhaul their IT infrastructure and platforms to revamp their ability to develop, store and deliver content with a digital-first approach.

They developed a content strategy with the aim of reinforcing their core value proposition, positioning ACCP as the leading source of educational content for their industry and increasing collaboration. They’re using a unified taxonomy based on the ACCP education curriculum.

They are rebuilding their technology infrastructure from the ground up and moving as much as they can to the Cloud. Stephen said, “When you build a house, you put in the foundation first — the AMS. However, pressures from our leadership and membership dictated that we build the rooms first and add the foundation later.” They’re in the process of migrating to their new foundation, Avectra Social CRM.

The “rooms” (integrated platforms) of their new “house” are:

• MemberFuse-powered online community launched in March 2012. Member use and engagement continues to grow. They’re developing content around case discussions. The mobile-optimized version of the ACCP e-Community launched last December.
• Content management system and website with integrated search: all sites will be mobile-optimized, moving ACCCP toward their “information anytime, anywhere” goal.
• Public education website.
• iPhone and iPad apps.
• Multimedia publications site with improved search, browse and “related content” recommendations.
• Learning management system for educational content delivery, online learning, testing and assessment.Web-based quality improvement tool for chest physicians to help them improve their practice through the application of data reports and peer comparisons. Stephen said, “Data is key to ACCP’s future endeavors. It’s the building block in our “essential resource” concept.

 They’re moving forward in phases and making progress. “We are doing it backwards, but it’s working,” said Stephen.

Deirdre Reid, CAE is a freelance writer who loves seeing associations moving forward even when the path is twisty.

National Volunteer Week is an annual celebration of the contributions volunteers make to their organizations and communities.  

And it started on Sunday. What’s that I hear?

“Oh crap, I missed it again?!? Arrgh, it’s already halfway over!”

Fear not. It’s all fixable. Here’s what you do. Pick and choose.

1. Be prepared for 2014. This one’s mandatory: mark your calendar with next year’s dates, April 6-13, 2014. Later, develop a plan of action and timeline leading up to that week.

2. Send out the alarm. Immediately let all staff know it’s National Volunteer Week, so they can express their personal thanks when talking to members.

3. Personal thank-you emails. Ask any staff who works with committees and other volunteers to send a personal thank-you email to them. These questions might help them come up with a message:

• How do those members help move the association toward its goals?
• How do they help you get your job done?
• What do you love most about working or meeting with them?
• When you think about the time they take away from their jobs and families to do association work, what thoughts come to mind?
• What group activity, event or accomplishment do you look forward to in the coming year?

4. Website home page. Grab some home page real estate on your website and beg someone to create a thank-you graphic. As much as I hate suggesting this, if you don’t have the talent on staff or the budget to outsource it, consider a crowdsourcing site like Fiverr. Sorry, designer friends, I’ll never suggest that again, but we’ve got an emergency here!

5. Newsletters. Find out what newsletters and other communications are scheduled for email this week. Can you insert a thank-you message in any of them?

6. Social media updates. Ask your social media colleagues if they can schedule a few thank-you updates for the rest of the week. Make it easy for them by providing sample copy they can edit.

7. Blog posts. Write and publish a blog post about the impact volunteers make on the association and its community. If you can, get someone else to do the same, or interview them and write the post yourself.

8. Videos. Do you have a video camera? Go around the office asking your colleagues what volunteers mean to them, or use the questions above. Post the video on your YouTube channel, get the link out via scheduled email blasts or social platforms, and post it on your home page.

9. Arts and crafts for office creatives! Make cards, signs or art projects to photograph and post on Instagram, Pinterest and other online platforms.

10. Blast thank-you email. If you track volunteer activity in your AMS, send a special email to all your volunteers – not only the ones on committees, but anyone who has helped at an event or with other activities.

11. Special treatment. If there’s a smaller group of volunteers who have gone above and beyond, send them a small gift. Even a Starbucks card will put a smile on their face. Or give them a special promo discount code to use as they wish.

12. Postpone. If you’re in hair-on-fire mode and there’s no way you can do any of these things, that’s all right. Schedule your own Volunteer Week at a more convenient time. But if you do that, make sure you do it every year.

Don’t wait for Volunteer Week to show your appreciation. Encourage everyone to get in the habit of thanking volunteers throughout the year. Even better, show your appreciation in other ways:

• Give volunteers the tools and support they need to get their work done.
• Prevent “martyr syndrome” by encouraging leaders to delegate work and train others to follow in their footsteps.
• Provide opportunities for volunteers to learn new skills and stretch their comfort zones.

Peggy Hoffman at Mariner Management says this week is a good time “to reflect on what volunteering means to your organization. How is it working for your organization, for you as a volunteer manager, for your volunteers, for your mission? What needs to be changed? What can be changed?”

How can you encourage more members to volunteer? I don’t mean volunteer for committee service, but rather any short-term or ad-hoc task — micro-volunteering. Many members have no desire to serve on a committee, but they’re just waiting for someone to ask them to contribute in a way that works with their lifestyle and schedule.

Deirdre Reid, CAE is a freelance writer who always forgets about National Volunteer Week until Peggy Hoffman reminds her.

We complain about cable companies, but they have more subscription options than associations have membership options. When you join an association, you usually have one option for membership that’s defined by your place within an industry or profession – industry professional, vendor or student. 

However, when you sign up for cable, you can stick to the basic package or add HD, premium, sports, international or other packages to it. Like associations, you get a lot of channels (benefits) you never use, but with the emergence of new disruptive TV technology, that may change one day.

If you belong to an association, think about your membership. Does it completely fit you? Are you taking advantage of all the benefits offered? Don’t you wish you could choose a membership plan that better reflected your behavior and needs?

I started thinking about these questions after attending a digitalNOW session by Sheri Jacobs, CAE, President and CEO of Avenue M Group. Sheri introduced me to a membership structure I had never seen before – one based on the member’s desired experience: Whitney Museum’s Curate Your Own Membership (CYOM).

Whitney members start with the Core Benefits for $85. They can add one of the CYOM series (for $40 each) to their membership:

• Social – invitations to receptions/exhibition previews and other city cultural events along with guest passes
• Insider – behind-the-scenes tours, gallery talks and presentations plus quarterly recommendations from curators and art insiders about city cultural activities
• Learning – invitations to lecture series, educational emails and preferred registration for public programs
• Family – admission to family programs, Kids Passport, half-off stroller tours and guest passes

As I listened to Sheri’s presentation, I kept thinking, “I would love my art museum to do this. Heck, I would love my associations to do this.” 

Changing membership at the Whitney

On the Museum 2.0 blog, Nina Simon asked Kristen Denner, Whitney’s Director of Membership and Annual Fund, about this new model:

“We wanted to find a way to really connect with our members and understand what experiences they value most at the Whitney. And we also wanted to respond to the general consumer desire for customization. I think museum visitors are ready and eager for museums to catch up to retail and the for-profit world and recognize them as individuals rather than homogeneous groups.”

Doesn’t this make a lot of sense when you substitute “museum visitors” with “association members?”

Here’s the thing: this interview is from September 2010. Is the Whitney that much ahead or are we just woefully behind?

The transition to CYOM began with focus groups to learn about the types of experiences that current and prospective members would value as part of membership. A cross-departmental team identified unmet needs and created new benefits to meet those needs.

They hoped this new approach would allow them to tailor their enewsletters and invitations to different membership segments and, most importantly, foster an emotional connection with members.

One year later, Denner said, “We far exceeded our goals for the first year and we are seeing a higher level of engagement from our members.” You can read another interview with Denner at Associations Now. 

What about associations?

Following the Whitney’s example, identify the behavior, needs, desires and interests of your members and prospects. Asking questions like “What do you want to get out of your membership?” may not be enough; look at their behavior both inside and outside the association. What experiences do they value? How can you provide those experiences?

What do your members and prospects care about?

• Keeping up on news? Learning? Keeping their license up to date?
• Volunteering? Being a leader? Being an advocate?
• Hanging up a membership certificate?
• Finding a mentor? Helping others?
• Meeting peers? Meeting leads? Socializing?
• Entering or transitioning into your industry? Getting a job? Getting ahead?

Do members who live near your headquarters have a different membership experience than those who live far away? Do members want a virtual or face-to-face experience or both? A passive or active experience?

How do they like to spend their free time? Many associations shy away from anything having to do with the “personal,” but many members may not mind mixing personal with professional, especially given life’s time constraints.

Just as your members have different TV viewing habits, they have different associating habits too. It’s time to think about offering a new menu of membership experiences based on what different segments of your membership value the most. 

Deirdre Reid, CAE is a freelance writer who is thinking about the membership benefits and experiences she values most.