How a Relation-centered Approach Increases and Expands Member Engagement

Membership-based organizations (MBOs) seeking new and better ways to increase and expand member engagement have learned that better outcomes can be achieved if their volunteer and staff leaders replace or adjust one very popular long-standing assumption about their members: that they fail to engage because they are “too busy.”

How did they come to that realization?

By participating as a research partner with the Melos Institute; pilot testing concepts uniquely designed to support MBOs. One of the first such opportunities occurred years ago when the Institute wanted to find out why some members engaged while others did not. About the same time, volunteer and staff leaders from a California-based MBO were interested in learning the same.

We both suspected that members wanted to engage. From our collective experience, we recognized that active members interestingly enough also tended to be busy members. We just weren’t entirely certain what the barrier was for those who remained inactive. We were eager to find answers.

The findings from that initial effort led to multi-year multi-dimensional research endeavor which provided a series of unexpected insights. This posting introduces one specific to member engagement.

We discovered that:

Integrating popular long-standing transaction-based concepts into MBOs’ existing strategies is unintentionally undermining their ability to increase and expand member engagement.

This insight, along with others from additional applied research efforts, led us to discover that MBOs required an approach uniquely designed to their distinctive purpose, scope, focus, and goals. Working with a number of research teams – comprised of association management professionals, volunteer leaders, subject matter experts, and scholars – we defined a set of premises, principles, policies, processes, procedures, and practices that would ultimately be referred to as relation-centered management.

But the initial discovery above was prompted by the development of a custom-made icebreaker: asking members to write brief stories explaining how their membership had made a difference in their lives.

How Members’ Stories Helped Us Better Understand Their Engagement

Some years ago, Scarlett Vanyi, CAE and Raven Deerwater, EA, Ph.D., chief executive and chief elective officers respectively of CSEA at the time, wanted their volunteer leaders to play a much more active role in getting members to engage at both the local and state levels. We brainstormed various ways in which that message could be integrated into the event. We also assumed that getting members to draw from their own experiences – right at the start of the conference – would help reinforce it.

Finding an activity that achieved the objective proved futile. With their consent, I designed one that required everyone’s involvement. At the start of the conference, nearly 100 volunteer leaders were asked to write a brief story explaining how being a member had made a difference in their lives.

The icebreaker proved to be a smashing hit. No one expected the stories to be as moving, inspirational, and heartwarming as they were. Thankfully, as interesting as the stories were individually, important common patterns and trends became immediately evident just from the initial brief onsite collective analysis. Volunteer leaders gained insight, many for the first time, into just how consequential engagement had been for everyone attending. More importantly, additional discussions throughout the day helped them recognize the impact their outreach efforts could have in helping other members engage to benefit as well.

What was their common experience?

Most every volunteer leader was initially influenced to get involved
after receiving fairly personalized guidance and support from
a fellow member, a volunteer leader, the MBO’s CEO, or a staff professional.

In essence, their engagement was prompted by a rather serendipitous encounter.

Anomaly or Discovery?

The information gained from this one activity made eminent sense. Active members were perfect advisors as they had learned how to navigate their MBOs to make the most of their membership. In this case, however, they were serving as momentary mentors facilitating members’ assimilation into their organizations.

But was this initial finding an anomaly or a discovery? Fortunately, many more opportunities were made available to repeat the icebreaker. Each time, the same patterns and trends emerged from their stories.

Then, it became important to know whether or not this was merely a contemporary phenomenon. Or, had it been possibly going on for some time?

To find out, I dove into the Institute’s historical and archival records to see if similar experiences had been shared during previously conducted individual and group interviews. I also looked for stories or quotes in the association management literature. My search, which went back several decades, revealed very similar narratives in both.

That led to a much more in-depth analysis.

Whether the focus was on one MBO or several combined, the patterns and trends remained the same.

Members who received guidance and support from a peer or a staff professional
were more apt to get and remain engaged than those
who did not have that same advantage.

The consistency, across decades, made clear that this informal – often serendipitous – interaction made a difference. Members’ stories had given us rare insight into why some members engaged while others did not.

More importantly, this informal momentary mentoring strategy had been going on for decades!

A Strategy Hidden in Plain Sight

Members telling stories about their member experience is not new. We have all heard them while talking to members. We have generally viewed their accounts as interesting anecdotes and nothing more.

It wasn’t until nearly 100 were drafted and shared in one setting that these seemingly disparate stories revealed critical insights about members and membership in MBOs. And, it wasn’t until even more were generated, compiled, and analyzed that we discovered the most effective strategy had been going on – for decades – literally been hiding in plain sight!

We could only assume that these stories did not capture volunteer and staff leaders’ attention because the impact on engagement was insignificant; as only a small number of members – who were often randomly selected – benefited.

But we now know that providing guidance and support is critical to increasing and expanding member engagement. And, that it can be provided in many different ways…member-to-member included.

More importantly, we realized that these interactions helped members understand what it meant to be a member; access what they needed to address their needs, interests, goals, and aspirations as well as contribute their information, knowledge, experiences, expertise, and connections to help other members as well as their MBOs.

That led us to see the extent to which the more popular long-standing strategies provided the same insights. They did not.

Again, we assumed the reason these actions did not was because most were initially designed for use in for profit settings where the objective was to generate a sales transaction. We characterized them as being transaction-based. While they did encourage many members to make purchases (e.g., register for conferences, buy books, etc.), they generally encouraged members to focus on one item at a time and rarely attempted to encourage other types of engagement at the same time.

Working with others, the Institute conceptualized what a more effective approach needed to look like. Once a prototype was developed, we realized that a new term and definition was needed to distinguish it from the more traditional transaction-based model. We opted to describe it as relation-centered.

Relation-centered vs Transaction-based Approach: A Brief Overview

A relation-centered approach differs from its transaction-based counterpart in that it views members as citizens of specially-defined membership communities; working in concert with their MBOs to improve their own personal and professional lives as well as work collectively to advance their practice settings.

Thus, MBOs can only accomplish this by providing members with the guidance and support needed to:  

• identify specific opportunities (i.e., programs, products, and services) – that are most relevant for them – which immediately allow them to address their needs and interests as well as advance their goals and aspirations;
• realize that participation is but one way to fulfill their expectations, and;
• understand that contributing in a voluntary way is another – often equally effective – way to achieve their desired outcomes; thus seriously consider opportunities where they can contribute their information, knowledge, experiences, expertise, and connections to support other members as well as their MBOs.

A transaction-based approach, initially created for for-profit organizations, is not inherently designed to achieve these outcomes. At best, it can only help these enterprises establish superficial company-to-customer relationships. What these companies want more than anything else is customer loyalty. Most have no desire or need for their customers to develop lasting relationships with one another.

By contrast, MBOs’ long-term sustainability is dependent on the degree to which their specially-defined membership communities develop a high-degree of social cohesion. This cannot be achieved solely by developing MBO-to-member relationships. It requires strategic and concentrated relation-centered efforts to help members develop meaningful and purposeful relationships with one another. Our research has proven that these actions can easily be integrated into existing strategies.

Since members don’t fully understand what it means to be a member, MBOs that use transaction-based strategies are unintentionally sending and reinforcing the message that members are just like customers. Members, understanding this role, behave as such and thus wait to receive promotions to make decisions about their engagement. They also then see voluntary service as a sacrifice of their time rather than an investment to achieve their desired outcomes.

Teaching members how to navigate their MBOs in a relation-centered way to get what they need, when they need it, and in a format that works for them is but the start of what the Institute has discovered about MBOs, membership and member engagement. Further findings and more insight on how to integrate a relation-centered approach into your member engagement strategies is available in: The Member Engagement Paradox: Overcoming 7 Obstacles to Build and Maintain Thriving Membership Communities.

Why Consider Making the Adjustment?

MBOs play a consequential role in shaping every profession, trade, and personal avocation in America.

They can only achieve this if their specially-defined membership communities have developed a high degree of social cohesion. The secret to achieving that end is helping members fully understand and appreciate what it means to be a member and how to make the most of their membership.

That said, times are such that many members, across a wide range of MBOs, are now facing an array of unwelcome threats and challenges. External and internal forces are seeking to impose the kinds of changes that may not advance their practice settings, but instead may force its regression.

Those MBOs that have adjusted their strategies to be more relation-centered than transaction-based will have a membership community fully prepared and willing to play whatever role is needed to ensure their fields of endeavor are not compromised.

Securing a high degree of member engagement is the key to achieving the power and influence necessary to combat these pressures.

Members’ stories have helped us understand what they need to ensure their membership delivered a meaningful and purposeful experience. It has also prompted the Institute to expand its applied research efforts to studying MBOs in a more relation-centered context.

We invite those who are interested in learning more and/or contributing to that endeavor to contact us directly.

Patricia A. Hudson, MPsSc is the founder and president of the Melos Institute   

© Copyright 2024 ¨Melos Institute – Santa Fe, NM     All rights reserved. 

For permission to reprint this posting (via a digital file) or to access the Transformative Impact of Membership icebreaker, contact the Melos Institute: info@melosinstitute.org.