Many YMCA and JCC organizations struggle with member retention, and 2020 has amplified these challenges. A study conducted of 17 YMCAs across the U.S. found that, without intervention, 63% of new members stopped exercising within six months of joining the organization and, unsurprisingly, member termination often followed.

We’re sharing a collection of tips and strategies to help you retain your members, even during these challenging times when in-person activities are limited.

Why Member Retention Matters

As the old adage goes, it’s more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to retain a current one. How much time does your team spend reaching out to potential new members versus enriching and cultivating relationships with your current ones? And, how often does your leadership team review retention numbers and look for correlations with program usage, differences across facilities, age and gender distribution, and more?

6 Ways to Increase Member Retention…Yes, Even In a Pandemic

1. Prioritize Members’ Needs and Align Programs to Meet Them.

Your members have unique goals and needs and specific reasons that they joined your organization in the first place. This can include a gym with childcare options, group workout classes, programs for seniors, or summer camps for kids. When your members first enroll, leverage surveys and phone calls from your staff to identify their individual needs and guide them to programs that align with their goals.

Some organizations have used journey mapping to identify initiatives and programs that are most valuable to members. Front desk staff may hear comments and frustrations with limited pool access or crowded locker rooms during peak periods but mapping the full member experience may point to optimizing the workout class schedule as an improvement where you’ll get the most bang for your buck.

Additionally, what’s important to members may have changed over the past few months. They may want to know how many people will be in a certain workout class before they come to the facility and what percent of the time they’ll have to spend indoors. Have you shifted your communication efforts to share the information that’s most important right now?

The Y-USA finds that new members are 50% more likely to leave if they don’t make friends and cannot meet their wellness goals. And, if members have few or no interactions with staff in their first month after joining, they are 50% less likely to return the following month. Look for opportunities to make connections between members as well as staff and provide members with easy ways to track their goals and progress towards them. I’ll share more on tracking progress in a moment.

For your existing members, consider ways to keep them engaged with others at the organization. For example, a member referral program can provide a reduced monthly fee to members who recruit their friends or family to join the organization. Both members can take advantage of the reduced monthly rate, they have gained a workout buddy and your membership base has grown.

2. Reinforce the Value That You Provide to Members.

Make sure to highlight the results of your work in personalized emails and member newsletters, reminding them of the programs that are unique to them and that you care about their needs and are working hard to meet them.

This is especially important during the pandemic when members are able to take advantage of a limited number of programs and facilities. Make sure to communicate often about the changes that you’ve made to accommodate social distancing, which facilities are open, changes to processes such as booking classes and more. And, consider providing members with a year-end summary statement of benefits where you quantify the value of the benefits they’ve received.

3. Make Membership Affordable and Streamline the Renewal Process.

Membership affordability is always a concern, but it is particularly relevant this year when many families have lost their jobs, experienced pay cuts or had to prioritize their limited resources. Revisit your membership options to ensure that you can accommodate a range of budgets and options. While in-person interactions are still limited, consider membership options that allow people to take advantage of digital programming only and provide ways for people to pause their membership and resume billing at a future date.

Organizations tend to focus on retention every 12 or 13 months instead of thinking about it on a monthly basis. Instead, evaluate your member retention data and discussions during the time periods when people are making a decision to renew their membership. If the majority of your members are paying their dues monthly, they’re considering the value of that membership each month and not just at the end of their renewal cycle.

4. Is your organization a place where people know your name?

 Sometimes you wanna go

Where everybody knows your name…

Okay, but really. Your staff plays a crucial role in facilitating relationships and helping members feel welcome every time that they walk through the door. Emphasize the importance among your team of getting to know members personally. Remembering first names is important, of course, but it can certainly be difficult. Instead, focus on details that are relevant to that member such as why they joined the organization, their fitness goals, what’s happening in their lives, etc. Front desk staff and trainers can make notes about these details in the member’s record and quickly reference them when he or she shows up for a class or training session.

When a prospective new member is given a tour of your facility, encourage staff to introduce them to other people in the organization. In a socially distant world, you can make introductions via your member community or launching a virtual buddy program. By creating these connections prior to member enrollment, you’ve built a reason for them to come back and instilled a tight-knit community atmosphere in your organization. When that member comes back for their first program or workout, they’ve already met a few people and feel like they’re part of the community.

5. Get Members Plugged In.

Your member community is a powerful tool for member retention. Often, members may feel that they’re solely responsible to keep up their exercise program and training schedule. Find ways for members to collaborate with and support one another as they work towards their goals.

You can host community events and hangouts for targeted groups such as members who joined in a particular month, those recently signed up for personal training, parents of young kids, and more. Encourage people to come early to a workout session, whether it’s in-person or virtual, or stay later to get to know their classmates. Introduce new members to people who frequent your facility often and find ways for staff to engage with all members, both the newbies and veterans.

6. Communicate Often and Help Members Track Their Progress.

Communication can help keep engagement high for some members. Consider accountability programs where members receive notifications when they have missed multiple sessions or are visiting your facility less often. The first sign of a member not being engaged is missing a week or two of workouts. Consider having your staff reach out, ideally someone they already know, to find out if anything has changed with their goals and how your team can support them.

Tracking progress can be difficult and it’s hard to bounce back once you’ve missed out on a few sessions. You can integrate your member management software with tracking programs and apps on a member’s phone or smart watch. The YMCA of the Twin Cities did this by engaging Personify, NetPulse, and eGym to leverage an Apple technology program for their members. Members check into the facility by scanning their Apple Watch and log into equipment at the facility that track metrics and progress in wellness programs. Members are also able to renew their membership using their Apple Watch, which is integrated with all of the member’s information in Personify.

Want to Learn More About Member Retention?

Check out our Endurance Training eBook, which details Personify’s research on young members at YMCA and JCC organizations, and includes their perception of membership, the programs and outreach techniques most effective in compelling them to join and how they prefer to engage with your organization.

The post Member Retention Tips for YMCAs, JCCs and Member-Based Organizations appeared first on Personify.

While I’ve been running in the 90-degree heat and attempting to stream exercise classes in front of my TV with my dog barking and chasing me around the room the whole time, it’s definitely not the same. I’m eager to go back to the gym and attend classes, but I feel some hesitation about doing so…and with good reason. An early release of a report published in Emerging Infections Diseases traced 112 COVID-19 cases linked to workout classes across multiple facilities.

The researchers found that the moist, warm air combined with a turbulent airflow from exercising created an environment where droplets can spread rapidly. Aerosolized droplets can remain airborne for up to three hours, making crowded and confined areas like a fitness room a hotspot for spreading COVID-19. Additionally, the fact that workout classes are typically 50 minutes long means that there is a greater amount of time for droplets to spread among attendees.

Many gyms, fitness studios and community-based organizations such as YMCAs and JCCs are grappling with how to reopen safely during the pandemic. And, there are differing guidelines across the 50 states and D.C. for how a facility can reopen, and what preventative measures should be taken. It even varies within counties and cities in those states.

As you craft your reopening strategy, consider these steps:

Develop a Leadership Task Force

Assemble a team of leaders across your organization that can contribute to the reopening plan and highlight considerations and things to keep in mind. Do this before making any moves or decisions that will impact your staff and your members. You want to ensure that you have the right people in the room and that it’s a group of diverse, representative voices at all levels of the organization.

This team should revisit your vision, mission, values, goals, challenges and opportunities for your facilities and programs to reopen. Your organization may have been open throughout the pandemic providing childcare or other needs for essential workers, and those continued services may affect your program goals or present new opportunities and challenges for your reopening plan.

Consider sending a survey to members to understand which programs and activities they want to take advantage of when you reopen to help prioritize your staffing and reopening efforts.

Define Your Safety Plan

Your members are looking forward to attending the programs, classes and activities that keep them healthy and active. But they are also looking for guidance and reassurance on how they can do it safely.

Develop a plan of action with your leadership task force for how you will bring people back to facilities and the steps taken in each phase to ensure safety. Create plans for each of these categories as part of your larger safety plan:

Containment

• How will you limit the number of people in the facility at a time to comply with social distancing requirements, and how will this be monitored and enforced? Some organizations are having members book reservations in specific time blocks to ensure limited capacity and limiting the number of members that have to be turned away at the front door due to high capacity.
• Will you reopen group exercise classes with social distancing measures in place? Will you move exercise classes outdoors to limit the risk of exposure?
• Will you offer virtual classes instead? And, how will members sign up for group classes?
• How will you enforce social distancing on equipment, in the free weight area as well as in the locker rooms or pool areas?
• What changes will you implement to prevent people from congregating in certain areas? Will this affect the check-in process?
• For resident and day camps, will you limit movement between groups to reduce the possibility of transmission? How can parents sign up for camps online? And, will you provide (or mandate/enforce) temperature checks of campers each day upon arrival?

Cleaning and Sanitation

• How often will equipment and surfaces be cleaned in your facilities? How will you clean equipment used between group classes, if you offer them?
• Are there any hard-to-clean items you should remove from the floor such as resistance bands, foam rollers or other equipment?
• How will staff who are responsible for cleaning be protected from exposure?

Staffing

• How many staff will you have present at facilities in each phase of reopening?
• Which staff members will you bring back for these roles, and how will you communicate changes to responsibilities or roles?
• What will you do to ensure your practices protect returning staff from exposure to COVID-19?
• Will you test employees for COVID-19 before the return to work if testing is available?
• Will you do daily monitoring of employee health (e.g. temperature checks)?
• Do staff need additional training before your facilities reopen?

Operations

• How will you time the reopening of different sections of your facilities? Will you reopen all at once, or in stages?
• Do you need to make any upgrades or changes to your current services to meet new needs that come with a limited reopen? For example, are you able to track capacity limits with your member-management software and allow people to sign up online for classes, activities and camps?

Broadly Communicate Your Strategy

Share your plans for reopening and what will be included at each phase to your members, staff and partners, and provide regular updates as policies change and as you’re able to roll out new programs.

• Revisit the survey that you sent to members and create targeted messaging based on their previous program engagement. For example, if you are planning to keep aquatics programming closed until phase 3, send a message to your members who have participated in aquatics activities in the past six months and let them know about what to expect in your reopening plan.
• Provide regular updates to members in your member newsletter or in weekly emails that details reopening schedules, any new processes for check in, which facilities are open, your daily cleaning and sanitation efforts, how members can sign up for virtual programs, and more.
• If your organization is continuing to provide childcare services for essential workers, be prepared for questions on how those programs will be managed and safety standards that are in place.

Revisit Your Plan Often

As of mid-June, many states such as Texas, Florida, South Carolina are starting to see a significant rise in the number of COVID-19 cases and local and state governments are considering whether the pump the breaks on their reopening plans. We will likely be coexisting with the virus for a while and organizations should regularly revisit their opening criteria to see if adjustments need to be made. Criteria can include:

External

• What local and state restrictions are currently in place?
• Are the cases in your area declining or increasing over the past few weeks? Is there adequate testing available?
• Is there enough capacity in area hospitals for the number of patients who need them? Are non-essential health services available?

Internal

• How do members and staff feel about returning to facilities? How many staff and members will need to be in the facilities to effectively (or sustainably) operate at a given time?
• Which staff can continue to work from home?
• Which programs and services can be replicated in a virtual environment?

I discussed more about this topic in free webinar with Jonathan Panter, Chief Financial Officer at the YMCA of Metropolitan Chattanooga. We shared how community-based organizations can develop a safe approach to reopening and leverage technology for more effective facility management. The discussion includes:

• A review of reopening approaches across the U.S. along with best practices and tips from member-based organizations that have opened recently.
• The strategy that YMCA of Metropolitan Chattanooga took when they reopened in mid-May and lessons learned over the past month and a half.
• How to leverage your member-management software to ensure limited capacity, manage reservations, communicate with members about changes due to COVID-19 and more.

Watch Now

The post Open for Business? Tips to Safely Reopen Your YMCA or JCC appeared first on Personify.

If you’re attending General Assembly, please stop by booth #665 to visit with our team. I was perusing the conference agenda earlier today and thought I would share some of the sessions that we’re excited about seeing:

Michelle Poler/Social Entrepreneur and Founder of Hello Fears

Friday, July 19 from 10:30-11:45 AM

Born to a family of Holocaust survivors, Michelle Poler was accustomed to living with fear. But when she moved to New York, she realized that the Big Apple was not for the fearful. To change her approach to life, Michelle decided to face 100 of her fears in a period of 100 days, sharing every experience on YouTube. Through humor, storytelling, engaging visuals and her “100 Days Without Fear” experience, Michelle will show you how to challenge your comfort zone to tap into your full potential. In this session, you’ll learn how to deal with the unknown, see growth over safety and redefine fear—from obstacle to opportunity.

Jia Jiang/Rejection Training Expert and Author

Friday, July 19 from 3:15-4:30 PM

Several years after Jia Jiana (also known as “The Rejection Guy”) began his career in the corporate world, he stepped into the unknown world of entrepreneurship and faced everyone’s biggest fear—rejection. As CEO of Wuju Learning and author of the bestselling book, Rejection Proof: How I Bear Fear and Become Invincible Through 100 Days of Rejection, Jia now helps people and organizations to become fearless through rejection training. Discover how rejection can be much less painful than we believe and how it can be conquered.

Digital Happiness: How to Be the Boss of Technology

Saturday, July 20 from 8:30-9:45 AM

What does it mean to be happy in a digital world? Start with understanding the effects of technology on our minds, bodies, relationships and culture. Assess your relationship with technology and develop a set of philosophies to guide your behavior as you learn concrete tactics to help you use technology to flourish and thrive.

The Board’s Role in Advancing Equity, Diversity and Inclusion

Saturday, July 20 from 1:30-2:45 PM

As our communities diversify, boards play a critical role in advancing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). Boards must examine underlying biases and assess strengths and areas of growth. Learn to recruit diverse candidates, create a culture of inclusiveness on your board and guide your organization in implementing principles of DEI in hiring, fundraising and other important areas of work. (If you’re interested in this topic, check out our four tips to make the most of board meetings.)

The 10 I’s of Innovation: Think on Your Feet and Generate Winning Ideas

Saturday, July 20 from 1:30-2:45 PM

Organizations today are looking to get the most out of their staff while providing a challenging environment that promotes growth, mobility and learning. Learn how to embrace innovation to create a culture that rewards new ideas and fresh approach to problem-solving, resulting in peak team performance and increased employee satisfaction.

In addition to our presence at General Assembly, we’re hosting a webinar on July 24 at 11:30 AM CT to help YMCAs and JCCs attract and retain their young members. While each organization’s membership is unique, the findings we’ll share can inform and support strategies designed to support the long-term growth and success of your organization.

The post What We’re Looking Forward to at General Assembly 2019 appeared first on Personify.

• Will anyone log in, let alone participate?
• Will our staff need to prompt every discussion?
• Will our members, of their own volition, really connect with each other?

In an interview for CMXHub, sociologist and strategist Danny Spitzberg says those fears can be assuaged with trust:

“What I think businesses can eventually get their head around is that people will participate. There will be user-generated content. There will be all these things that might match up with some of your metrics or business objectives generally. You have to suspend your disbelief that those things won’t happen and just trust people radically.”

You heard it: Building a community is a radical act.

Having an organizational culture of trusting your members is important for community. But community also requires building trust between members. Being part of a community, after all, means sacrificing a sliver of one’s own individuality in favor of a shared identity. Your members need to trust each other enough to know the sacrifice will be worth it.

How do you go about building trust? Modeling authenticity is key. Community managers can build trust by listening, sharing and responding in their own voice, by admitting mistakes, and by asking for help. But in addition to those very important ways of being, there’s another age-old way to build trust on a more massive scale: by facilitating ritual experiences.

Here’s the thing: studies have shown that groups of people who participated together in a completely bogus ritual trusted each other more than those in control groups did. For example, in one study, participants in an invented ritual were more likely to share their own money with other ritual participants than with non-participants.

A different study showed that participating in rituals seems to enhance the quality of an experience. Brands like Oreo and Guinness, writes social psychologist Heidi Grant, have smartly built ritual into their marketing campaigns, “created added value right out of thin air” or, out of the twist of a cookie or the careful pour of a beer.

Think about rituals that you engage in as part of a community – physical, online or both. Does your organization take every new hire out to lunch, or induct them with a common project? What are the shared experiences that bind members of your association together at the annual conference? What do members of your advocacy group do together to celebrate gains (or acknowledge losses)?

New online community members should have these kinds of experiences, too. We need to invent new rituals where they may not exist, leaning on organizational culture, community mission and vision and member personas to make them on-tone, delightful and organic. We need to listen for and gently acknowledge and elevate any member ritual practices that arise organically. (If your member base has already created their own common rituals, great job!)

Joining a community – really joining it, on an identity level – is no small transition for members. How does your community celebrate every crossing of that threshold? How do you mark the passages and milestones that take place beyond it? Helping shape and illuminate the unique rituals in your community can bring delight to members and add another layer of meaning to membership, building trust for the group as a whole.

The post Radical Acts: Rituals and Building Trust in Community appeared first on Personify.

We love them, we hate them, but we keep making them.

In new research from YouGov, about one quarter (26%) of people report having New Year’s Resolutions for 2019. As for the specific resolutions people are making, the most popular one is “exercise more” (59%) followed closely by “eat healthier” (54%) and “save money” (51%).

But according to podcast HowStuffWorks.com, 35 percent of us who make New Year’s resolutions break them by the end of January. And only 23 percent of those who make a resolution will see it through to completion. Can this year be different?

With each new year comes the promise of a fresh start, the chance to introduce new habits and stop bad behaviors holding us back. Whether in our personal lives, for many individuals and organizations both stumbling out of a holiday-induced haze of either overindulgence or (for those in the charity sector in particular) over-work, January provides the opportunity to set the course for what will be the year to come.

It occurred to me though that many of the resolutions we make as individuals can be equally beneficial in our professional lives and for our organizations. Consider the most popular resolution: exercise more.

Commit to Good Data Hygiene

What about the health of your organization? What about the health of your data? Many of the standard health clichés apply. If you put garbage in, your mouth or your database, you’ll get garbage out. Excess weight creates an additional burden, to both your knees and the systems on which your organization relies.

If it seems like a stretch, an attempt to create a seasonal blog post out of thin air, it shouldn’t. The impacts of poor data hygiene are significant:

• According to Forbes, 84 percent of CEOs are concerned about the quality of the data they’re basing their decisions on.
• Gartner measures the average financial impact of poor data on businesses at $9.7 million per year.
• MIT recently reported the cost of bad data can add up to an astonishing 15-25% of revenue.

The thing is, while individual people have the luxury of trying on a New Year’s resolution and failing only to try again another year, organizations aren’t that lucky. In the nonprofit sector, resources are limited and every penny counts. The financial impact of poor data hygiene is terrible on its own but poor data can also lead to higher risk. There aren’t always do-overs and new habits need to stick to make a difference.

Embrace the New Year as an opportunity for a fresh start! Whether you’re looking for a total data makeover or the life-changing art of tidying up your database. Check out our webinar, New Year, Fresh Start: Clean Data for Big Results, as we explore ways to kick off the year with optimized data designed to deliver the results your organization is looking including:

• The real impact of poor data on your organization
• How to identify and understand the root cause of bad data quality
• Practical tips and techniques to get your data healthy – and keep it that way

Watch On-Demand: New Year, Fresh Start: Clean Data for Big Results

The post Make a New Year’s Resolution to Clean Up Your Data appeared first on Personify.

And why not? The dawn of a new year presents a great opportunity for a fresh start. As organizations put together budgets to present to their executive leadership and boards, the need to understand and document these resolutions may hit your inbox soon. This is especially true for big changes, like a rebrand.

Not long ago, “investment” felt like a dirty word for nonprofits – after all, money spent on branding takes away from funds available for new programs or activities that can move an organization’s mission forward. But a strong brand can play an important, strategic role for an organization, driving long-term awareness, strengthening identity and creating cohesion among internal staff, volunteers and other constituents.

What is a Brand

Advertising executive David Ogilvy defined a brand as “the intangible sum of a product’s attributes,” while AIGA, the Professional Association for Design, defines a brand as “a person’s perception of a product, service, experience or organization.”

For commercial products, proving the brand’s value can be relatively straightforward. A consumer purchases a product and the product either delivers on the brand promise or it doesn’t. M&M’s for example, “melt in your mouth, not in your hand.” Take the time to apply L’Oreal mascara, “because you’re worth it.” Spill something? Grab a Bounty paper towel as it’s the “quicker picker upper.”

These relatable consumer experiences have become a growing part of talking about branding across nonprofits of all sizes. Many nonprofit executives define brand using for-profit language, in part because they’re often discussing brand with board members and donors whose own roots are in the for-profit world.

Yet for nonprofits, their brand effectiveness can be more subjective, relying on the audience to visualize a world that’s better for them having been part of the organization’s mission. The strength of the brand is determined by the trust, loyalty and enthusiasm it elicits. A nonprofit’s brand reaches beyond the organization and its mission, appealing to what’s most meaningful to their audience. Whether a donor-focused charity or a member-driven association, the nonprofit brand must show that the organization delivers on its promises for the individual and the broader collective.

Living the Brand

That’s a lot to live up to. Although the ambitions of nonprofit marketers are growing, the strategic frameworks and management tools available to them haven’t kept pace, with lots of the language and strategy borrowed from the for-profit sector brand playbook designed to boost name recognition and drive brand reputation. But optimizing your brand doesn’t have to be hard or take a back seat to other activities in your organization. Integrating the brand conversation alongside other planning discussions can ensure your brand is:

• Closely aligned with your organizational strategy
• Deeply ingrained with your nonprofit’s culture, ideas and values
• Part of each action, with staff recognizing interactions with members, donors, supporters and other constituents as unique opportunities to reinforce your brand’s value
• Reflected in what you say and how you say it
• Fully supported by your visual identity and technology tools, creating opportunities for consistent quality across all communications and interactions.

Taking Your Brand to the Next Level

Branding delivers tremendous value for nonprofits, driving the awareness that leads to acquisition, the enthusiasm that drives engagement and the loyalty necessary for strong differentiation in a crowded marketplace. While branding should be part of everyday conversations around organizational strategy, culture, messaging and tools, there are several steps nonprofits interested in improving their brand in the new year can take to get started:

1. Know Your Target Audience: Without a clear vision of who your organization engages with, building a brand to drive their support is next to impossible (or at the very least inefficient)! Personas can provide a helpful framework for identifying who’s who. Learn more about defining your target audience and personas to get the ball rolling.
2. Differentiate Yourself: Why you? Showing what makes your organization unique is paramount in helping you stand apart from other nonprofits serving a similar need and trying to reach the same audience. Does your organization have a specific goal that others aren’t working towards? Do you serve a niche audience or geography? Are your programs unique? Donors and members have a growing number of choices when it comes to which organization to support – give them a reason to choose yours.
3. Be Approachable: The ability to be relatable is essential to forming a connection and creating deep, long-lasting relationships. Articulate, as part of your brand, how donors, members and other supporters can become involved in your brand’s promise and organization’s mission.

Nonprofits who ignore their brand – or deny they have a brand – do so at their peril. People’s perception of your nonprofit can impact your acquisition, engagement and retention efforts. Strong brand cohesion, and the high levels of trust a great brand can inspire, contribute to greater organizational capacity and social impact. Bring your brand to life to influence the way your nonprofit is perceived across channels, whether in person or online, your communities and constituents in 2019 and beyond.

Want to know more about elevating your brand’s reputation across channels? Discover the must-have martech tools you need in 2019 to effectively leverage your marketing technology stack.

The post New Year…New You? 3 Steps to your Nonprofit’s Brand Makeover appeared first on Personify.

“Ideas are a dime a dozen. People who implement them are priceless.”

Whatever your feelings on her pink Cadillac, the above quote from pioneering businesswoman Mary Kay Ash perfectly encapsulates the struggle of the “great idea.” Thousands of amazing ideas are born every day, but they fail to go anywhere.

Why?

They lack the support of champions passionate enough to make these ideas a reality. After all, unless you win support for your idea, from people at all levels of your organization, it may fail to deliver on its promise. Recent research shared in the Harvard Business Review showed that 70% of all organizational change efforts fail, and one reason for this is executives simply don’t get enough buy-in, from enough people, for their initiatives and ideas.

Securing buy-in from others can prove intimidating under even the friendliest circumstances but it’s something that happens throughout an organization. Technology teams have to get buy-in from their leadership. Senior leaders across an organization have to get buy-in from C-level executives. Nonprofits then often have the additional step of selling their ideas to their board for final approvals.

How can you get the ball rolling? The Harvard Business Review article “Get the Boss to Buy In” provides a series of useful tips, each of which translates directly to the nonprofit world. Whether you’re a front-line staff member who has identified an opportunity through daily interactions with your membership or a C-suite executive steeped in the annual planning process, these seven techniques can help you build support and gain traction

1. Tailor Your Pitch

Who are you talking to? Understand your audience including their goals, values and their frame of reference to shape the presentation of your idea and ensure it resonates. Use clear, concise, easily understood language that’s relevant and timely. Understand the key performance metrics that will matter most and back up your idea with data and research including details from your constituent management and engagement platform, CRM or AMS.

2. Position Your Idea in Context

Where your idea ends up on a list of priorities depends largely on how it’s positioned with your target audience of decision makers. How does your idea contribute to the vision, values and strategic goals of your organization? Will it help existing programs or create value for existing efforts around constituent acquisition, engagement and retention efforts?

Once your leadership team sees how idea contributes to the big picture, they’ll be more willing to devote resources to it. Consider:

• Creating a sense of urgency, with the idea presented as an opportunity that shouldn’t be missed.
• Highlighting a threat—a consequence of not adopting your idea—to create pressure to act.
• Bundling your ideas with related ones.

Also, take the time to position your idea in terms of how it supports not only your organization but the experience of your members or donors. This helps you articulate how executing on your ideas will support your organization’s biggest asset: its constituents.

3. Manage Emotions

Passion, if appropriately expressed, improves your chance of capturing attention and triggering action. However, beware of coming across as angry. Your idea may have come from frustration with the status quo but decision makers who detect negative emotions from subordinates offering even constructive criticism tend to perceive those employees as complainers.

4. Get the Timing Right

Timing really is everything. Be mindful of organizational priorities and broader market trends.  Too, recognize deadlines. If, as Harvard notes, “an idea relates directly to an imminent product launch or software release, by all means speak up—now is the time to be heard. But as recent research shows, when a deadline is far away and decision makers are still in exploration mode, an open-ended inquiry can be more effective than proposing a specific solution.”

5. Involve Others

There is power in numbers. When it comes to selling ideas, one person may have access to important data, for example, and another may have a personal relationship with one of the top managers you’re trying to persuade. Experts in relevant areas add to your credibility. Be open to including others in the presentation of your idea and leverage their strengths.

6. Adhere to Norms

Understand and respect the process of how decisions are made. Provide the information that decision makers want in the manner they prefer it, be it through a formal or informal approach. While casual conversations may feel more comfortable, a formal approach can convey seriousness and apply helpful pressure on decision makers to take action, even if the ideas are innovative in nature.

7. Be Prepared with Solutions

Respect their time and yours. If you’re prepared to introduce an idea or raise an issue, be prepared to suggest thoughtful fixes. Introducing a solution signals that you’ve put considerable thought into the issue and shows a level of due diligence to those being presented to. If you aren’t yet prepared to recommend a solution, propose a path identifying one, with a cross-functional group that brings diverse knowledge, experience and expertise to the table.

Wrapping Up

Even with relentless preparation, presentation of your ideas takes guts. No amount of skill can completely remove the risks and potential disappointment associated with hearing the word, “No.” But using some, or all, of the tactics outlined above can help give you greater confidence and boost your chance for success.

The post 7 Steps for Getting Buy-In appeared first on Personify.

For the unfamiliar, Caboodles were the must-have accessory for teen girls coming of age in the late 1980s. A molded plastic cosmetic case based on the functional design of a tackle box, Caboodles included all the compartments necessary for your blue eyeliner and frosted lipstick, a mirror and came in all the pastels you could imagine.

And, although it had been years since Caboodles had been on store shelves, their magic was in full effect with the display surrounded by wide-eyed young girls eager to take one home.

Then I went to the mall and saw, on a hanger in a trendy chain store, a black and blue checkered sweater I’m fairly sure I owned in 1991, a black and blue checkered number I was going to wear to the MTV VJ audition I was convinced would happen at any moment.

Retailers routinely turn to what’s been tried and tested to boost their odds for success. Television networks and movie studios do the same, introducing reboots, because these characters and the stories they tell are familiar, beloved parts of our lives.

When it comes to programming, there’s no reason nonprofits and associations can’t do the same. Constituents have a relationship with your organization and trust the content you produce. While delivering fresh information and perspectives is important, you don’t always have to reinvent the wheel. It’s also OK to open up the archives and find new inspiration in existing material. There are many benefits to finding fresh ways to bring new life to old favorites including:

• Sharing with New Audiences: Maybe you published important research but your members hadn’t yet joined your organization. Or maybe they’re already a member but didn’t have the time to read a white paper or attend a webinar? Share existing content in a new format or channels such as rich media syndicated through new threads or discussion topics in your community, social properties and content forums.
• Elevating Old Favorites: Have a timeless classic on your shelf – the piece, guide, tip or campaign that was a huge hit with your constituents the first time around? Consider bringing it back for an encore performance or update the information with new data for a refresh that extends the outreach to new and old audiences alike.
• Get the Biggest Bang for Your Buck: Developing and delivering quality content is hard work – there’s a lot of effort that goes on behind the scenes. Take information that you and your team spent time curating and writing, and give it more runway. Consider updating with a slant towards your SEO keywords and common search terms. Elevate its reach across platforms for an integrated outreach of your programs.

But not all content deserves a new lease on life. Times change, technology continues to evolve and trends today may be different than they were last year or the year before. When looking for content to repurpose, ensure the topic is still timely and relevant. Determine how much updating needs to be done—a guide talking about Netscape as an internet browser or resurrecting a blog post on MySpace strategy may not convey the message you’re looking for.

In addition to details, understand if it’s a topic or broader area of interest for your members by digging into your website analytics, e-commerce data in your CRM or event details to understand if it is something people are eager to hear about.

Already have some pieces in mind? Here are four that are top of mind as we head into 2019:

1. Send Your Blog Posts on the Road as Podcasts

Those of us in Austin, like many of your members throughout the world and country, spend a lot of time commuting to and from work, darting through airports or running errands around the city. Podcasts have exploded as a way to make the most of this time, with a wide variety of available topics and lengths that go from snackable, bite-sized tidbits to multi-episode, deep dives into a very narrow topic. Want to get started with podcasts but don’t think you have content? Look back in your blog archives and pull a couple of favorites to record.

2. Reinvent Blog Posts as Guides

Have you blogged a lot about a particular topic, trend or new regulation? Maybe specific to your industry, the history of your organization or how to do something that’s of unique interest to your audience?

Packaging multiple blog posts together as a single guide not only ensures your audience understands everything you have to say about a topic but creates tremendous convenience as well. You can even spin the guide into an email campaign, social media posts, a webinar…the list goes on!

3. From PowerPoint to View Point – Infographics Made Easy

Those who know me well know that I love nothing more than a good slide deck. And before presenting a Personify webinar or live event, I spend a lot of time on my deck. Sure, a lot of it is formatting – making sure everything is aligned, the colors are right, the charts aren’t fuzzy – but more of it is focused on the narrative.

• What story does the presentation tell the audience?
• What do I want them to know?
• What should they take away?

This focus on storytelling and plot also serves as the foundation for great infographics. Infographics are taking a star turn right now – they’re informative, easy on the eyes – but they can be a lot of work, requiring huge amounts of research and design support. But with the right presentation you’re off to a running start – your story is already laid out, facts assembled and even some of your graphics are in place and ready for their close-up.

4. Highlight your Members Stories for Impact

Do you have a number of success stories showing the impact that your organization has had on members and donors? Real people and real stories have a real impact on your mission. Whether short quotes, self-directed video shorts, guest blogs or a Q&A in the community—flip the script from your team creating all the content and give your members a platform to co-create with you.

Your constituents are looking for a place to learn, share and grow their passion with your organization– whether it’s in your community, on your website or at live events. Repurposing content and supporting co-creation of content can be an easy way to make the most of resources already stretched thin, allowing you to quickly fill gaps quickly with relevant outreach efforts because the heavy lifting has already been done. Take a look at what is in your content Caboodle and consider bringing it back for a makeover – it’s not as hard as you think.

The post What’s Old is New Again: 4 Ways to Make the Most of Your Existing Content appeared first on Personify.

Marjorie Illig (right) in 1938

Marjorie G. Illig is one of my heroes. In 1936, 20 odd years after the American Cancer Society started as a tiny group of volunteers, she amassed a volunteer army of female volunteers to knock on doors across the country and start a conversation at kitchen tables. By 1945, the American Cancer Society, funded by Mary Lasker, a volunteer, and others, had raised $4 million dollars.

Very little of its first 30 years were driven by staff. They accomplished all of that from tiny rooms, the back of cars and living rooms.

In fact, in the heyday of the 80s and 90s, nonprofits rode the rising tide of wealth in our nation. We shifted from volunteer-led organizations to staff-run and created organizational structures.

In 2008, the markets crashed. Money got tight. People lost their homes. People lost their jobs. As a direct result, nonprofits lost a substantial part of their funding. In that moment, we all understood the value of the volunteer.

2008 forced many of us back to our roots, and our roots weren’t a bad place to be. The value of the volunteer wasn’t just free labor, it was and still is the vital energy, direction and capital for organizations doing good work.

Retaining Volunteers is Tricky

It is hard to retain volunteers. We ask them to give their time, their talent, and often, their treasure. When we do it incorrectly, we lose big and our missions suffer. According to the Stanford Social Innovation Review, ineffective volunteer management can result in more than one-third of those who volunteer one year to not donate their time the next year, which is an estimated $38 billion in lost labor.

Traditional volunteering relies on volunteers to do the grunt work. It’s like going to a job. You clock in, you clock out. You follow policies and procedures to deliver some kind of service. Think about Illig’s army. They went door to door with talking points and leaflets.

This type of volunteering appeals to a certain group of people. There are lots of volunteers who like to work at hospitals, museums, animal shelters, etc. It doesn’t appeal to everyone, especially volunteers still in the workforce. Our challenge is to meet the diverse volunteer needs within our organization.

Beyond Candy Stripers

When we get it right though, our organizations shine. What do we know about volunteers? They need meaningful engaging work that meets their skillset and helps them grow as a person and, often, as a professional. Finding the exact right fit for volunteers lets them give back and keeps them coming back year to year to move your mission forward.

Volunteers can fill roles across our organizations that staff are currently filling. This means we need to look very closely at what our staff are doing and ask, “how can a volunteer partner with them?” This means using volunteers in different ways and understanding that each role needs a different type of volunteer. When we do so, we bust the doors wide open to long term volunteer engagement.

The Value of Volunteers as Leaders

Someone emails you. You can tell they have a clear vision and are accountable, responsible, used to making decisions that have a deep impact, a planner, an organizer, and an innovator. You look at your list of open opportunities and say, “well, you can walk a dog.” They do it for a couple of months and leave. You didn’t meet their skills and capabilities head on.

Governance roles are perfect for your independent volunteers. It lets them be who they are, and it uses their brain in a way that motivates them. It gives them a challenge to master. This is the volunteer you want on your board or committee, as a chairperson or as a volunteer manager.

The Value of Volunteers as Drivers of Social Change

A person walks into your library on a Saturday. They are passionate about equal access to education and thrive on having conversations with people about the structural changes to enable reading development and early childhood education. All volunteers do at your library is shelve and dust books. The volunteer says, “sure,” and never follows up.

Social Action Volunteers allows you to harness that person’s passion and drive change that moves your mission forward. This type of volunteer is the person who will attend protests, send letters/postcards to legislators or go in person to lobby. Once a match is made, they will move mountains to get in front of the people who need to listen to them.

The Value of Volunteers as a Skills-Based Volunteer Force

Traditionally, skills-based volunteers donate their skills on an ongoing basis over long periods of time. Think pro-bono lawyers, doctors, nurses, accountants and grant writers who help organizations they care about year to year. They typically find us and know which organizations they can and want to volunteer with.

They are vital to delivering front-end service. We can tap into their need to give back and supercharge our service output, as long as the role is clear.

The Changing Shape of Skills-Based Volunteering

Young volunteers want to work on projects and make their contribution matter to an organization. They may not know where they will be living next year or what their life will look like, but they know you need the skills they have to offer. These volunteers don’t even get in your door right now, unless you have project-based volunteer opportunities listed. You didn’t even get to talk to them.

Today, when every job you try to get, you need three to five years of experience, a masters and be willing to accept an entry-level salary, young workers are looking for ways to gain skills and feed their need to give back. Projects that are time-limited give them just that.

When we have projects that allow them to commit to a short period of time and drive their personal growth and development, they will come back again and again to help. If we give them projects that allow them to give back in the short term, but don’t lead to personal growth, we aren’t tapping both motivations.

Volunteers are Valuable, so What?

2008 was a watershed moment for all nonprofits. It forced all of us to reckon with who we as organizations had become, and it reminded us that we all started as a group of volunteers in some poorly lit room drinking bad coffee planning to change the world. I know I did, and the organizations I love all did.

American Cancer Society took Relay For Life back to its roots. In its first year, the organization saw 200 DIY Relay events that helped raise over $2 million in unbudgeted revenue. Illig, with her volunteer field army, would be proud.

People are ready to be valued volunteers. The real question is, are you ready for them?

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The post Understanding the Roles That Volunteers Play in Your Organization appeared first on Personify.

A recent survey of nonprofit professionals suggests 45 percent of organizations don’t measure the impact of volunteers with 34 percent attributing the failure to a lack of resources and tools, 29 percent reporting a lack of skills or knowledge prevented measurement and 25 percent citing a lack of time. Many organizations looking to understand their impact and value focus instead almost exclusively on the dollars and cents coming into their organization. But, why?

If the contributions of those giving their time, talent and effort to a need or cause are (truly) mission-critical for an organization, then why isn’t the value of a volunteer treated with the same diligence and care given to donations, event performance, membership dues and other assets necessary to a nonprofit’s success?

Whereas the volunteers of yesteryear may have chosen service to a nonprofit in lieu of professional work, today’s volunteers are more apt to do so as an alternative to other leisure activities or hobbies. Nonprofits must understand, document, articulate and recognize their value, cultivating relationships with each individual and engaging volunteers as respected partners in their organization’s mission – not as unpaid employees.

Today’s Volunteer

A survey released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2016, the most recent year available, shows that approximately one-quarter of Americans take the time to volunteer. And, at the highest level, survey data from the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) suggests volunteers tend to be married Caucasian women. The largest age group for volunteers was 35-44, the CNCS survey said, and volunteers were most likely to be parents with children under 18. The survey also volunteers tend to be highly educated, with the gap between those a bachelor’s degree or higher and those with only a high school diploma of more than 23 percentage points.

Most volunteers report working with either one or two organizations for a median of 52 volunteer hours per year.

Different Generations Provide Different Value

Considering the generational differences sociologists have studied, for everything from purchase behavior to entertainment and food preferences, it’s not surprising to see those differences extend to volunteerism as well. While CNCS survey data suggests those aged 35-44 were most likely to serve (28.9), unique attributes and stage-of-life milestones present unique opportunities for nonprofits looking to better understand and engage their volunteers.

When it comes to prospective volunteers, Baby Boomers, the generation of 77 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964, represent a huge opportunity for nonprofits. Per U.S. Census data, the numbers of volunteers age 65 and older will swell to more than 13 million in 2020. What’s more, that number will continue to rise for many years to come, as the youngest Baby Boomers will not reach age 65 until 2029. Volunteering also offers significant health benefits for these Baby Boomers navigating the complex transition from full-time career and family building to retirement. According to the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP):

• Almost two-thirds of Senior Corps volunteers reported a decrease in feelings of isolation, and 67 percent of those who first reported they “often” lack companionship stated that they had improved social connections.
• Seventy percent of volunteers who initially reported five or more symptoms of depression reported fewer symptoms at the end of the first year.
• Sixty-three percent of volunteers who initially indicated three or four symptoms of depression reported fewer symptoms after one year.

In addition to the sheer opportunity presented by their generation’s size, Baby Boomer volunteers provide value through their experience, with a broad range of skills, talents and experience. Access to this maturity and competence will prove invaluable in solving and resourcing solutions for a wide range of social problems in the years ahead.

The Value of a Volunteer: Baby Boomers

To attract Boomers to volunteering, nonprofit groups should “re-imagine” roles for older American volunteers, making available opportunities that embrace their expertise and background. This approach is essential in driving value not only in the acquisition of Boomer volunteers but also in their retention.

Current data suggests three out of every ten Boomer volunteers choose not to volunteer in the following year. The CNCS reports volunteer retention rates are highest for Baby Boomers whose volunteer activities are professional and managerial, engaging in music or some other type of performance, tutoring, mentoring, and coaching (74.8 percent, 70.9 percent, and 70.3 percent respectively). Volunteer retention is lowest for volunteers who engage in general labor (55.6 percent).

The Value of a Volunteer: Millennials and Gen Z

What they lack in the experience shown by Boomers, younger volunteers make up for in enthusiasm. Even in the face of complex social issues including climate change, terrorism, and income inequality, polls, statistics, and anecdotal data suggest Millennials and Gen Z bring to volunteer opportunities a strong social conscience.

Millennials, born between 1981 and 1991, have transcended early labels as “Slacktivists” and now include both those on the cusp of middle age busy balancing work and family and younger adults early in their careers. With experience to contribute, Millennial volunteers can provide tremendous value as members of committees or advisory boards. Millennials with significant work experience can also provide support to nonprofits via pro bono skills and via Young Professional groups. In fact, 77 percent of Millennials are more likely to volunteer if they can use their skill set and if they see examples of the impact of their time or donations.

Meanwhile, born between 1997 and 2012, Gen Z continues to come of age with the youngest in the cohort just 6 years old and the oldest 22. However, 67 percent of Gen Z report volunteering in the last 12 months and 26 percent of 16 to 19-year-olds report that they volunteer on a regular basis. Gen Z continues to be primarily interested in episodic volunteering with 70 percent contributing below 100 hours a year.

Realizing the Value of Younger Volunteers

Building relationships with young volunteers can build a strong foundation for lifelong support. Video offers a powerful recruitment tool, with the ability to show the impact of an organization’s cause and a young volunteer’s service. Showcase what’s been made possible with their support and share stories of people who benefit from their contribution. Organizations looking to attract Gen Z volunteers should articulate the value of a volunteer role as a means to gain valuable work and life experience.

The Value of a Volunteer

Welcoming the volunteers who are raising their hand to support your organization, recognizing and capitalizing on their unique attributes and ensuring they have meaningful opportunities to contribute are effective first steps but are only a piece of the puzzle. In order to ensure a high ROI on volunteer programs, an organization must also have a culture which acknowledges, cultivates and celebrates their contribution.

The soft benefits of volunteer involvement across a nonprofit are widely accepted, with industry averages suggesting volunteers are 66 percent more likely to donate financially to the organization they support than those who do not volunteer their time.

Yet formal documentation of the cost savings delivered through volunteer involvement remains a powerful tool in helping organizations understand, track and maximize volunteer programs. The most recent data from Independent Sector suggests the value of a volunteer hour grew to $24.69 in 2017, a 2.3-percent increase from 2016.

Built using the approximate hourly earnings of all production and nonsupervisory workers with an additional 12 percent to include a buffer for fringe benefits, the hourly average provides a benchmark helpful in articulating the value of a volunteer across a variety of roles within an organization. Nonprofits can get additional clarity by adjusting the figure to accommodate:

• Pro-bono services from professionals including lawyers, doctors, technologists and others whose wages may reflect an hourly rate higher than the national average
• Wage rates specific to a particular geography, especially urban areas

Quantifying the Impact of Volunteers

As noted above, per ASAE’s Achieving Mutually Beneficial Volunteer Relationships report, associations report that an average of 30 percent of their members are serving or have served in a volunteer role in the past while the other 70 percent have never volunteered. Improving volunteer participation can have a significant impact on an organization’s financial health, introducing cost-savings which can then be redirected to supporting other programs.

Additionally, many organizations have high participation in short-term, project-based volunteer opportunities but may benefit further from improving engagement and driving an increase in the number of hours volunteers are willing to commit to an organization. For many organizations, driving even modest growth from an existing volunteer base already familiar with, and passionate about, can yield significant results.

Based on the total U.S. contribution of 7.8 billion volunteer hours, the most recent CNCS data available, the 2017 value of volunteerism in the U.S. would have exceeded $192 billion. Understanding the monetary value of volunteers to your organization brings focus to the big picture.

What could those additional cost savings do for the nonprofit sector? More importantly, what would even a fraction of that savings mean for you?

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