STC is forming a new Membership Committee with one simple and basic goal: Increase STC membership! And who better to come up with new and fresh ideas on how to increase membership than current members?
The committee is chaired by STC Director Rich Maggiani, and he’s looking for a small group of members to join him on the committee and then a larger group of members to assist with spreading the word and implementing their final plan. If you’d like to help out in either aspect, please email Rich with your name and contact information.
The committee is still in the nascent stage, so the organizational structure is evolving. If you have any thoughts or advice or would like more information, please feel free to contact Rich as well. STC’s lifeblood is its members, and growing the Society is of utmost importance. Please consider lending your time, experience, and ideas to this important committee.
7 Replies to “Help STC’s Membership Grow”
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This is an important initiative, and I applaud it.
Will this group be actively seeking to interview and understand people who:
a) know about STC but have chosen not to join?
b) are lapsed members?
c) are potential members but do not know about the organization?
All three of these populations can tell us a lot about how to increase membership—more than those who are already members, I’d wager.
I’m 100% in favor of increasing membership! Though I don’t have the bandwidth for a committee roll, I’m happy to lend my feedback.
Maybe some of the suggestions that were offered months ago of how STC can support its communities (see http://stcideas.ning.com/forum/topics/what-do-chapters-and-sigs-need? ) could be implemented? These are the types of “value-added services” that would go a long way in improving the appeal of STC and increasing membership
Yes, I think the committee will find that a WEALTH of information that can help their cause has already been generated. The Board received a roll-up of those ideas, which is likely where this committee is coming from. It’s imperative that the committee go back into the weeds in STC Ideas and focus on the many good ideas generated by members (and now potentially former members) that would help increase and strengthen membership.
in addition to Will’s suggestions, I hope the committee will also ask members who did renew (as well as new members) *why* did they join STC?
As a reminder, we had an ideas brainstorming whirlwind on STC Ideas, so steering the task force/committee toward reviewing them should be your first step, before brainstorming new ones. Much of it centered around two key topics:
1) finances
2) membership
The Membership Committee should have a wealth of ideas to harvest and evaluate, and should have names and contact info for those who have contributed to those ideas for follow-up and possible contacts for champions of any initiatives involving those ideas.
In case it’s been forgotten, you can find all this info here: http://stcideas.ning.com/forum
A while back, the Board had asked us to provide them with a high-level grouping of these ideas for their review, as the forum content itself had grown substantially in quite a short period of time. If it makes things easier, you can use that submitted grouping/summary to get started and use Search in the forum to get to the details.
I do hope the Membership Committee makes effective use of STC Ideas. That’s why it was implemented, and that is why STC now (with the change of Ning pricing) pays to keep it alive. The info in there is extremely valuable, and it would be a shame if it went unused.
Also, on another note, I think it would be incredibly helpful for the Membership Committee to announce its members and have a home where STC members can see what it being discussed, decided, and worked on. I don’t believe that any changes regarding membership can be made in a vacuum these days. People are now accustomed to open, honest communication and involvement, and any action contrary to this – particularly involving membership – will likely have a striking negative effect on the STC membership, or at least those who are embracing the open and honest communication and collaboration vehicles that much of Web 2.0 innovation has offered. And IMHO, those are the people STC cannot afford to lose.
There was a forum with the collective wisdom of STC members going back for years and years.
Too bad STC management chose to delete it when the membership began to use the forum to ask questions like: Where did the money go?