The Membership Project

Megan Griffith's presentation at the recent NCVO conference on membership schemes aimed to spark some discussion among those at our workshop - and we weren't disappointed. Here's some of the key issues reported back from group discussion, transcribed from the flip charts by Simon Berry. The groups were asked to consider:

• What do you think are some of the major challenges and opportunities facing membership organisations in the 21st century?
  

and

• What might your membership scheme look like in 5 years time?

Simon has grouped the responses:  read more »

Conversations at today's conference on membership confirmed what a big stretch membership covers, from providing infomation, advice, a voice, networking opportunities, through to the development of collaborative projects between staff and members. Each activity will require different communications, marketing and engagement approaches.  read more »

Over the next couple of days we have the NCVO Membership Schemes Conference, followed by a team meeting ... so there will be a lot more here by the end of the week.
However, just to recap, the aim of the project is "to explore changes the social web and other factors may bring to groups and organisations ... and to "belonging" in a networked society".

As Simon Berry summarised here we see three strands of work emerging:  read more »

The recent Social Innovation Camp proved a highly successful experiment in bringing together social activists, web developers and others who believe the best way to get things done is to get creative people together and cook ideas rapidly. I've reported over here how eighty projects were filtered to six for intensive development over a weekend, and why I think this model will be significant in future.
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Are there any researchers out there who can help me with this question: how do you research potential adoption of social media in memberships organisations if the people you are talking to may not understand what you are talking about?

One of the work packages for this project is "research", and as you can see here one of our partners, the NCVO Foresight team, have pulled together some resources, and also suggested how to develop a Guide.  read more »

Matthew Taylor, at the RSA, is one of relatively few chief executives of nonprofit organisations who have a blog ... now others are joining in, and getting encouragement.
Following news here that that Stephen Bubb, chief executive of the organisation for nonprofit chief executives acevo has started blogging at Bubb's blog, a couple of more established bloggers have launched a support group.
 read more »

People's reluctance to embrace social media may not result just from difficulty with the tools, but rather from their worldview and how far they like to believe in simple cause and effect, rather than complex interactions.

Two specialists in the use of collaborative methods highlight this. David Gurteen is a knowledge management specialist reflecting on the use of social media. Jack Martin Leith is a long-time expert in the use of Open Space methods for face-to-face events, focussed on co-creation.

David contrasts World 1 and Word 2 view's in a matrix - see below - writing in his latest newsletter.

"We are moving from a world where we were told to do things and where things were structured or planned for us to one where we get to decide what works best for us. We are moving from a mono-culture to a highly diverse ecology.
"We are moving from a simple world to a rich, complex, diverse one. One where power is less centralized and more distributed. We are moving from a command and control world to a world where people can do as they please within the boundaries of responsibility."  read more »

I've found that one of the most effective ways of helping organisations and groups understand how to bring social media into their communications mix is to play through their possible plans in a workshop game.

We did that at the Ruralnetonline event, and also at the Circuit Riders conference, shown here. More recently I ran a workshop for PR and communications staff who are working in housing associations, and I've put the presentation and game that I used on the social media wiki. As I reported earlier, it certainly brought out the challenges for association staff.

I think this version could be the basis for a game designed for membership organisations, because at the beginning I introduced a simple matrix to help participants think through who they are trying to help, in what way.

In this case the "who" was Board members, staff, residents or wider interests. The "why" covered getting information (consuming), communicating, collaborating. It's then possible to map on to the matrix what tools may be appropriate in what circumstances - as I did here on another occasion.  read more »