Speaking Engagements

Current Practices in Increasing Membership Dues

We have started to work our way through the crosstabs for the 2011 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report and some great data is showing up from the responses provided by the 650 participating associations.

Analyzing Two Volumes of Great Data
 This week I have had a number of questions asked about dues increases and since we included questions on membership dues this year, I wanted to share some top line responses from the survey data.

In our research, we asked: “How often does your association raise membership dues?”, “When was the last time your association raised membership dues?” and “What was the average percentage of your last membership dues increase across all membership categories?”

Here is how participations responded.



These dues related questions were also included in our 2007 Membership Dues Increase Study. So in addition to cross tabulating responses with membership outcomes, we will also provide some trend data in our benchmarking report.

By the way, participating organizations in this year’s research will receive their copy of the Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report in a few months.

2 comments:

David M. Patt, CAE said...

The "as needed" on the dues increase frequency is alarming. I think a lot of associations put off dues increases as long as they can and finally have to raise dues a lot.

They would have been better off increasing dues a little bit every couple of years. Members will hardly notice and they won't make a big fuss about it.

Tony Rossell said...

David -- Thanks for the comment. As you know, price is one of the 4 p's of marketing. So ideally what an organization charges for dues should be part of an overall market strategy. One might interpret the "as needed" response as more of a budget need than as a strategy. Tony