Your members are your nonprofit’s lifeblood—they’re your raison d’etre, your reason for being. (Impressive use of French, eh?) If you want them to renew their memberships year after year, you need to give them something of value in return. Actually, you should give them a lot of value in return—and to do that, you must engage them.
What does “engagement” mean?
When you think of engagement, do you think in terms of people visiting your website, or how many “Likes” and “Follows” you get on social media? If you do, you’re not alone. It’s not uncommon for marketers to think of engagement in terms of website visits and social media. However, that’s just one side of the coin. An important side, to be sure, but just one side.
Your goal should be to engage your members in a holistic manner, because their lives are not spent online or on Facebook alone (hopefully).
Content that connects
Well-written, useful content that delights your members is a great way to build a connection. If the content can benefit your audience in a tangible way, that’s icing on the cake.
For example, let’s say you work for a children’s museum. Your audience mostly consists of parents of young children. Therefore, articles about how to prevent summer learning loss, making bath time fun, activities for road trips and more, are perfect for such an audience. (Btw, Ally 360 offers a publication service. Click to learn more.)
To get even more engagement out of an article, consider offering a Talkback section where readers can ask questions and make comments.
Well-written, useful content helps build strong relationships with members. Click To TweetFace-to-face interaction
Come up with ways to engage your members in person. For example, a zoo could invite members to attend lunchtime lectures whereby zookeepers or other personnel talk about what’s new at the zoo, certain animals, research, etc.
Personalized emails
Email remains one of the best ways for communicating with audiences. Send your members a questionnaire inquiring about their interests. Follow up with emails tailored to specific audiences that share particular interests. Imagine a natural history museum that funds an archeology project in, say, Israel. Members interested in archeology would enjoy updates about the in-field project.
Exclusive social media
You can use your segmented email lists to create exclusive social media groups using Facebook, LinkedIn and hashtag-based Twitter chats. You could even launch your own niche online community. Keep such groups smallish, because that will make it easier for you to interact.
Conclusion
There are many other ways to create meaningful engagement with your members, so you’ll want to get creative to come up with strategies that work best for your type of nonprofit. The effort will be worth it, because your biggest supporters will appreciate it.