BETTER
PRACTICES
Recruiting Board Members, Volunteers
and Participation
Having
trouble recruiting Board members? Members to write
articles? Chapter
volunteers? Committee
members? It
could be that you are recruiting via the open “cattle
call”, and such calls for leadership or assistance no
longer work in many situations.
Cattle
calls typically share a number of attributes:
-
It
is directed at everyone…and comes across that way.
-
It
does not make a link between the need and what the
individual can offer.
-
It
is mass communicated via a notice in a publication,
e-mail or fax.
The
personal approach still works.
A personal request to participate or serve works
especially well when the initiator of the request knows
something about what the individual being contacted has
to offer (circumstances, talents or interests).
This can be facilitated through a comprehensive
membership database, activities history, issues
tracking, and effective connections with members (e.g.
Chapters).
And
whether or not the request is successful, it provides
the opportunity to connect with a member.
Member information can be updated, a future offer
of assistance secured, member relations enhanced, a
product sold, or a great idea identified.
A
few years ago while working in an association, I sent an
e-mail message to a few hundred members via e-mail.
The purpose of the message was to find out about
two current trends, and whether they were seeing them in
their organization.
From this information, I hoped to determine if
the topics should be on an upcoming program, as well as
individuals who might present on the topics. The message
was mass generated using technology that personalized
the messages. And because that was how they were perceived, I received in
excess of 100 responses.
Each response was written as if only they had
received the request….and they wrote volumes. Had I
sent a request that was perceived to be a mass request,
I expect that the results would have been minimal
(quantity and quality).
Organizations
that are still using cattle calls are passing up a great
opportunity to engage their members.
Try the personal ask…you’ll be surprised how
well it works!
The practices
described in this area are described as Better
Practices for a very good reason. We have a great
deal of difficulty with the term best practices
used in any other context than to refer to the results
of benchmarking exercises involving real and relevant
organizations with tangible results. We offer
Better Practices related to areas where we feel that
change is needed in associations. Better Practices
are intended to provoke thought, and to encourage
organizations to think about what they are doing and how
they are doing it.
|
