Membership Recruitment and Retention
Recruiting new members is vital to any student chapter. Remember with new members come new ideas, energy, talents, new friends, a pool of new leaders to carry on the work toward achieving the chapter's goals and a commitment to forestry and the natural resource profession.
Setting the Stage
Everyone needs to be involved with membership recruitment. The first step is to hold a planning meeting with current members, leadership, and the faculty representative. Agenda items for this meeting should include:
- Review current chapter goals and objectives. Current members cannot recruit if there is no understanding about the chapter goals, objectives, and the SAF mission statement. This may be an opportunity to decide if the chapter's goals and objectives for the year or semester need revising.
- Identify potential new members. Try to establish a list of potential members that current members, leadership and the faculty representative know. Then, make a second list of potential members that you may not know including freshman, transfer students and graduate students.
- Establish an achievable goal. Consider your current member numbers and the number of potential members. Not all individuals you approach will be interested in SAF membership. However, with a strong recruitment plan and commitment to membership, your chapter numbers will grow! Don't set the goal too high. You want chapter members to feel an accomplishment at the end of the recruitment drive.
Implementing the Recruitment Plan
Once the chapter has set the stage for a successful recruitment plan, the plan can be placed into motion.
Contacting potential members. Direct contact with potential members is the best way to recruit new members. It allows for discussion of chapter's projects, future speakers, goals and most importantly what membership means to you. After talking with potential members, invite them to the next meeting to experience SAF. For potential members you do not have direct contact with, try some of these techniques:
- Ask professors if you can have 2-3 minutes at the beginning of class to talk about SAF, the student chapter and invite individuals to a meeting.
- Request a list of forestry or natural resource students from the Registrar's Office. Due to privacy considerations, it may be required that the faculty representative request the list. But remember, the Registrar' Office still may not be able to perform this task. If you are able to obtain a mailing list, mail out a flyer or send an e-mail about the meeting or information about the Society of American Foresters.
- Create unique flyers to hand out to students and post around classrooms and bulletin boards. Use bright florescent colored paper or metallic markers. Promote refreshments at the meeting—"feed them and they will come".
- If your chapter has it's own bulletin board, decorate it with a tree by gluing real twigs, leaves and acorns on construction paper. Be creative...and you will get noticed!
Hold a welcome or orientation chapter meeting. In this meeting, you can discuss:
- SAF student membership which includes:
- Explore the networking opportunities available by attending local SAF chapter, division, and state society meetings, and the SAF national convention. Pass around pictures of student members attending these meetings along with the meeting's program or agenda. You can also discuss future SAF meetings the chapter will be attending. Don't forget to discuss the chance to develop networking skills that will last a lifetime.
- Describe chapter social events throughout the semester or year. Does your chapter develop a spring or fall picnic, ice cream socials, camping trips, holiday party, or senior luncheon or dinner? Again, show pictures or talk about the community experience of the events.
- Discuss the educational opportunities with future speakers, for example, learning the different aspects of forestry including urban forestry, consulting forestry and watershed management.
- Talk about future community service projects including "Walk in the Woods", Habitat for Humanity, Project Learning Tree program at a local school or Adopt-a-Highway.
Even if you do not hold an orientation meeting, make sure the following materials are available at the first meeting:
There are several ideas to get potential members to sign up for member during the orientation meeting including:
- Have the faculty representative endorse applications during the meeting.
- Have the chapter send in the applications to save time and money for student members.
- Tell students if they sign-up by (date), the chapter dues for the semester will be waived or the chapter will pay $5 of everyone's national membership.
Involving New Members
Now that your potential members are members of SAF, the student chapter needs to formally welcome them, get the chance to meet them and discover their interests and skills. The more you know about your membership, the easier it will be to get them involved in your chapter's projects.
Here are some tips to help get your new members involved with your student chapter and turn them into life-long SAF members:
- Ask for volunteers to do a certain job. Then, pay attention to who actually shows up. This doesn't mean that those who show up are ultimately interested in just that particular job. Their real interest may be getting involved in anything, or in meeting other members.
- Interview new members by phone and ask them direct questions about opportunities for their involvement and their related interests. This should be done for all new members on a general basis, rather than "calling around" for volunteers for a particular task at the last minute.
- Hold a small group sessions of new members with a leadership team member, perhaps during a portion of a larger group meeting. Stimulate informal talk about interests. Be sure to ask someone to take notes.
- At the first meeting of the year, place signs around the room indicating primary areas of your chapter's activities. Take a "working recess" to give everyone a chance to go to the area(s) of their main interest, talk to designated members of the leadership team, receive special materials and sign up.
- Have each member fill out a Membership Information Card to indicate their interests and other information valuable to the chapter. This card should be tailored to fit your chapter. It might be helpful, for example, to locate a computer expert, artist, pickup truck or someone who has access to a special place for an informal meeting.
Membership Retention
When does the retention process begin? Three months before someone's membership is due to expire? Six months? Actually, the moment a member is recruited, the retention process should begin. How? Simply, by making new members feel welcomed, getting them involved and ensuring that they are aware of all the benefits and services they will received.
Here are some retention tips for student chapters:
- Hand out a checklist to student members before they leave for the holiday break. The checklist can remind students to pay national dues, inform student leadership if they will have a new phone number or address during the spring semester and mark the dates of the first meeting in the spring semester on their calendar.
- If your chapter has a bulletin board, post a reminder notice about renewing SAF membership for next year. Don't forget to keep a membership benefits list posted.
- In March, the faculty representative will receive a list of members who have not renewed their membership. The student leadership should personally ask each member to renew his or her membership. You may want to follow-up with an e-mail highlighting the benefits of student membership including networking, Journal of Forestry, The Forestry Source, student discussion list and the value of being involved in their professional Society.
These are just suggestions to recruiting new members, discovering their interests and retaining members. Working together as a group, your chapter will discover more ideas that will help you grow...and don't forget to have FUN!
Source
Discovering Member's Interest, Office of Student Activities, Western Illinois University
The SAF Leadership Manual, "Membership Retention", Society of American Foresters
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