Why Your Club Or Association Needs A Member Recruitment Plan

As I’m sure you know, recruiting new members to your club or association is incredibly important. Without a near-constant flow of at least a few new members, your organisation will struggle to survive in the long run.  

However, despite how important it is to recruit new members, according to a recent survey, only 24% of membership organisations actually have a written recruitment plan. So today, let’s talk about what a recruitment plan is, why you need one and how to make one. 

What Is A Member Recruitment Plan? 

A member recruitment plan is, and bear with me as this is about to get pretty technical, a written plan to help recruit new members.  

 

A membership recruitment plan is a formal agreement among your organisation's committee on how you will recruit new members in the upcoming year. Rather than just saying, “Let's try to get more members this year,”. 

It's the difference between deciding on what your New Year's resolutions are going to be while sitting on a roof drinking Jägermeister at 2 am on the 1st and sitting down with someone who can hold you accountable and carefully planning out what your goals will be for the next 12 months. One is much more likely to succeed, while the other is much more likely to end in a trip to the hospital. 

A member recruitment plan is your formal plan for what you will do as an organisation to attract new members. Including what your action points will be, whose job it is to achieve them and how you will know if it has been a success. It’s a pretty simple but extremely important step to take if you want to help ensure your club or organisation continues to grow. 

A well-defined recruitment plan includes details like:

• Who are you trying to attract? 
• Why should they join? 
• How will you reach them?
• Who's responsible for what? 
• How will you measure success? 

Also, to be clear, measuring success isn’t just about how many new members you get, though that is obviously important. It’s also about measuring if your team has achieved everything they initially set out to do. For example, your goal might be to get 100 new members, run two events with free attendance for non-members, and hold one free webinar for non-members to get to know your organisation. You need to track how many new members you get, but you also need to track how you go hitting your other goals.  

It's a simple but crucial step that can greatly enhance the growth and sustainability of your club or organisation.

Why Is A Formal Membership Recruitment Plan Important? 

A formal membership recruitment plan is important because it helps unify, organise, and retain new members. Without a plan, recruitment can feel scattered and not very successful.

Having a clear plan gives your team direction and focus. It keeps everyone on track toward specific goals and helps avoid wasting time and energy on random efforts. It also helps you figure out which recruitment actions will have the biggest impact, especially when you're working with limited resources like time and money.

Having a formal plan makes everything run more smoothly. It helps you spend your budget wisely, simplifies the process of bringing in and onboarding new members, and lets you make decisions based on data about what's working and what isn't. This way, you get the most out of your recruitment activities.

Being consistent is also a big plus of having a recruitment plan. It ensures you're always reaching out and engaging potential members rather than just doing it in fits and starts. This consistent approach helps keep your brand message uniform across all channels, which is key for attracting and retaining new members.

Another benefit is increased accountability. When you have clear roles, responsibilities, and measurable goals, everyone knows what's expected of them and can be held accountable for their part. This brings a sense of ownership and commitment to the team.

3 Steps To Make A Formal Member Recruitment Plan For Your Club Or Association

Plan A Meeting

Before you can start creating a formal recruitment plan, you need to gather your club or association’s committee together for a sit-down meeting to discuss it. This can be done in person or via an online meeting, whichever works best for you. 

It’s also probably best to make sure someone in the meeting has information on your club’s current demographics (age, gender, etc.) and stats on how members currently find your club if you collect that. 

Once you’re people and the information is ready, then you need to have your meeting. 

Step 1. Know Your Audience  

During your meeting, you need to work out exactly who you are trying to attract to your club. What ages, genders, interests, etc., do your current members have in common, and are they still the ones you want to attempt to attract?

For example, let’s say you run a classic car club. Your average member is currently 50 - 70 years old, male, and into classic pre-80s Holdens and Fords. There is nothing wrong with that; the question is, are you still trying to target that demographic with this new membership push, or are you looking to target younger members, get more women in your club, etc.? 

I’m not saying ditch your existing membership; far from it. I’m just saying you need to work out who your new member recruitment plan will target. 

Once you know who you will target, you need to consider two key aspects of that demographic: What are their pain points, and how can you best reach them? 

To use the car club as an example, if you are targeting younger members, their pain points will be a lack of time and likely a lack of disposable income. As far as targeting younger people goes, you will have more luck with videos and posts on Instagram and TikTok.

Step 2. Craft Your Message

Once you know who you’re targeting you need to work out what your message to potential members is. You should focus on your organisation’s biggest draws, how it can help their pain points, and what makes you unique. You should also make sure to keep it short and sweet; you want to attract your people’s attention, not rewrite Lord of the Rings. 

To return to our car club example, they might pitch themselves as a fun place where people with classic cars, no matter the make or model, can come together and love cars. It doesn’t matter if you have a 69 Mustang, a 2001 Monaro, or the true king of classic cars, a Subaru Brumby; you’re welcome to come hang out, talk shop, and learn everything you need to know about caring for your pride and joy, etc.

I’m not joking about the Brumby being the greatest car ever made, either. Did you know that to get around import tax in America for two-seaters, they fitted road-legal, removable jump seats in the tray? 

 

My point is to determine what your potential members are looking for and then find a way to offer that to them in a short, punchy way. 

Step 3. Get Your Message Out To Your Audience

Once you know who you’re trying to reach and what you’re trying to say to them, you need to get your message out to them. There are two primary ways of doing this, one is by advertising online, and the other is during in-person events. 

Advertising Online 

Obviously, the easiest and most effective way to advertise online is through paid advertising. However, that may not be something you have the budget for right now. Well, the good news is that paid online ads aren’t the only way to get your message out there. 

Normal social media posts can have a great reach and impact on people. Post about your upcoming events, what your club or association does, and little videos or recaps of past events. This will show people what they are missing out on by not joining you. 

I’ve previously talked about what social media channels are best for which demographics, so you can learn more about that here: The Best Social Media To Use To Grow Your Club For Free.

I will note that Twitter’s demographics that are listed in that article will have changed by now due to everything that’s going on over there. But just sub in Threads, Blue Sky or whatever other platform is in vogue this week. 

Advertising In-Person

You don’t just need to rely on digital methods to spread your message to potential members. You can also host events that are open to the public; these will give you the perfect opportunity to show potential members what you can offer them. 

You can try partnering with local businesses to help each other out. For example, our fictional car club might partner with a locally owned parts shop; they can put up posters or have flyers in the shop and in return, they can encourage their members to use that shop whenever they need to buy anything. 

You can also set up a referral program where if your members refer someone and that person joins, your member gets a discount on their membership or something from your merch store. 

Get creative, and do whatever you need to get your message out there and into people's heads. 

What To Do Once You’ve Decided On Your Formal Recruitment Plan

Once you have a clear plan of what you want to accomplish and how you will do it, ensure that every task needed to achieve these goals is assigned to someone. Identify who will be in charge of planning the public event, who will organise the social media posts, and who will design the posters. It’s crucial to assign responsibility for each task before your meeting ends.

You also need to find a way to track how members find your club. If you use Member Jungle, this will be easy. Just add a required field into the signup form, make it multiple choice and get new members to select how they found out about your club or association. This will help you track how your efforts are going and what was and wasn’t effective. This is incredibly important, particularly if you are trying multiple things to attract new members. You need to know which ones were worth your time and effort. 

Finally, you need to make sure that your new member sign-up process is easy and intuitive. They should be able to complete it all online; the signup form, payment, everything. You basically want them to be able to do it on their phones while on the toilet. If it’s more complicated than that, it’s too complicated. 

If you already use Member Jungle, this won’t be a problem, but if you are still using manual sign-up methods, you should really look into using Member Jungle or a similar system, particularly if you are targeting younger members. Younger generations will have very little tolerance for slow manual sign-up methods, and you may well drive many of them away. 

Check out How to Save Time & Money With Membership Management Software.

More About Growing Your Membership

I hope that helped you understand why you need a formal plan to recruit new members and how to make one. 

To find out about how you can welcome new members to your organisation and ensure they stick around for the long run by reading, 4 Ways To Welcome New Members To Your Club.

If you want to know more about how Member Jungle can help you grow your club or association, check out How Much Your Club Can Grow With Member Jungle.