Saturday, January 19, 2008

Asking new members what to change

Facilitated retreat where new members from a board/chapter gave insight. Included:

* Make dues deadline at least month before holidays.
* Information overload in the beginning.
* Too many passwords and they're not easy to find.
* Want a one page summary and flowchart of how things work.
* Don't want to do anything political. Even if it's really easy.
* Astounded by rules and policies. Don't like word "can't".
* Too many acronyms.
* Heard expression "save a tree" a few times.
* Very clear about what they believe wastes their time.
* Loved the idea of encouraging multi-tasking at meetings/courses. Divide meeting rooms into multi-tasking section and section that doesn't.


Could these apply to many organizations?

Spent a lot of time on the political part (because so many critical issues that really require thousands to engage) and believe more than ever a real need to repackage our approaches - for member response.

Good news is they're willing to help develop solutions too. Any thoughts on repackaging requests to respond to legislative calls to action or contributing to PACs?

1 comment:

Tony Rossell said...

HI Cindy -- This is a helpful post. I think new members are the best for getting feedback -- same as getting feedback from new employees. They still have a fresh set of eyes that says "Why?". Tony