Now might be the easiest time to engage members because our members’ needs are temporarily more straightforward to identify. Nearly everyone, in every country, has just had their world turned upside down. We can jump in and engage members because member engagement is supportive and good and helpful for our members and, boy, do they ever need help and support right now.
Today your association can become the purveyor of industry, field, or profession-specific information about the world of work during the pandemic. Find out precisely how your members are suffering and consider offering them solutions by providing information, training, and community.
Information
- Interpret new government orders and communicate regulations
- Conduct a benchmarking survey to track and amplify how members are responding to the crisis
- Create a temporary daily or weekly e-newsletter of industry/profession-specific articles that are COVID-19 related
- Develop a landing page or microsite as a one-stop-shop for information and resources that your members need during this time
Training
- Augment colleges by supplying online training to students
- Author special e-books about how to deal with a COVID-19 issue
- Offer online training to educate the influx of new people suddenly entering the workforce (thinking here of student physicians graduating early and retired doctors reentering the workforce to help with the pandemic, but there are examples like this in many other industries and professions.)
Community
- Temporarily make your online community available to non-members
- Try facilitated discussions on Zoom for members and niche member groups
- Offer training and tools for your chapter leaders to help them take their meetings online
- Amplify the work of the innovators in your membership to share experiments and solutions
- Changing the tone of your member communications to start asking, “how can we help you?” and “what do you need right now?”
These ideas may not work for your members or association, but they could be the jumping-off point for ideas that will work. How can you offer information, training, and community to help your members today?
Related:
- [External post] Helping Chapters Be COVID-Proof by Peggy Hoffman
- This is the perfect time to question what an association is
- What your members need most right now