Is membership retention or recruitment more important to an association?
Asking whether membership retention or membership recruitment is more important to an association is a little bit like asking whether breathing or blood flow is more important to a person. You won't live long without both being in good order.
That said, retention is probably more important for three reasons:
- If your association has membership retention problems, that signals that your association has larger issues. The problem may be in your mission, member benefits or leadership, but if no one wants to stay in the association after they have joined, the association is in trouble.
- Mathematically, if your association has membership retention problems, you'll have to work much harder on the recruitment side. Fraternities and sororities have a built-in retention challenge (not a problem) due to graduation, and they have to spend a disproportionate amount of time and resources on recruitment. The average non-fraternal association would have difficulty sustaining such an effort.
- Financially, retention problems are very draining on an association. Existing association members tend to be more profitable than new members due to the prospective member marketing costs. Losing those members can create financial problems very quickly.
This is not to say that recruitment problems do not need to be addressed urgently. But if your retention rate is strong, the association can live for some period of time while you fix the association's recruitment problem. Moreover, when you do fix the association's recruitment problem, you have a good chance of surviving long term because those members should stay with the association.
All in all, it's better to not have any problems with association recruitment or retention. But if you had to have one problem - recruitment would be the way to go.
Has your association ever had any recruitment or retention problems? What was the solution?
That said, retention is probably more important for three reasons:
- If your association has membership retention problems, that signals that your association has larger issues. The problem may be in your mission, member benefits or leadership, but if no one wants to stay in the association after they have joined, the association is in trouble.
- Mathematically, if your association has membership retention problems, you'll have to work much harder on the recruitment side. Fraternities and sororities have a built-in retention challenge (not a problem) due to graduation, and they have to spend a disproportionate amount of time and resources on recruitment. The average non-fraternal association would have difficulty sustaining such an effort.
- Financially, retention problems are very draining on an association. Existing association members tend to be more profitable than new members due to the prospective member marketing costs. Losing those members can create financial problems very quickly.
This is not to say that recruitment problems do not need to be addressed urgently. But if your retention rate is strong, the association can live for some period of time while you fix the association's recruitment problem. Moreover, when you do fix the association's recruitment problem, you have a good chance of surviving long term because those members should stay with the association.
All in all, it's better to not have any problems with association recruitment or retention. But if you had to have one problem - recruitment would be the way to go.
Has your association ever had any recruitment or retention problems? What was the solution?