MEMBERSHIP SURVEY REPORT – FOLLOW UP
Written by Inda Omerefendic
78% of those who completed our recent Membership Survey agreed to take a longer survey with a chance to win a $100 Amazon gift card. 137 individuals completed the survey. Let’s see what they had to say…
The questions posed were:
- Specify the importance of each membership benefit:
- Receive some of all of ñ’s journals
- Receive discounts on ñ books and site reports
- Receive discounted rate to the Annual Meeting
- Know that I support ñ’s work through my membership dues
- Receive various ñ e-newsletters
- Receive access to exclusive webinars on topics related to career and professional development
- Attend ñ events in addition to the Annual Meeting
- Interact with fellow ñ members in an online community forum
- Gain opportunities to share my research and professional work
- Receive discounts to related organizations, institutions, and museums
- How did you learn about ñ?
- Do you attend our Annual Meeting?
- In the last five years, I have attended the Annual Meeting…
- If you answered “No,” why do you not attend the Annual Meeting?
- Do you follow our social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, or the ñ Blog?
- Which social media site do you visit the most and do you have suggestions for improvement?
- Do you have suggestions for getting more social media followers to become ñ members or attend the Annual Meeting?
- What is your preferred method of contact for matters other than membership renewal reminders?
- How do you like to receive your membership renewal reminders?
- Would you support ñ offering a graduated membership rate based on student status and/or level of employment even if it meant that your membership dues might increase?
- Specify whether the following are reasonably priced: ñ Membership, ñ book publications (not journals), ñ Annual Meeting registration fee, and ñ Annual Meeting hotel rates.
- Do you think that you have a role in ñ’s decision-making process?
- Describe your interactions with the ñ office staff.
- Additional comments for ñ?
Please specify the importance of each membership benefit…
The membership benefit that was ranked most important, with 81% of survey-takers giving it a 4 or a 5 (out of 5) was, “Receive some or all of ñ’s journals.” A close second, with 78% giving it a 4 or a 5, was, “Receive a discounted rate to the Annual Meeting.” When looking at the benefits that were ranked least important, the two that were rated with either a 1 or a 2 were, “Interact with fellow ñ members in an online community forum,” with 49%, and, “Receive access to exclusive webinars on topics related to career and professional development,” with 47%. The other benefits received a majority of responses in between “Most Important” and “Least Important.” While I’m glad to see that two benefits we already provide are deemed most important, we hope to provide more reasons for you to look forward to your ñ Membership every year.
How did you learn about ñ?
45% of those who completed the survey have been members of ñ for over 10 years, while only 1% learned about ñ through an online promotion or e-mail. So far, our most established members seem to be the most vocal based on their high participation rate in both surveys. We hope that more and more of our new members join the conversation soon!
Do you attend our Annual Meeting?
55% answered, “Yes,” 32% answered “Sometimes,” and 13% answered, “No.” The most common response for the number of times the individual attended the Annual Meeting in the past five years was five meetings with 33%. The other options (1-4 meetings) all had percentages evenly spread in the teens.
The most common responses for why someone doesn’t attend the Annual Meeting came as no surprise, with money and time being the main reasons, especially for those who live far from meeting sites or outside of the US. These reasons are well known to us at ñ, and we are continuously trying to find more ways to offer more discounts and travel support to our members.
What are some ways we can extend the experience of the Annual Meeting to those who cannot attend? Feel free to reach out to us if you have an idea, and we’ll take it into consideration!
Do you follow our social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, or the ñ Blog?
55% of you follow our social media sites! Woo! However, 39% stated they do not, but I do hope some of those numbers head over to the “Yes” column sometime soon.
Based on the statements provided, the most followed sites were Facebook and the ñ Blog. Some suggestions for improvement included posting more highlights regarding ñ Member achievements, broadening our focus by sharing more general archaeology news (not just Near Eastern), incorporating more personal interest pieces (Someone cited the “What’s In Your Dig Bag?” as an enjoyable piece – I thought so too!), and providing more links to ñ-affiliated projects while excavations are in progress or a blog by students in the field at different ñ-affiliated dig sites. We love all of these ideas! If you have a news item regarding an ñ-affiliated project or would like to highlight an ñ member’s achievement, please do not hesitate to share your news with me at asorpubs@bu.edu or with Kaitlynn Anderson at asormedia@gmail.com. While we can’t promise that we’ll be able to share everything that comes our way, sometimes the only way a news items is brought to our attention is when someone in ñ sends us a notice, which anyone is welcomed to do!
We asked for suggestions on how to encourage social media followers to become ñ Members or attend the Annual Meeting:
“Offer discounts or promotional periods for registration and perhaps also competitions where people could enter to win discounts on the hotel registration.”
“Have Annual Meetings in MAJOR academic centers/cities.”
“Subtitles on YouTube would provide a better understanding of the various talks for the non-English speakers and vice versa since the lecturers whose origin is not from native English speaking countries have an tremendously varied accents. That makes it difficult to understand the original research from very interesting talks.” –This is something we’ll work on right away!
“Membership Drive type events like March Fellowship Madness, but focused on memberships at a discounted rate.”
“Advertise the Annual Meeting hashtag and encourage people to tweet during the meeting – which means having good phone reception and/or wifi available in all meeting rooms.”
“I think the social media presence does not reflect what happens at the Annual Meetings. This isn’t a bad thing, but if I am a non-professional and decide to come to an Annual Meeting because I like what is posted on ñ’s Facebook page, I’d probably be lost at the meetings (and a little irritated) because the paper topics are much too scholarly. So, I think the question/challenge is about enhancing/articulating the benefits of membership for non-professionals, without diluting the scholarly content that professionals rely on.”
[What is your preferred method of contact?]
For question #5 regarding what is the preferred method of contact for matters other than membership renewals, the winner with 82% was email. E-newsletters received a percentage of 14%, while paper mailings received 4%. The option for telephone contact received 0%.
For question #6 regarding what is the preferred method of receiving membership renewal reminders, the winner with 85% was email, while paper mailings got 11%. E-newsletters received 1%, while the telephone option again received 0%.
Over the past few years, we’ve rolled out a lot of improvements in terms of email design and outreach via email. We hope to continue improving and working to make online transactions something with which everyone is comfortable.
Would you support ñ offering a graduated membership rate…?
66% of the responders answered that they’re interested in the idea; 13% said that they were not interested; 20% said that they were not sure how they felt about the idea.
Specify whether ñ Membership, ñ books, Annual Meeting registration, and Annual Meeting hotel rates are reasonably priced.
Most of the answers fell in the 3 or 4 range (out of 5 for “strongly agree”). The only response that had a stronger sense of disagreement was that the Annual Meeting hotel rates were not reasonably priced. 27% of respondents said they disagreed with the “reasonably priced” statement, while 12% of respondents, or fewer, disagreed with the statement that ñ memberships, ñ books, and ñ Annual Meeting registration were reasonably priced.
Do you think you have a role in ñ’s decision-making process?
57% said, “Yes,” while 43% said, “No.” Last year, we held elections via an online voting process for the first time. The process went very well, and we hope to bring more decision-making opportunities directly to our members’ inboxes!
Which of the following best describes your interactions with the ñ office staff?
I’m happy to report that 89% of members said that your experience with the ñ staff was either positive or very positive.
Additional comments?
I know that I have just listed off a lot of numbers and percentages that may make it difficult to get a sense of how ñ members really feel about ñ, but we hope that it will at least shed some light on their views, especially on areas where there is room for improvement.
Additional comments received provide further suggestions on possible discounted memberships, membership changes, concerns raised by the location of our Annual Meetings, and other news items people would like to hear about. With our Strategic Plan recently finalized for 2016-2020, all this feedback not only provides us with areas that we can focus on, but also with a number of suggestions to consider when looking on how to move forward in the best possible way. Please see below for some of those additional comments:
“One point the membership committee needs to consider is that THERE IS NO LOGICAL REASON for a student (grad/undergrad) to join the organization if they are at a member school. The membership committee should be trying to find an active way to get students, particularly MA/PhD to join and have a stake in the organization.”
“I have never had a negative experience with ñ, whether it be with the staff, event, new letters it’s always been a great experience!!!”
“If ñ is keen to increase its profile with the public and increase the number of avocational members, it could look to the AIA and its system of local societies and local, public lecture series. It does take some effort to set these up and keep them going, but it does a lot of good for the profile of the AIA and the promotion of archaeology, good archaeological practices and awareness.”
“Regarding graduated membership rates: I’d suggest adding retirees as another category for discounts. Maybe also distinguish between professionally employed (e.g. faculty) and those not working in the field (alt. ac., etc.).”
“I’d like to see the annual membership actually go from date of joining to 365 days later rather than membership being tied to the journal publication quarters. I ” lost” nearly 2 months of membership due to joining at a time in between journal publication cycles. For example, if I join on August 13th, then my membership should expire 365 days on the following August 13th.”
“It would be good if ñ were to consider more ways to specifically help graduate students discuss the their work, i.e. sessions at the Annual Meeting devoted to grad students paper, for example. Both ñ and SBL could be doing a lot more in this area. Expanding the size of the Annual Meeting to have more slots for papers and thus less rejections every year might be considered.”
“ñ staff are helpful and efficient in dealing with direct inquiries. As an overseas member there is less opportunity for me to serve on committees etc. but I am OK with that.”
“The undergraduate rate is very welcome, but I think it would be fair to have a lower rate for post-graduates and those not yet at an institution because it’s a very hard time finance-wise for us. You might even get MORE people interested if the price was fairer and not need to raise other rates.”
“I renew my membership and register for the next meeting every November because I know it’s the least expensive rate I’ll get. There may be an opportunity for more professional mentoring beyond the “Junior Scholars” group, which is largely a grad student group and focused on grad student issues. I would love to see early career scholars have professional development opportunities under the mentorship of ñ’s senior members.”
“I would like to see ñ become the digital archives for all CAP excavation reports so members can access the data freely.”
“PLEASE do more targeted advertising of ñ and related events. There was a talk at the Wadsworth Atheneum, in Hartford this spring, and I did not find out about it until afterward. I’d have gone and taken students. I am very sorry I missed it.” –If there is ever a news item or event that you think would be of interest to ñ, please send it to us and we’ll do our best to share it in a timely matter and avoid this happening!
“The scholarships and fellowships that ñ provides students and junior faculty are wonderful.”
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What to do now? Quite a few suggestions raised revolved around the news items we share regarding related events and ñ Member achievements. I’m excited about this because this issue has a simple solution – get in touch with us! Please never hesitate to contact someone on the ñ staff regarding news you’d like to share, ñ member or institution announcements, or questions you may have regarding memberships or the Annual Meeting. This survey was intended to start a conversation within ñ, and we need your help to keep that conversation going!
The winner of the $100 Amazon gift card from this survey was Kathryn Simonsen, and you can find the announcement of her win on our Facebook and Twitter!
Membership Survey Report written by:
Inda Omerefendic
Publications and Fulfillment Manager
asorpubs@bu.edu
(617) 358-4376