How to Figure out Your Membership’s Motivation

Last week, I talked about engaging your membership and combating apathy. I said that the starting point is finding out what motivates them. But, you might ask, how do I find out what motivates them?

There are a few options available and you might use one, two or all of these methods:

• Focus groups – getting together a representative group of your members and asking questions.
• Surveys – either via phone or email.
• One on one – spending time with members.
• Observation – spend some time observing what your membership is doing, what they are saying, and to whom.

Of course, you need to know whom your membership consists of before you can do any of these things. Give this some thought before you make any quick assumptions. For example, you might be a minor sports association. Is your membership the kids in the league? Or their parents? Or both? If you are an organization that caters to families, who is the decision maker in those families – the mother? The father or both?

Once you have determined your membership and the tool(s) you are going to use, you are ready to go. Or are you? What are you going to ask them? You could try asking them outright “what motivates you?” However, they may not be conscious of their motivations.

By asking the right questions, you should be able to figure out their motivation. For example, they may say that the cost of membership is not a concern for them, but later unknowingly contradict it by saying they don’t feel they get a good return on their financial investment with your association.

Part of asking the right questions is determining what you want to know, and then asking the question in a couple of different ways. You might ask them a multiple-choice question on why they belong to your organization. Later, ask them to rate a list according to what is most important to them. It might look something like this:

Question #1
Why do you belong to XYZ Association?
1. affordable option
2. quality of interactions with staff
3. makes me feel I am doing good in the world
4. provides added value to my family/business/life

Question #2
Please rate the following priorities you use when choosing an organization, with one meaning most important and four meaning the least important:
__  customer service
__  I feel they will put my money to good use
__  the quality of features they provide as part of membership
__  I feel they are helping make a difference in the world

By asking essentially the same question in a couple of ways, you should get a truer picture. This is just a general example of how you can dig out an answer to a specific question. Of course, you will need to tailor your questions to your organization.

Are there other ways or tools you have used to determine motivation? What kind of questions could you ask? Have you ever been surprised to learn what your membership’s motivation was?

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