by This is the first entry in a series of topical discussions on LOPSA’s shortcomings, as I perceive them, and how I think that we should be addressing them. Most of the text is taken from my candidate statement (PDF warning).
Throughout its existence, LOPSA has seen a steady increase in its membership count. The last document I read reported that we had nearly 800 active members on the rolls. The growth rate is slower than I think we’d all like, but by expanding organically, we have been able to put infrastructure into place to support this growth.
There are areas where I think we could do better, particularly in marketing to potential members, but I’m happy to see that we continue to look like an appealing
organization to join.
After I posted my candidate statement, I received feedback from someone with what I think is a very interesting idea. If we find that it’s impossible to do automatic renewals for whatever reason (and really, even if it IS possible), we might also look into allowing multi-year memberships, with possible discounts for longer time-spans. It’s definitely another idea that we can use to continue growth.
When you dig deeper, though, there is a more disturbing trend in membership retention. Although we’re bringing in new recruits, it appears that we are hemorrhaging members. According to the most recent minutes from the Board of Directors, we have lapsed 51 members in this quarter alone. The membership numbers don’t necessarily reflect this, because we have been doing a good job of growing in our market and bringing in people through the two regional conferences.
In essence, we have been using the America On-Line model of customer growth.
The Board does know that this is a problem, and previous Board meeting minutes have mentioned that they are looking into the problem, but the plan of action wasn’t discussed in the documentation, and I’m not aware of the efforts to correct the issue.
LOPSA membership does not auto-renew – in other words, our system doesn’t default to assuming that you want to remain a member. Whether this is by design or due to a lack of technical ability (or perhaps because of Sarbanes-Oxley regulations surrounding the retention of credit card data), I don’t know. If it hasn’t been investigated as a solution, it should be.
When someone allows their membership to expire, we need to provide a follow-up exit survey so that we can try to determine the reason they weren’t interested in continuing their membership. When I’ve personally encountered people who dropped their membership on purpose, the most commonly given response is that they didn’t “get” anything from their membership.
I can’t blame someone if they don’t feel like they get benefits out of being in LOPSA, but I can’t help but wonder if they’re really using their LOPSA membership to its fullest potential. Do they buy books from O’Reilly or Pearson? Because we get discounts on those. Do they need external monitoring? Because we have discounts on that (and VPSes and hardware and even business cards)! We even offer health and business insurance to our members, so if you are an independent contractor (or just don’t have insurance through work) you can get it through us. We seriously offer a lot of benefits.
That’s not to say we can’t do better. The insurance plans aside, I feel like we don’t do enough for our members’ professional development, and I’ll work toward that.
I hope that with my efforts along those of the rest of the Board working together you feel like we’ll be able to both offer more, and make our members more aware of the benefits we already provide.
Whatever the reasons for the lack of renewals, we need to identify it so that we can work to correct it. I know that the other Board members are dedicated to fixing the problem, and I’ll work with them to make it happen.