Membership Update

By Joan Hall | May 29, 2014

As some of you heard in November during Executive Council, we began a journey last spring to identify a vision for membership that is sustainable, long-term, boosts alumni involvement, and generates increased revenue to support IU campuses and schools. We’ll be talking more about Membership at the Alumni Leaders Conference next week and before we gather, I’d like to provide a brief review of our work accomplished thus far.

Membership Working-Group Update
Over the past year we’ve convened a Membership Working Group who has reviewed membership challenges and opportunities in the current model, and defined desired critical outcomes of a successful model.

Critical Outcomes of a Successful Membership Model:

  • Optimal alumni engagement and involvement
  • Increased annual donor participation
  • Increased overall giving
  • Support for the Alumni Association’s vision of a powerful network of alumni who back one another and IU throughout their lives
  • Elimination of membership competition and audience confusion of dues vs. gifts

Based on these critical outcomes, the Alumni Association leadership team began to explore new model concepts. Below is an example of a concept, comparing the current benefit model to a cause-driven model.

Concept example demonstrating critical outcome inclusion
Models Model 1: Benefit Driven (current status) Model 2: Cause Driven
Focus Sells membership in support of the Alumni Association’s operating budget. Moves IUAA and its key volunteers from selling membership to building relationships that bring greater value to IU alumni and the university.
Features
  • Offers a set of benefits in exchange for membership dues.
  • Life and annual members receive the same set of benefits.
  • Two categories of membership exist:
    • Basic membership id free to all alumni who opt-in, and it provides a basic set of communications and resources.
    • Sustaining membership is available to all alumni who make a tax-deductible annual gift to the Indiana University program of their choice at giving levels equivalent to or greater than past dues; these members will have access to a more robust set of communications and resources
  • Current life members will maintain all benefits. No new life memberships will be offered after a specified date to be determined.
Value to Alumni, Donors, and Volunteers
  • Makes only those who contribute dues Alumni Association members.
  • Helps cover the cost of Alumni Association membership benefits and programs.
  • Dues allocated to support alumni engagement and involvement to groups based on campus, school, community, interest, and identity.
  • Focuses the Alumni Association on selling membership benefits and services.
  • Welcomes all graduates as members of the Alumni Association and the common cause of helping one another and IU.
  • Recognizes and encourages annual gifts to the Alumni Association and any other program of choice.
  • Shifts IU alumni engagement efforts from “selling benefits” to engaging alumni in helping one another and IU.
  • Recognizes and maintains life member status.

In November, we heard constructive feedback around the cause driven example model above from alumni volunteer and recognize much work is still to be done as we seek to define a successful model in the future.

Our next step on this journey is to continue exploring model concepts that support the defined critical outcomes and address volunteer feedback while NOT sacrificing revenue for alumni programs. Once the concepts are defined, they will be assessed by the working group and then prepared for research and testing. However, with our environments and resources currently in a state of development and transformation, this task requires an expanded time frame and incremental steps in the short-term to create positive impact.

During the Alumni Leadership Conference in June, we will introduce three areas of incremental change we anticipate achieving over the next 12 months. We look forward to seeing you and continuing our dialog around membership.

Elizabeth Blevins
Director, Annual Giving

Joan Hall
Director, Membership

Posted in IUAA Policies