Developing Successful Strategies
Many organizations expend considerable energy on organizing general recruitment campaigns that have discouraging results. Despite the investment of valuable time and financial resources, only a few new members actually join.
An organization can maximize the impact of its recruitment efforts by identifying and concentrating on one or two groups of potential members most likely to be attracted by your organization. This may involve women working in a particular setting or profession or those with special interests, such as graduates just entering the job market or women re-entering professional life after long, family-related absences.
If you think about what you want to do as an organization, you can also identify the kinds of new members who would enhance your action in terms of their expertise, skills and contacts, e.g. journalists or professional, political and community leaders.
New members bring an organization new energy, ideas and financial resources, but if they are going to stay, the organization must give them something in return. New members interests and time constraints may differ significantly from those of current members. The exercises in Targeting Potential Members help to identify groups of potential members and to adapt your recruitment strategies and programme to best meet their needs. Recruiting Community Leaders and Attracting Younger Members provide examples of possible strategies for two possible target groups in.
Reaching out to new members requires being open to change. If existing branches are not interested in adapting their programmes, the answer may be to start new branches. Suggestions for how to go about this are provided in Starting New Branches .
Back to Planning for Growth (Membership)
