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The Virtual Toolkit:
Before You Change Your Dues, Clarify What Members Are Paying For
When conversations turn to membership growth or retention, dues are often one of the first things organizations question. Is the price too high? Are the tiers too complicated? Should membership be based on company size, number of employees, or access to specific benefits? Those are important questions—but they may not be the first questions to answer.
A pricing problem is often a value problem in disguise. Before changing what members pay, an organization needs to be able to explain clearly what members receive and why it matters. That means looking beyond a list of benefits and identifying the outcomes membership helps create. If networking is a primary benefit, for example, what does that networking enable? Does it help members find customers, build partnerships, influence policy, recruit talent, or gain insight they could not access elsewhere?
Executive teams and boards should consider:
· What problems does membership help our members solve?
· Which outcomes are most valuable to different member segments?
· What can members gain through us that they cannot easily find elsewhere?
· Can our staff, board, and members explain that value consistently?
Once the answers are clear, the organization is in a much stronger position to evaluate whether its membership structure and pricing reflect the value it delivers.
Need something to kick off? Use this worksheet to guide the conversation.
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