The bottom line for any association is member retention. As an Association volunteer, you can make a significant contribution to that goal. Everything you do has an impact on a member’s decision to continue being a member. Each phone call and action team assignment—even a word of thanks to other volunteers—feeds into a member’s overall assessment of the association’s value. The member uses that assessment when deciding whether or not to continue membership, investing valuable time and money, for another year.

As an Association volunteer leader, you are often the vital link between institution and individual. Your interactions can be grouped under four categories: communications, translation, inspiration, and mentoring.

As a volunteer leader you understand the need for and value of communicating with members. Association related communication works on several levels and yields both immediate and long-term benefits. There are five basic reasons to communicate with members:

1. identify members’ needs;
2. maintain contact with members;
3. inform members of services, events and issues;
4. respond to members’ needs; and,
5. involve members in the association.

As an Association volunteer leader, your actions occur along a continuum of contacts ranging from personal (face to face discussions) to not so personal (articles you write). Your actions will have a direct effect on whether or not the member decides to stay in the association.

Translation

The logic of Membership in our Association and is simple: a member decides to renew because he or she has perceived value from belonging to the association. The trick is to make sure the benefits offered are the benefits the member wants and needs. This is where translation comes in. Translation refers to a member’s perceptual conversion of what the association offers— both tangible products and intangible good feelings—into what he or she wants.

Translation goes two ways. Associations work to answer member needs directly as well as to show how products and services meet those needs. This requires constant monitoring of member needs. The more you know about individual members and their relationships and transactions with the association, the easier it is to make the needs-to-services translation.

Inspiration

Being an inspiring leader is perhaps the volunteer’s most misunderstood and difficult role. Leaders are different from the rank and file. In a membership organization, the volunteer leader is first among equals because through actions and commitments, he or she comes to embody the association’s values. When you stand on the podium, you are the association for all in the audience.

Leaders offer inspiration in several ways-from being a role model and cheerleader for the association to mentoring individuals one on one. Ironically, because leaders are different, they do not truly represent the rank and file. They are more committed to, involved in, and more knowledgeable about the association than the average member. For some associations, leaders are often more successful, established and better-educated members. For these reasons, you need to focus on identifying and satisfying the needs of rank-and-file members, not just the needs of the leadership.