Allow your members special privileges

Give your members more than just benefits for joining. Allow them special privileges.

Create high profile events geared only to membership. 

Invite them to join speakers at dinner after the event, or for cocktails and chat before an event kicks off. 

Set up symposia that give them access.

• Let members sign up early for events. 
• Give them not just early bird rates, but early registration. 
• Hold spaces for members to sign up, but let them know that after a certain point it's first come-first served. Limit attendance to members only for some special programs.

Many of your members will appreciate the privilege of being able to spend time with a speaker in a more intimate setting after a presentation. They will be able to ask questions one-on-one if you set up a dine with the speaker program. 

Always make these dinner or cocktail outings for members only. As a benefit it adds value to membership. It is a great way of saying thanks for loyalty.  It is a privilege of membership!

Transparency and Your Group's Goals

Open up your management meetings to your constituency Board meetings are meant to take care of the business of running an organization. Even an organization that opens up its management meetings to its members will probably need to hold private closed-door directors meetings. At an open meeting, your board can establish immediate goals, discuss plans for upcoming events, look to volunteers to step-up with new ideas.  The long-range mission of an organization, plans for succession, review of by-laws, budgeting for the future, still need to discussed by your elected group of directors. Open meetings should have a short, fixed agenda. They can offer your members and volunteers information about the organization while eliciting from them ideas about how to make the organization better or keep the association relevant.  You are offering your members an opportunity to be heard. This will probably make them feel engaged and this is the  kind of organization to which people want to belong.

Open meetings provide transparency and honor your members and volunteers.