Membership Season

Duck season! Wabbit season! Membership season. It's July, and it's hot. So, stay inside and work on your membership plan. What are you going to do this summer to meet affiliated and formerly affiliated people in your catchment area and attract them to your insitution? Here are a few items to consider . . .

1. Make sure you are open for business for new members. Is your membership kit/brochure up-to-date? Is there a letter of welcome from the rabbi and president and education director in it? Are there descriptions of your programs? Service times? A map of your facility? Web-site information? An application and a list of your fees? Great! Now, IS THE WHOLE THING ON LINE? A great on-line application package that I came across can be viewed at: www.mjcby.org/Membership.html.

2. Traditional open houses are still a great idea and you should definitely schedule a couple; however, synagogues need to be a little more out of the box when figuring out where you will go to meet prospective members.

a. One idea is to use geo mapping to find out where your members live. (A great free tool is http://www.batchgeo.com/.) You can easily download your members' addresses into the utility and batchgeo will map your membership. Once done, this can be a tool for figuring out where to focus your membership activities such as advertising, mezzuzah hunting and parlor meetings during which you can even offer to set up carpools.

b. The batchgeo tool can also help you focus on where to host your out-of-building activites. Consider a playground playgroup, bookstore or library story time, book discussion or speaker, or a friend finder table in your local supermarket.

c. Why not plan a synagogue reunion at your local town pool. This is great if your pool offers a day rate. If your pool does not, call and see if the synagogue can book a party. Many town pools already offer birthday party deals. Consider this a giant anniversary party. Just think, when non-members see all the fun that your members are having together as a group, they will just naturally want to join the fun.

d. Take a table at the local town fair or farmer's market and offer a raffle item so you can collect names and addresses.


3. Signage is important.

a. Hang a banner on your building such as, "Now accepting new members." or "Ask us about High Holiday tickets." or some other catchy phrase. Your building is a great canvas for your message.

b. Not situated well to put a banner on your building . . . ? Temple Beth Ahm Yisrael in Springfield, NJ bought an ad on a billboard in the middle of their town to adverstise their presence there (as they are located off the beaten track.) The synagogue found that this way of advertising was not prohibitively expensive at all when compared with advertising in local print media.

c. Buy some ad time at your local movie theater. Let people know you are there while they are waiting for the coming attractions.

What has worked for you? Feel free to share some of your great membership ideas.

B'shalom, Lisa