WWA Membership Committee
Meeting Minutes
February 11, 2014 at 10:00 AM
Attendees
Paul Boersma, Steve Kluesner, Kevin Richardson, Katie Karow, Jason Bordewyk
1.
Membership Summit Report
Paul prepared a summary and sent to all committee members. The summary will
also be included in the next newsletter. Highlights of the summary were
discussed.
a.
The speaker at the summit was Sheri Jacobs. She has a book called “The
Art of Membership” that is a good read and has valuable information.
Organizations are affected by doing more with less, easy availability of
information, expectations for customized services, and generational
changes.
b.
People join for organizations for some reason. We need to find out what
these reasons are and how to support members reasons for joining. Are
the reasons networking, to give back to the profession, to obtain technical
information, other?
c.
Paul offered to lend his copy of the book to committee members.
d.
Paul’s interaction with AWWA staff has been wonderful and impressive.
AWWA provides high quality resources and information and we can rely
on them more for support.
Action:
None.
2.
Membership Challenge Goals - 2014
Wisconsin Section was one of a handful of sections to meet our membership
challenge goal for 2013. We were given a $316 check from National AWWA for
our efforts. It was discussed to use this money to give back to members.
a.
Retain 46 of our 69 new members. Our focus should be on each new
member. It was discussed to use the money earned to welcome new
members. We need to show the organization’s relevance to new
members.
It was discussed to send out a survey to new members to help us identify
their expectations and relevance of WWA. It was decided that a personal
phone call perhaps followed by an email/survey would be more
appropriate and lead to more useful responses. Some useful talking
points were discussed and generally include:
Have you used WWA resources?
Have you attended WWA educational seminars or classes?
Have you used the WWA website?
What are you looking for from WWA?
b.
Grow membership to 833. This is a secondary goal and we appear to be
on track to be able to accomplish this goal as well.
c.
Other Membership Goals. Paul wants us all to get engaged more with
using the website. We are going to focus as a committee on the retaining
new member goal.
Action:
Paul to contact National AWWA to obtain the new member list. Katie
will obtain the list from the database and Paul and Katie will compare
the lists. The final list will be sent to Kevin.
Kevin will divide the list appropriately between committee members
and will send out the list for contacting. Kevin will also prepare a list
of talking points to use when making the calls.
3.
Member Retention
a.
Steve K. continues to contact late members each month. Steve focuses
his contacts to individual, operator, and student members. Steve just
received the February report and will begin contacting late members.
Steve typically contacts late members on a one month delay as past
experience shows many renew shortly after expiration date.
b.
Steve S. will continue to send new member welcome letters. Paul will
contact Steve to update as there are a few letters that need to be sent this
month.
Action:
Steve K. will continue to contact late members.
Steve S. will continue to send new member welcome letters.
4.
Follow up on last month’s action items
a.
All committee members were reminded to continue to actively recruit new
members.
b.
Paul sent out an appointment last month for this year’s meeting dates.
Meetings will be held the second Tuesday of each month at 10:00 am.
c.
All committee members present have been on the WWA website and have
setup their user accounts. Paul asked Steve K. to post minutes to the
website.
d.
The upcoming newsletter will have Paul’s summary of the Membership
Summit and the Membership Report. It was discussed to include all of the
names of our new members in an article for the next newsletter. Perhaps
the names could be included in the “What’s Happening” section.
Action:
Continue to recruit new members.
Post meeting minutes to website.
5.
Next Meeting
Next Meeting - Tuesday, March 11, 2014, 10:00 AM.
Prepared and respectfully submitted by Steve Kluesner.