Posted by J Ridgley in Questions for the Candidates - Membership Trend
This question is open to both sets of candidates.

Given the recent membership trend and the fall below 100 members, what during your term would you do to return the curve towards the positives as opposed to the current downward trend we’ve seen in the last 6 months.

More specifically towards membership recruitment and advertisement but feel free to divulge into retention plans.

Many thanks,

Jake

So I hope it is okay if I put my Personnel Director hat on for a moment (because how can I resist :)). We did drop below 100 members briefly at the end of January, as pointed out in my last report, following a slow, but nonetheless net downward trend since August. However, as I alluded to in my report, the February numbers are much better - we’re certainly going to be recovering from our January drop, and by the mid-March recover to an earlier point in that net drop. The official membership numbers for the end of February will be ready for the next Personnel Department report (which will be posted in the first week of April - just the way the timing goes on the numbers…)

I also just want to address the question’s focus on recruitment, because I also want to be clear - as per my reports as Personnel Director - that outside of January, the membership trend has been more of a retention issue than a recruitment issue. Recruitment was poor in January - resulting in the larger dip in net membership - but we more than doubled those numbers in February and March is looking even better right now.

So… talking about our ticket’s thoughts about recruitment, we have a specific plan in that area as part of our larger CMM vision. That post will be going up shortly (I hope you’ll indulge Nathan and I in spacing out our platform posts). We’ll DM so you know that post is up, and if you feel your question isn’t answered by our post let us know and we can answer any questions that may arise from that post.

In terms of retention, we don’t think there is a magic solution. Because of a lack of data (or ability to get data), we have to make educated guesses at what are the contributing factors to members leaving, and try different experiments and techniques to address those educated guesses. Sometimes we see improvements and sometimes we don’t. (Although we have just begun collecting data on Discord involvement to see if we can track the role Discord plays in retention.) Nathan and I want to use our position in the executive next term to push the idea of retention and exploration which will also help with some areas in the club that need member involvement. Within the next few days, we will be sharing a specific platform post on an idea we think will work, so stay tuned for that and let us know if there are any questions arising from that.

Thanks for the question, Jake.

Daniel

Daniel and Nathan: HashtagTeamDaniel