Membership

Members are the lifeblood of co-operative and community businesses. They are critical to its success. It is important to keep members engaged as your co-operative grows and develops. In this section you’ll learn how to recruit, engage and retain members, develop a membership strategy and keep good membership records. If you need help with this, we can provide expert advice and training on co-operative membership.

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Membership strategy

Now that you’ve completed a membership audit and understand your members it's time to create a membership strategy.

Understanding your members

Before you can start to develop or refine your membership strategy, you need to understand your current situation. We call this a membership audit.

Member participation

Recruiting the right members and communicating the value of membership is vitally important. Co-ops need to encourage participation, so that members feel engaged and involved. In turn they can spread the word about your co-op and act as ambassadors…

Keeping good membership records

Every organisation needs a quality system to record members, their contact details and their status.

Member recruitment

Recruiting the right members is vitally important to a successful co-op. Learn why people join and how to encourage members to join.

Why do we need members?

Without active and engaged members, your co-op would not exist, so it’s important that they are at the heart of your organisational strategy. But why are members so important?