Membership organisations play a crucial role in guiding and supporting multiple industries and markets across the UK. From The Camping and Caravanning Club to the Youth Hostels Association; you name it, there’s a membership body for it.
We’re lucky to work with several UK membership organisations including the Glass and Glazing Federation, CIPHE, The Boys’ Brigade, and Manchester Digital. Having a solid PR and communications strategy in place can help member organisations with many of their goals – whether that’s attracting new members, proving value to current ones, supporting core strategic campaigns, or securing valuable funding. With that in mind, in this blog post, we’ve looked at a few of the main ways PR can support member organisations to grow and thrive.
PR to attract new members
Naturally, the first thing many think about when it comes to the value that promoting member organisations brings is attracting new members. Member organisations, whether they are professional associations, clubs or societies, rely heavily on their membership base for sustainability, growth and influence. Attracting new members could be important for several reasons including to help increase the organisation’s long-term sustainability, improve financial stability, bring increased authority, expand resources and knowledge, or support with core mission fulfilment.
We started working with youth organisation The Boys’ Brigade in 2023 to encourage people to consider joining either as a volunteer or member, as well as raising awareness of the organisation across the UK in general. We did this via a multi-pronged campaign that focused heavily on owned content and video, showcasing the varied activities those who attend The Boys’ Brigade get involved with, while also shining a light on how the organisation supports those within the local community more broadly. More than 12,000 volunteers were engaged via the campaign and social media engagements and followers increased dramatically. You can find a case study here.
Supporting core campaigns
Member organisations engage in various campaigns tailored to their goals and mission. These campaigns aim to raise awareness, support the needs of their members, drive engagement, advocate for policy changes, provide valuable resources, and advance the organisation’s goals.
PR agencies can help member organisations spread the word and build brand awareness for their campaign efforts. A great example of this is the work we did with Manchester Digital on its important Digital Futures campaign. Funded by the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, the campaign was aimed at getting more young people across the Greater Manchester region interested in a digital career through engagement with local businesses.
To do this, Refresh created a campaign that combined strong social media engagement and business community outreach, supported by top-tier press coverage. Refresh generated a pledge-based community campaign inviting businesses to sign up online and become ‘Digital Futures Ambassadors’. Narrative around the campaign played on the North West’s current digital skills shortage, with businesses invited to take the future into their own hands and strengthen the digital pipeline. The campaign was promoted with strong press coverage, three ‘social media takeovers’ and business outreach, ensuring that all relevant communications channels were optimised. The campaign resulted into 250 Greater Manchester businesses signing up to become Digital Futures Ambassadors – you can’t get much more tangible than that! You can read more here.
Building membership engagement through PR
Many member organisations charge members an annual fee to be part of the organisation. And with anything we pay for as consumers, we want to see value. So, member organisations often use PR to help prove value to their members. Here comes a great example of that.
The pandemic was a tricky time for many. Not least for tradespeople, who were banned from entering customers’ homes for several months. Our client The Glass and Glazing Federation (GGF) represents hundreds of window companies and installers across the UK. At the end of 2020 when it was again permitted to let tradespeople into the home, we supported the GGF with its Stay Safe campaign – aimed at building back consumer confidence around tradespeople entering their homes in a safe and measured way.
The campaign combined consumer sentiment research with strong, safety-led advice content and landed 148 media placements, including Metro, Grand Designs, Your Home and more. It provided extremely valuable to the GGF’s installer base as it helped to alleviate consumer fears about them entering the home. You can read more about the campaign here or see some of the resulting coverage here.
We also often secure media opportunities that enable us to provide comment from both the membership organisation and their members. Again, this provides added value to members by securing them free of charge, top-tier press coverage. You can see an example of this in a recent Grand Designs opportunity we secured for the GGF, where one of its members was also able to be included.
Attracting external funding
Last but not least, PR and comms professionals can help member organisations attract and secure external funding – whether that’s grant funding, online funding, corporate sponsorships or partnerships, or philanthropic partnerships.
PRs can help member organisations to secure this all-important funding via a number of core tactics including building brand awareness/a voice for a client around key narratives, creating lead-gen focused campaigns with KPIs specifically on securing funding interest, and supporting clients with writing successful bids and funding applications. The latter is a skill in itself, requiring careful assessment of the grant guidelines and requirements and developing compelling proposals that demonstrate the organisation’s capacity to effectively utilise funds for meaningful impact.
Effective PR for member organisations
Ultimately, with a strong communications strategy that shouts about the great work member organisations are doing, all manner of key strategic goals can be achieved. Strong PR plays a vital role in helping these organisations amplify their message, increase visibility, and attract new members.
To further demonstrate our commitment to supporting the sector and doing great work for member organisations, we’re proud to be a MemberWise partner – an independent professional network that provides practical help and support to around 8,000 membership and association professionals in the UK and overseas.
If you’re a member organisation that is in need of a boost, or wants to stand out via carefully crafted PR, get in touch.