He can help your organization to grow its membership in a manner that is sustainable—abandon the join & quit cycle and embrace the high-level retention model. Learn from Ed how to ride the member ROI organizational wave, making your organization more member-ROI-centric and influence non-members to make the decision to join and stay.
Ed’s approach is simple; keep the members you have by delivering even more ROI for their membership dollar. Next, influence non-members to join by proving in actual dollar numbers, that membership in your organization is a great business decision. Third, turn your members into member recruitment evangelists.
To achieve the above, you’ll need to develop new tools for your member evangelists through qualitative research focus groups—The Rigsbee Member ROI Valuation ProcessTM to determine your organization’s ROI (return on investment) in actual-dollar numbers. You’ll need to conduct Features of Membership Framework Exercises among your staff and volunteer leaders to know what to sunset and what to keep. And, you’ll need to make member ROI one of the decision-filters for every silo or department in your organization. Perhaps you’ll even need to fix some governance issues too? If your organization is committed, you can make membership growth a reality, regardless of the economy or generational issues.
Ed Rigsbee is unique in the fact that he holds both the Certified Association Executive (CAE) credential and that of the Certified Speaking Professional (CSP). He has been referred to as, the dynamite that blew up the log jam. If your organization is ready to take a definitive step toward growing your organization, Ed is ready to help you through the maze or land mines, road blocks, and subversives. He is available to help your non-profit “move the needle” toward accelerated membership growth.
Looking for the missing link to explosive membership growth? It’s member ROI at your core. Learn to calculate, prove and communicate your organization’s member ROI and prove to the non-members in your industry/profession that membership in your organization is a smart business decision. Trade associations and professional societies of today must continually prove the return on investment they deliver to members in order to stay relevant. Today, membership organization leaders must see their organization through the eyes of the non-member and be capable of proving the actual yearly sustainable real-dollar ROI that their current members receive in order to maintain high-level member retention and continual new recruitment. Learn how to turn your ambivalent members into member recruitment evangelists.
The ROI of Membership–Today’s Missing Link for Explosive Growth is available here. Click book cover to order your copy (no charge for shipping) at Rigsbee.com. Get the special 3-book deal: a copy each for the Chief Staff Executive, Director of Membership and Chief Elected Officer.
I found working with Ed an enlightening experience. His skill set, process, analysis, transfer to reality are all spot on. He is a true consultant. That being said, he comes in with no preconditions or conceptions about your organization. He finds the good, bad and ugly of the organization and calls it out, in a very professional way. I valued this as the E.D., either confirming my thoughts or, in some cases, changing them for the better. There are no “sacred cows” in Ed’s economy, which I appreciate very much. He objectively observes your operation, evaluates its current effectiveness and gives you concrete plans on how to improve it. That is the good news…….Ed is very good at his profession. The bad news is that organizations must be ready to entertain his “view”, at least as a possibility or the entire exercise will fall flat. As in the movie, A Few Good Men (during the exchange between Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson…..”I want the truth” to which Jack retorted…..”you can’t handle the truth”). Ed will give you the truth, as he sees it, from working with dysfunctional associations for many years. And, given an honest effort to evaluate his recommendations, his “truth” most always works out. But if you are not ready to have someone leave no stone, and I mean NO STONE untouched, it would be in your best interest to look elsewhere for a “make you feel good about what you are already doing” type consultant. I am sure there are many out there. However, Ed is not one of them. If you are doing something well, he will congratulate you and add his opinion on how it might become better. However, if there is something truly wrong (which usually is the reason you hire an outside consultant in the first place), then he will point it out, tell you why its wrong and tell you how to fix it. Period.
The best I can say is that he may not make many friends in your organization, but he will make a difference for the positive. Before hiring him, be sure that is what you want. To hire him for any other reason than to look at your organization (at least the broken parts) and work toward a solution, without reference to its political fall out, will result in a positive and productive engagement. To do so for any other reason may prove somewhat “uncomfortable” for those who dislike productive and progressive change.
Thanks Ed, for your counsel, leadership and solid principles on which an organization truly wanting to improve itself, can flourish.
Thank you very much for your keynote presentation at the NFBA 2004 Frame Building Expo. Many of our attendees told me they really enjoyed your presentation. The fact that you tailored your comments specifically for our group was highly appreciated.
Additionally, your member valuation session created great value for us. We now can better communicate the high-level return on investment our members receive from their membership. Our board of directors was quite pleased with the information you gathered and presented. One of their strategic goals was to measure the value return on investment for being a member of the association, and you helped us attain that.
The article you prepared after the Expo that was based on the “Member Value” workshop and the actual dollar amounts our members pegged to the various benefits and services we provide extended the value of your presentation far beyond our conference. We printed it in the “Membership Directory” issue of our official publication, Frame Building News magazine, and it greatly increased the effectiveness of that issue in convincing people of the value of our association! I’m certain that article led directly to several new memberships we received after the magazine came out. We also appreciate your other articles, which we will continue to publish as often as possible.
I really appreciated the fact that you were quite easy to work with throughout the months before our meeting, as well as during our meeting. I would highly recommend you to any association as a keynoter and seminar leader.
Our Association has worked with Ed on several projects, and he took the time to get to know our members and their needs. His innovative programs and member valuation and recruitment and retention efforts have made a difference in our strategic planning and marketing. We have also close followed his message related to strategic alliances and have made inroads in creating synergy in our industry through efforts related to this. I highly recommend Ed Rigsbee as a professional speaker or business consultant.
Ed Rigsbee led a membership drive kickoff webinar for us that fired up our Membership Committee and board. I think Ed is an association electrician since many lightbulbs came on during and after his presentation. He has given our membership team a solid roadmap for our new membership year. Having tried direct mail, telemarketing, and other means, we are excited to adopt Ed’s approach, which emphasizes member evangelism and providing education on value and ROI. We applaud Ed for getting us off to a great start. Our wheels are now off the runway.
When I was Director of Membership at SNAME, we hired Ed as a consultant to help us with our strategy for recruitment and retention. Ed really helped us think about our society in terms of the value that we were delivering to our members. Ed forced us to take an honest look at the features of SNAME membership – what do members get, and how does it make their lives better?
Once this basic framework was in place, Ed helped us with our communications with members and non-members, focusing on ROI. Our messaging has become much more concise and powerful as we learned to zero in on the “what’s in it for me” aspect of our Society. He also has a method of quantifying the value of each feature of membership through qualitative research. This allowed us to attach a monetary ROI to each feature determined completely from our members.
Recommended for any non-profit exec: “The ROI of Membership” by Ed Rigsbee. And I urge you to take the opportunity to reach out to Ed on LinkedIn. I guarantee that you will learn something that will help you do your job better.
At the Mid-Atlantic Society of Association Executives, we hired Ed to do a full day seminar on Member ROI in the Spring, and brought him back as our closing keynote speaker at our Annual Meeting this Winter. I personally get a lot out of speakers who challenge the status quo – and he certainly did that. I walked away with several ideas to implement right away in my organization, and even some longer term items to incorporate into future member recruitment & retention campaigns. I would personally recommend Ed without hesitation for any organization looking for an energetic, thought-provoking presentation.
This hard hitting presentation quickly got to the value added part of association membership and accomplished the very important goal of setting the table to allow our board to move forward with a common sense determination of which of our actions are actually valued by the membership. It was an outstanding presentation and moved the group to consensus in a very efficient manner. All associations would benefit from this process, and regularly.
There was considerable value to us as an association in that Ed was able to deliver two successful programs over the course of our annual meeting. It was tremendous bang for the buck.
I attended Ed’s ROI Membership Summit. I gained invaluable information from this event and now we are incorporating some of his innovative ideas across our association. It was truly an inspirational and wonderful learning experience. I would highly recommend Ed if anyone needs assistance with increasing their membership efforts and finding new ways to succeed as an association.
Ed’s insight, experience, and proven tools make the seemingly impossible tasks of calculating and communicating member ROI possible. He comes to the ROI discussion with a straightforward approach and clear examples of ROI models in action and leaves you with concrete action items and tools to reach success.
Tracy RigganPassionate, Data Driven, Innovative Project Expert and Senior Director of Member Support at IPC
I attended one of Ed’s seminars on Member ROI. It was well organized, highly interactive, and the information provided was very useful. Having worked with nonprofit organizations for more than a decade in various capacities, I have attended many workshops and seminars.This seminar was, by far, one of the best. Ed reinforced much of what I have learned over the years, and also provided new insight and guidance concerning emerging issues. I enthusiastically recommend Ed for any professional development trainings geared toward nonprofit staff.
Over the years I have electronic interactions with Ed, which have been useful, but in our first (and I hope not last) face to face meeting, Ed really delivered. In about 90 minutes we covered a range of member recruitment and retention strategies, built out the skeleton for a long term engagement and gave me a great value concept to work through my national membership team.
I can tell you that Ed knows what he’s talking about with regards to membership and his willingness to help us membership professionals succeed makes him a real asset to those who reach out to him.
Jonathan SperDirector of Membership at NAIFA - the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors
I attended Ed’s Member ROI Summit in Toronto. The member recruitment, engagement strategies we have implemented have helped my organization reach our member goals and plan for future ROI.