Last month was really busy. I met with many organizations who are looking for help after a distressing 2009. And some of them do not realize just how much trouble they may be in going forward.
When I meet with groups, I use a simple method to calculate where their membership is headed given their current metrics. It is called a Steady State Analysis.
Using your current data, you can also do this analysis to see what the ultimate equilibrium of your association membership count will be. You can also use the analysis to model where it might be if you add more new members or have higher renewals.
To do the calculation, you only need two numbers; your renewal rate and your total new member input from the past year. Here is how it works. You take your new member input from the past year and divide it by your lapse rate presented as a decimal. So if your renewal rate is 80%, then your lapse rate is 20% or .20.
For example, 20,000 New Member Input / .25 Lapse Rate = 80,000 Steady State Total Membership.
Here is the formula: Annual New Member Input / Reciprocal of Renewal Rate (or Lapse Rate) Shown as a Decimal = Total Membership Steady State.
Here are three examples of how you can project your future membership.
• A 75% renewal rate and 8,000 new members per year will result in a steady state membership of 32,000 members
• An 85% renewal rate and 2,000 new members per year will result in a steady state membership of 13,333 members
• An 80% renewal rate with 5,000 new members per year will result in a steady state membership of 25,000 members
One other thought to consider. From my personal observation, the organizations that I am seeing in the most distress are those that pulled back from marketing this past year. Groups that continued to aggressively market membership actually came through the year in much better shape. This confirms some of the research that we shared at the start of this recession.
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