Thought I'd take a break from the Herculean (or is it Sisyphusian?) task of unpacking books here at my new place in Portland Maine to post something I've been carrying around on my hard drive for over a month.
These are some notes and reflections from a workshop offered at General Assembly by Linda Laskowski, who as I recall (having long ago tossed away my GA program) is or was the Membership Coordinator at our church in Berkeley CA.
This was one of the best GA workshops I've attended in a long (and I mean LONG) time, because it brought together several different things I've been interested in almost my entire career and presented them in a very thoughtful and (more importantly) useful package.
So thanks Linda! (although in fairness I really ought to mention that anything here that doesn't quite seem to make sense was probably added by me).
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Processes are things that happen over and over again. Process Improvement Techniques can be used to evaluate and improve them.
• break down each process into its separate and discrete steps
• measure each step and convert those measurements to a ratio
• track change over time, and
• compare your ratios to external benchmarks in order to measure your performance.
Sometimes just the process of identifying your "key processes" and analyzing their constituent steps will bring noticeable improvement all by itself, since this also encourages simplification, thus helping to make things that are done routinely as “routine” as possible. Simply creating clear and coherent “Standard Operating Procedures” (SOPs) which are transparent and measurable, easy to teach, and consistently repeatable, will often improve performance dramatically.
With respect to the processes related to Outreach and Membership Growth, Linda has essentially defined steps very similar to the ones outlined by Roy Oswald in The Inviting Church. So if you're familiar with that work, this will all make even more sense.
Generating Public Awareness (Oswald's "Attraction") -- Membership Growth teams often want to start with ways to do better publicity in order to create “increased visibility.” But from the perspective of process improvement, this is both a difficult benchmark to measure, and also the trickiest to significantly influence. Based on previous studies, only approximately two-tenths of one per cent of the general population are “aware” of Unitarian Universalism in any significant way beyond the level of a punch-line on “A Prairie Home Companion.” So one should assume low public awareness from the start.
More to the point, campaigns to raise public awareness are generally very expensive and yield only marginal results in comparison to their cost, thus making it at best a step to be taken later rather than sooner, only after you have already improved the portions of the process over which you have more effective control.
First Time Visitors ("Initiation" or "Orientation") -- Make it a priority to greet and welcome ALL visitors warmly, but track the local ones who are also prospective new members. Three most frequent sources of visitors are friends, family, and the internet. How do we know? We ASK right on the visitors card. The use of “check the box” rather than “fill in the blank” (i.e. “how did you hear of us?”) significantly increases the response. Also:
• Greet people AS they arrive...first impressions are formed in the first five minutes, and will generally determine whether or not a visitor will return.
• Ask how they learned about you. Ask what they are interested in.
• Help them create a handmade name badge, and use that time to collect their contact info.
• Send e-mail or post card within the week! (preferably within 48 hours).
Benchmark: growing churches have a 1:1 ratio (or better) of annual first time visitors to actual members (so, “each one bring one” really is true); churches which are NOT growing generally can’t meet that benchmark.
Return Visitors (Oswald's "Exploration") are three times more likely to join the church than one-time visitors. So focus on creating more of them!!! Have a permanent name tag waiting for them, as well as some sort of “coupon.” (coffee with the minister?) Then ask everyone to return their badges to a central location (like a basket) so you can measure attendance that way.
Track attendance for at least six months (Linda had several good ideas for doing this, but mostly it's a matter of paying attention) -- try to measure ratio of repeat visitors to total visitors (i.e. what percentage of first time visitors return within six months).
Also attempt to track the non-returnees. Try using the anonymous “Survey Monkey” for an informal "exit interview"-- What was your experience here? Why did you decide not to return?
Benchmark: growing churches report anywhere from 20-40% of first-time visitors return for a second visit.
Formal Membership (Oswald's "Commitment"): what percentage of visitors actually eventually “sign the book” (& pledge)...
Growing Churches: 15-20%+
Declining Churches: less than 10%
Active Membership (“Going Deeper; Being Sent”) “task, role, group” -- track this carefully! The point is to encourage everyone to do one thing for themselves (i.e. a class, or participation in an on-going Fellowship Circle like a Small Group Ministry Covenant Group) and one thing for the Church/Community (some sort of volunteer or leadership position).
Often these things overlap, but don't ASSUME that they will -- actively encourage people to think of their involvement beyond Sunday Worship in both of these dimensions (which are basically just synonyms for the old-fashioned practices of "Discipleship" and "Vocation" or "Ministry").
Also remember this: NO ONE in their right mind joins a church because they want to give away their money and serve on a committee. They do those things because by doing so they contribute to something larger, more meaningful and more important to them. So make sure that they aren't disappointed!
Benchmark: 65% or more (the higher this number, the less likely they will be part of your “back door”...
Attrition Most churches typically lose between 10-12% of their membership each year. Much of this is unavoidable -- perhaps 5% move away, and another 2-3% die...leaving only about a third of this number (i.e. 3-4%) up for grabs.
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The nice thing about tracking these numbers is that they not only allow you to measure how well you are doing, they also force you to pay attention to the process itself, and to focus in on the places where you are either doing well or falling short.
But even before you begin to target your efforts this way, here are The Five Best Membership Growth Ideas Ever (i.e. the five more effective things you can do right away to improve newcomer hospitality and increase the likelihood that first time visitors will return and eventually become active members of your congregation).
• Hire a paid, part-time Membership Coordinator. Or (if you must) find someone who has the both time and the inclination to do the work of a paid, part-time membership coordinator without pay.
• Develop a highly visible, easy-to-follow “Pathway to Membership.” Some folks like to stick their toes in the water, while others like to plunge right in. But a well-defined path can accomodate both, and still allow them to move along it at their own most comfortable speed.
• Use Roving Greeters Effectively. You can call them whatever you like -- Hospitlers, Guardian Angels, even “Pineapple People” (as they are known in Berkeley) -- but meaningful, one-to-one personal contact is essential! So assign an adequate number of “roving greeters” for every service, and give THEM the Gold Coffee Mugs! Recruit your greeters from the demographic groups you hope to attract, and make sure they are knowledgeable about the programs that newcomers are likely to be most interested in.
• The Personal Touch. Greet newcomers as they arrive at the front door, make a friendly follow-up contact within 48 hours, and make a point of personally welcoming them again (by name if you can) when they return a second time.
• Website, Website, Website!!! Back in the day, the one piece of publicity a church couldn’t live without was a good Yellow Pages ad. Before that, it was a great sign or a sidewalk readerboard. And before that, it was a tall steeple, and a loud bell. But today it is a great webpage. So don’t ignore your web presence -- it is probably the first thing about your church people are going to see and notice. Make it user-friendly and easy to navigate, fill it with friendly and inviting images (rather than a lot of dense text), and make sure it gives newcomers the kind of information they will want to know (like what time church starts, what to expect during the service, how people dress, etc. etc.). You won’t regret it.
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3 comments:
Membership stuff is good as far as it goes -- and believe me, I do push it all the time -- but pastoral care is the weak link in too many UU interdependent webs. Too often we scare people off in their hours of need, because we garble our messages of abundance and stewardship into assumptions of affluence and capabibility. Sadly, this is usually not what we were intending, and we need to work as hard on getting rid of these overtones as we have still must do on anti-racist, homophobic cultural baggages.
I tend to agree that often times our "membership" efforts become way too obsessed with what growth is expected to do for the church (i.e. bring in new people who will give us their money and do the work that nobody else seems to want to do), to the extent that we loose sight of what we really ought to be thinking about, which is "hospitality to strangers," and how participation in an authentic community of faith (or at least faithful participation in OUR "authentic" community) can enhance other peoples' lives. Pastoral Care is obviously a big piece of that (since people do tend to seek out a religious connection in times of need or crisis), but it is certainly not the only piece and UU churches are not the only faith communities which sometimes fall short in this respect.
But in my own mind this is always tempered by another sentiment I've often expressed here: that churches are institutions which are almost guaranteed to disappoint and even routinely break our hearts, because we expect SO MUCH of them, and yet (despite all the rhetoric about being "Houses of God") they are such quintessentially human insitituions. So I prefer the "positive regard" approach -- I want my people to focus on the things we do WELL, while reminding them that church is a gift we give to one another, and to which we invite, if not the entire world, then at least our "kindred spirits." Which of course then opens up a whole set of other questions around the issue of "who is my neighbor?"
As for the racist, classist, and homophobic attitudes you mention, UU congregations are once again certainly not alone in carrying this baggage, and the work itself is constant. But it's not going to happen overnight either; I've certainly walked a long way down this road in my half-century on this planet, and in many ways still often feel like a one-eyed man trying to lead the blind, the lame, and the halt over uneven ground without tripping them up or letting them stumble and fall.
Ouch! That last metaphor really strained something! So rather than limp along any further today, I think I'll just sit and rest for awhile, and hope nobody comes along and tries to lay hands on me....
I just read this post - five months after I gave the workshop referred to in Portland. Thanks for the support - you not only summarized the points well, but added material that was totally relevant.
So here is a request: you may remember that I gave out CDs (30 to be exact) to anyone who would be willing to send me data so that I could continue to refine the benchmarks. To date: 0. So if you know anyone who, like you, "gets it" and actually collects data, please ask them to send it to me!
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