What Membership Retention Methods can be learned from Jewish Community Centers with High Net Promoter Scores

JCCs demonstrate an organizational culture of attending to membership, that report having adjusted their membership model over the last three years (such as adjusting their membership categories to more accurately reflect local population, or allowing month-to-month membership payment via credit card or bank draft), and that have recently altered their facilities, are those which have experienced the highest rates of growth.

Factors are the most critical in predicting growth:

1. Attention - An organizational culture of closely attending to members and to membership growth. (p. 8)

• This includes motivating a staff that is professionally trained to value membership growth, attending to members at critical points in the entry (and exit) process, staying close to the customer, listening for feedback.

2. Agility - Devising innovative approaches to the membership model. (p. 9) • Some examples of new models are: monthly memberships and automatic renewal, lifetime lock-in of membership rates, responding to the changing shape of families, a new two-tier membership model offering community and/or fitness, and responding to aging Baby Boomers.

3. Alterations - Recent renovations to the physical plant. (p. 11)

• The level of renovation can range substantially from renovating only the fitness center to renovating the entire JCC to building a new facility or moving to a new location.

While the relative statistical influence of each of these factors is about equal, a JCC's organizational culture of attention to membership is the most influential of the three. Moreover, the three factors operate independently; each contributes to membership growth in the presence or the absence of the other two.

Some other highlights from this study include:

4. Nearly half of responding JCCs now require no membership commitment after the first year, and 11% of these require no commitment ever, allowing month-to-month membership from the start. (p. 14)

5. Fifty-one% of respondents state that the people who sell memberships have not received training in how to “close a sale,” and 11% report the majority of their tour leaders have not been trained in how to lead a tour. (p. 14)

6. Communication with members is mixed. (p. 15)

• Seventy-six% of responding JCCs said that they communicate with their members via a monthly e-mail newsletter. Only 41% periodically call random members to ask about their satisfaction with the JCC, and just 36% of JCCs conduct an annual or biennial membership satisfaction or feedback survey.

• Eighty-one% of JCCs thank new members for joining the JCC with a phone call or personal letter. Only 43% of JCCs thank their returning members for renewing their memberships with a similar phone call or letter.

7. While nearly every responding JCC (97%) requires membership to access their fitness facilities, only 72% require it to participate in early childhood education programs, and 38% require membership to attend camp. (p. 16)

8. Fully 75% of JCCs do not offer trial memberships, and only 11% require no commitment ever, thus limiting the ways ...