Recruiting and retaining members is a perpetual problem for most organizations. It is especially challenging at not-for-profits such as the IEEE, where membership activities are handled by unpaid volunteers. Nevertheless, by focusing on a few key factors, membership development (MD) volunteers helped IEEE staff to recruit 76 536 members in 2006—more than in any year since 2002.

Of course, signing up new recruits is only half the job. Holding on to existing members is equally important and is, in fact, the first priority of Rolf Remshardt, newly appointed MD chair of Region 8 (Europe, Middle East, Africa). Remshardt asks the region’s various section MD chairs to send e-grams to anyone who has not yet paid dues for the next year. The idea is to remind those who simply forgot to renew to do so, and to ask those who intentionally didn’t renew why they didn’t. That information can then be analyzed by the IEEE Regional Activities Board to see what steps might be taken to make the institute more attractive to them.

COUNTING ON TYPE A’s For Lee Stogner, a member of the IEEE’s MD Committee and MD committee chair of Region 3 (Southeastern United States), the key to an effective MD effort is being able to rely on people with Type A personalities. Stogner wants Type A’s on the institute's MD committees—people who are comfortable walking up to strangers at meetings and saying, “You’re an engineer. Have you considered joining the IEEE?” And, once they get a conversation going, MD people need what Stogner calls a 30-second “elevator pitch” in which they outline the benefits of IEEE membership.

To instill a bit of Type A pizzazz in its MD people, the IEEE updated the training it provided during the MD retreat held in May at the IEEE Piscataway Operations Center in New Jersey. Regional MD chairs and society chairs were brought in so they could train local MD volunteers. The volunteers left the retreat with the benefits of membership implanted firmly in mind, an updated MD manual gripped tightly in their hands, and finely honed elevator pitches.

The IEEE’s new business management system (BMS), which is currently in the process of becoming operational, should make recruiting easier. It is designed to allow local MD committees to call up the names of nonmembers who attended IEEE conferences in their areas, and who can then be contacted and asked to join. Local MD committees will be encouraged to staff membership booths at conferences, where they can themselves make contact with potential members.

Stogner says it is essential for MD committees to take on the task of persuading student members to remain in the IEEE after they graduate. That requires letting them know that the IEEE is much more than just publications and conferences. “It is a network that can help them find jobs,” he says. “And, they can practice people skills within the IEEE that they can take back to work the very next day.”